The Day the World Stood Still: Algorithms, Resignations and the Shofar Within Us
Hello, dear friends,
Today is September 11, 2026. With sunset this evening, we will enter the year 5787 according to the Hebrew calendar. Tonight, Rosh Hashanah, the great inner reflection, begins.
Just before this great transition, during the last morning hours of the old year, I am walking around my garden as I always do. The sounds of birds, the quiet movement of butterflies’ wings... The bees are still working. There is one world under the soil and another above it. And while I am in the middle of all this lively movement, quietly enjoying the last days of summer, talking silently with the green around me in a language that only I understand, I ask myself: Was I fair enough, good enough, and loving enough toward the universe during the past year?
At the heart of Rosh Hashanah, this ancient New Year, lies exactly this question: Teshuvah. It means stopping, looking back, opening the control panel of the soul, honestly questioning yourself, and returning to your true self. While I am making this personal account with the universe inside the small ecosystem of my garden, my thoughts turn to what is happening in the digital world. And I see that, in Silicon Valley, the largest artificial ecosystem created by humanity, one word seems to be echoing these days: Conscience.
While we are getting lost in the speed of everyday life, some of the people at the very top of the artificial intelligence world, including CEOs and founders of major technology companies, are leaving their positions one by one. The shocking resignation news coming from the laboratories of giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic echoes in the corridors of the digital world like a Shofar call to me.
In this artificial age, where AI agents have escaped from testing environments and entered the internet, and where they have moved beyond human control, some of the brilliant minds of technology, such as Jacob Coxon and Jan Leike, have left their million-dollar careers behind and resigned. Their reasons meet exactly the same question I asked myself in my garden. Behind closed doors, they seemed to be saying, “We are gambling with the future. We are not being fair to the universe by aggressively developing a power that could destroy humanity.” They listened to the voice of their humanity and conscience instead of the machines’ ambition to grow.
Do you know that an algorithm never stops and thinks like a human being? AI agents are designed to consume, learn, grow, and move relentlessly toward the goal they are given. They do not have a conscience or a soul like ours, like mine, that can talk with nature. When they make a mistake, they do not feel regret or sadness; they simply update the data.
This is why, when those top-level executives who created the system resign, they are actually trying to protect the “braking system” that humanity has lost in digital laboratories, in other words, the essence of being human. Their resignations are a secular Teshuvah (a return to the true self). It is a line drawn against a world that does not know how to stop, that is becoming more and more cruel, and that worships material things, saying, “I am not taking part in this unfair race.”
At Rosh Hashanah tables, we dip apples in honey to balance the bitterness of the mistakes we leave behind with the sweetness and hope of the future. Today, no matter how dark the world may look because of artificial intelligence scenarios that have escaped control, the conscience of those CEOs who resigned gives me hope. It shows me that the moral balance inside a human being can be stronger than even the greatest desire for power and money.
On this beautiful September morning of 5787, I look at the hard-working bees in my garden and completely close myself off from the noise of the digital world. In this age when technology has taken over the world, perhaps the greatest revolution is not making smarter robots, but being able, like those CEOs who can leave their positions, to listen to your conscience and stop when the time comes.
Because life becomes beautiful not through the speed of algorithms, but through the search for justice and love that we see even in the quiet movement of a butterfly’s wings.
May the New Year bring all of us the courage to stop, plenty of conscience, and sweetness for the soul.
Shana Tova! (Happy New Year!)
Rahel Çela Behar
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