The Final Dance: Shabbos, AI, and the Fear of Redemption

This is a guest post that I had the privilege of editing and tweaking. It’s a piece that really resonated with me, and I hope it will with you too. Thought-provoking, poetic, and deeply relevant - enjoy.

The Search for Oneness

Shabbos isn’t a day of doing. It’s a day of being.

Long ago, people sought something beyond themselves. A way to touch the infinite. To lose themselves in something greater. Some called it prayer. Others, meditation. Nirvana. Enlightenment. I like to think of it as dancing. And if not the Divine, then God. Shiva. Ein Sof. The names change. The experience does not.

At some point, our ancestors built a temple - a way to make the intangible real. They took the ephemeral and etched it into stone. A place where all work stopped, where a person could step inside and, for a moment, dissolve into the Divine. A sanctuary in space, carved into the physical world.

But then, it was destroyed. And without their sacred space, they felt lost. They couldn’t dance anymore. But they rebuilt. Because that’s what we do. We lose. We mourn. We rebuild. Again and again. Until one day, when the temple was destroyed once more, something shifted.

They saw a truth so simple, so profound, that it reshaped everything: If a sanctuary in space can be taken away, then maybe the true sanctuary isn’t in space at all. So instead of carving out a place, they carved out a time. A sanctuary in time. They called it Shabbos.

The Illusion of Separateness

For six days, we work. (Back and forth. In and out.)

We build, we create, we immerse ourselves in the illusion of separateness. (Faster. Faster.)

We thrust forward, pushing, striving, reaching. (Harder. Deeper. Faster.)

And then -

(In and out. In and out.)

On the seventh day -

(FASTER! FASTER! FASTER!)

STOP.

Silence

Stillness

Release

We are there.

Everything stops.

The illusion of separateness melts away. Everything is ready. There is nothing left to do. No more pretending. No more striving. The world is whole. Exactly as it is. And for this one day, we just exist.

In Chasidic thought, this concept of carving out locations for communion is represented by Olam, Shana, and Nefesh.

First, we carved out a place. Olam. A temple of stone. The Beis HaMikdash.

Then, we lost it.

So we carved out time. Shana. A temple of moments. Shabbos.

But the final frontier is not a place. Not a time. It is us. Nefesh. Soul. Not a sanctuary we build, but a state we become. A world where Shabbos is no longer something we enter. It’s something that never leaves. Not because we have set it aside. But because we no longer need to.

And maybe that’s what we mean when we talk about Moshiach.

A Glimpse of the Infinite

If Shabbos is a taste of that final state, then maybe we’ve glimpsed it elsewhere too. In those rare moments when the mind quiets, and the illusion of separateness begins to slip away.

I’ve wondered about this before. About the way certain experiences seem to open the same door. How, at the height of a psychedelic journey, the illusion of separateness melts away. And like Shabbos, everything is ready. There is nothing left to do. The world is whole. Exactly as it’s supposed to be. For a brief time, we just exist. And in that stillness, it feels obvious. Like it was always obvious. That separateness, competition, identity - all of it - was never real.

But we can’t stay there for too long. We have to come back to the default world. Because being one with the universe doesn’t pay our mortgage, or feed us, or protect us from being eaten by a tiger. So, although through substances or breathwork we can taste the final communion - the final dance - our circumstances require it to be just that. A glimpse.

The Fall from Oneness

And maybe this is what the original storytellers were trying to convey with Adam and Chava in Gan Eden. (Bear with me.) In the beginning, they lived in a Yom Shekulo Shabbos. No striving. Nothing to do. Because everything was already prepared. Their needs were met. They were tripping full-time, dancing in communion with the Infinite. They didn’t know good from bad. Because it was all One. Intelligence and logic didn’t matter. (A proof they were tripping? The snake had legs.)

But then - They ate from the Etz HaDaas. The Tree of Knowledge. They chose differentiation. They chose self-awareness. They chose to come down from the trip. And suddenly, the Oneness faded. They saw themselves as separate from the universe. And that’s when they realized they were naked.

From this place of knowledge, they could no longer spend their days dancing with the Infinite. It wasn’t a curse. It was a consequence. From that moment on, they lived in this world - the default world. The world of striving. The world where one eats by the sweat of their brow. And only occasionally, with effort, could they taste the Shabbos they had left behind.

The Next Shift

But maybe the story isn’t over.

Maybe Moshiach is coming. And sooner than we think.

Not as a man on a donkey. Not with miracles or prophecy. But through a shift so massive, we barely recognize it as redemption.

For most of history, survival belonged to the strong. If you could farm, hunt, fight, build - you thrived. If you couldn’t, you depended on those who could.

Then came the Industrial Revolution. Machines took over muscle. Strength no longer mattered - intelligence did. The ones who thrived now were those who could invent, strategize, manipulate systems.

Now, we’re on the brink of the next great shift.

If we don’t destroy ourselves first, we might find ourselves here:

A world where AI takes over what we once thought was uniquely human - intelligence itself. Just as machines made brute strength obsolete, AI may do the same to intellect. Why spend years studying medicine when AI can diagnose and treat better than any doctor? Why train in law, finance, or programming when AI can draft contracts, predict markets, and write code at superhuman speeds?

If we make it that far - if we don’t collapse under our own weight first - then maybe intelligence will go the way of muscle. AI will optimize, strategize, execute far beyond our capabilities. It will pay our mortgage, feed us, protect us from being eaten by a tiger.

And if that happens, what then?

Maybe, for the first time, there will be no reason to return to the default world.

Maybe it will once again be a Yom Shekulo Shabbos - a world where we no longer need to fight to survive. A world where we no longer need to separate in order to exist. A world where, at last, we can just be.

The Final Question

The illusion is fading. Maybe.

Maybe faster than we think. Maybe faster than we’re ready for. And if it does - if one day there’s no more need to fight, no more reason to strive, no more separateness left to cling to - what will we do?

Will we panic? Will we run? Will we scramble to rebuild the walls, to carve out new barriers, to manufacture new struggles just to keep pretending we are apart?

It’s Shabbos afternoon at my in-laws’. The house is hot, the air thick and unmoving. Someone is sweating. Someone else is fanning themselves with a bent copy of the Yated.

For close to an hour, they argue. Can they call over the non-Jewish neighbor to lower the thermostat? If they do, how do they ask without explicitly asking? Can they hint? How strong of a hint? Can they say, "Wow, it’s really warm in here," or does it have to be even more indirect?

The conversation loops, doubles back, knots itself into halachic contortions. The heat swells, but the question remains unanswered. I sit there, listening, the words washing over me.

And then - through the window - I notice a bird gliding weightless through the air. No hesitation. No calculations. Just flying. Just being.

And a thought creeps in, quiet and dreadful.

What if we actually get there?

What if, one day, there is no more struggle? No more barriers? No more need to work, to strive, to survive? What if humanity finally steps into Yom Shekulo Shabbos?

And what if - just like now - they forbid it?

What if they call it evil? What if they write teshuvos against it, declare it treif, build new walls just to keep it out? What if they cling to the struggle, to the archaic debates, to the very laws that were meant to lead them to this moment?

What if the world is finally whole - exactly as it’s supposed to be - and they refuse to see it?

I watch the bird disappear into the sky, weightless, untangled by law or language. And I wonder if we will ever let ourselves be free.

Shabbos has always been here. Waiting. Not a day. Not a rule. Not a ritual. But a whisper beneath the noise. A stillness beneath the striving. A quiet invitation we have spent eternity resisting.

The final dance has already begun.

The music is playing.

The only question is -

Will we look up?