On the Saturday night before Purim 1991, I sat in the Bet Midrash (study hall) of Yeshivat Har Etzion when my teacher, Rabbi Ezra Bick delivered a semi-humorous shiur (class) on cooking Manna on Shabbat. Rabbi Bick, citing the Midrash Halacha, explained that the Jews cooked the Manna, the miraculous sustenance of the wandering Jews in the desert, by thinking about what it should taste like. If the Jew thought Manna should taste like steak, it cooked itself to be a juicy steak. If the wandering Jew preferred pasta bolognese, your thoughts cooked the manna to taste like pasta bolognese. The modern Jewish delicacy of Sashimi was a bit out of the question, since your thoughts thoroughly cooked the manna and did not leave it raw.

Rabbi Bick suggested that this was no mythological parable but rather a Midrash Halacha (exegesis of Jewish law) and, hence, should be thought of as an attempt to codify a law. He proceeded to ask whether certain acts of “being” could be considered doing melacha, prohibited work on Shabbat, much like “think-cooking” manna. He asked about a human being whose body temperature triggered the thermostat in a cold room to turn off the air conditioning. Would that act of “being,” which triggers an electronic reaction be considered a prohibited shabbat activity? What about if you, or Uri Geller, could think to bend a spoon into a ball? Would that be “work” on shabbat?

That was 1991 but it turns out that Rabbi Bick was ahead of his time. 1991 was the very early days of technological innovation in the home. However, this Friday night, August 28th 2015, “being” lit up our house.

When we came back from America last week, I brought home an Amazon Echo because I wanted to really understand the implications of voice interfaces on our lives. For those of you unfamiliar with Echo, you can watch the video below. To activate Echo you simply say “Alexa.” Echo then let’s you know it is ready to start listening to instructions or questions by alighting a blue LED on the top of the cylinder.

After addressing the black box as Alexa and seeing the blue light, you can ask it a myriad of questions or ask Alexa to perform tasks. Over the first few days, we asked it to play music, radio stations and tell us the Yankees score. My wife and I asked Alexa to add sugar, dish soap and napkins to our shopping list, which Alexa then immediately populated to the list on our iPhones. You can ask Alexa to turn on and off the lights in your smart home. My kids even asked Alexa “Who is Michael Eisenberg?” At least in my opinion, it did not get that answer completely right but you get the point.

We have been fascinated by Echo and voice activated Alexa. Naturally, it became a topic of discussion at the Shabbat table as my children were explaining to our guests how Alexa works. My son Chaim innocently said to the guests, “So you just address it as Alexa and it listens to you.” As soon as he said the word Alexa, the now familiar blue light, turned itself on and Alexa was listening for commands.

We all looked at the sleek black cylinder somewhat stunned. None of us was addressing Echo nor trying to turn Alexa on. However, Echo is always on and always listening. Chaim’s casual description of the device triggered the light. Instinctively, we all thought this was an incursion into our weekly paradise called Shabbat. We work so hard to disconnect from devices like cellphones and computers for this one day of weekly reflection, family time, study and thought, that the blue light made us all feel a bit uncomfortable and guilty. I know I did.

As I thought about this some more over the last 48 hours, I could not figure out, why talking to, talking at, or talking around Alexa is prohibited on Shabbat under our current understanding of the Torah and Rabbinic prohibitions. It has an LED and not an incandescent bulb. It is voice operated and always on. There are not buttons nor anything to fix, making the classic rabbinic “fixing” prohibitions irrelevant.

Alexa is the classic “being” instrument. As it gets smarter (which it does), it will anticipate us; it will hear our voice. It will just do stuff. It could even help a tone deaf guy like me sing shabbat songs better by playing along. Or, if nobody around the table knows the weekly Torah portion, it could provide some insight into the parsha (Torah portion). That would make it a shabbat device and not a weekday device so as to undermine the rabbinic prohibition of using weekday implements on shabbat. After all, my assumption is that the Jews preferred to eat Manna Cholent on shabbat and not just bland Manna.

As I have written before, this is all uncharted territory for Jewish Law and Sabbath. We need to maintain and retain the paradise that is shabbat. However, inevitably, sensors and now sensory devices are everywhere. They are detecting and, crucially, doing much more.

We need to have an open conversation about “being” on shabbat in a world encircled and enveloped by technology. We need to figure out how to envelop our “being” with shabbat in this new world. We need to retain this weekly island of paradise while not making life in a sensor-filled world unlivable.

When shabbat concluded and we had made havdala, I turned to the Echo, positioned between the kitchen and the Shabbat candles and said, “Alexa, please play some Shlomo Carlebach music.” Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach is perhaps the singer most associated today with Jewish tunes that soothe the post-shabbat period. Alexa responded “Shuffling Shlomo Carlebach from Prime Music.” It then played the one song it has in the Prime library from Reb Shlomo “Tov L’hodot L’hashem,” (it is a good to give thanks to God). Those words, of course, are from the weekly psalm for Shabbat. That Echo is pretty intuitive.