In a conversation following his five-month sabbatical, Benjamin E. Sax, Ph.D., ICJS head of programs and Jewish scholar, reflected on the experience, how it reshaped his perspective, and the scholarship that emerged from it. He talks about getting started on a new book project, which will follow the upcoming publication of his book, Encounters: Dialogue, Antisemitism, and the Israeli-Palestinian Divide [August, 2026].
Q: You recently returned from sabbatical. What did you work on?
I spent the time researching and writing—or at least getting started on—a new book about how dialogue, in our contemporary climate, has become a form of resistance. I did a deep dive into how current technology, especially in its relationship to capitalism and government surveillance, creates a new kind of loneliness.
It’s not loneliness in the conventional sense. It’s loneliness in the sense that we get our stimulation from screens, and our connections become less human. That actually makes us more alienated from one another. I started developing this idea that corporations, governments—really any business entity—are now competing for unclaimed time in your life.
I also spent time thinking about the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. In a strange way, it’s a critique of the dehumanizing effects of technology and the nihilism it creates. Even if you know everything—every possible version of life—it produces a kind of sadness. And what counters that, in the movie, is just one real relationship—something you can’t control.
Part of the allure of our devices is the illusion of control. But what gets lost is our ability to connect in the most profound, dialogical way. If you think about someone like Martin Buber, transcendence is experienced between two living beings. You can’t control the other person. You’re both subjects. And what once might have sounded idealistic now feels absolutely necessary. In a strange way, you’re resisting authoritarianism just by talking to a stranger on the bus.
Alongside this larger project, I was able to return to some more focused scholarly work. I traveled to Speyer, Germany, to present my research at a symposium honoring the philosopher (and my mentor) Paul Mendes-Flohr. I also wrote two peer-reviewed articles on the state of Jewish-Christian relations in the wake of Gaza, and an encyclopedia entry on Jewish views of the resurrection of Jesus. In a way, the sabbatical let me hold both together: the long, slow thinking and the urgent work of responding to the moment we’re in.
Q: How do you think technology has changed dialogue itself?
Thinkers like Buber and Hans-Georg Gadamer talked about the human tendency to objectify others as a way of controlling our own insecurities and what we think we know. Technology supercharges that impulse.
When we talk about echo chambers, what we’re really talking about is control. We’re creating such insular worlds that it’s not just that we can’t hear one another—it’s that we’re pushing the other out of existence. You can now go from dawn to dusk without encountering an idea you find challenging. We inhabit realities that are already interpreted for us. It’s an authoritarian’s dream.
I don’t think most people building these systems are driven by evil intentions. It’s usually profit-driven. But once these technologies exist, you can’t control how they’ll be used.
One of the only ways out of this is relearning how to listen—and remembering that to be human is to be both capable of terrible things and extraordinary things at the same time. We use the word mensch to describe both. Technology pushes us to see people as either villains or heroes. That’s not human.
Q: Where do you find hope in all of this?
I do believe people can transcend their worst impulses. Historically, things have been worse. That doesn’t make the present easy, but it does give perspective.
The solution is strangely simple: learning to see complexity in others the way you want others to see it in you. It’s not even the cliché of “love your neighbor as yourself.” I think you love your neighbor because you recognize that your neighbor is capable of love, just as you are—even if you don’t fully understand that love.
Every major technology has been met with panic and exploitation—BUT HAS also produced democratic possibilities. Even now, we can do things at ICJS like connect people across the world that would have been unimaginable before. Authoritarian regimes don’t last forever. Wars have to end. On my best days, I think people can rise to the occasion.
Q: Did the sabbatical change how you think about your work at ICJS?
It did. For the first time in eleven years, I stopped. I realized how much of my life here has been constant motion. When I started at ICJS, I had a very abstract understanding of dialogue. During this time away, I realized how deeply I actually need to be in the room with people.
And I think the biggest shift is this: I no longer understand how someone can be sincerely religious in this world without also being interreligious. It makes no sense to want a world where everyone is the same. Difference opens us to transcendence.
Religion gives you rules—and those rules are what open you to infinity. I’ve been thinking about chess. If there are no rules, you’re totally free—but you’re not really playing anything. When there are rules, it opens up possibilities you could never imagine.
So when people ask why religion is still necessary in modern life—beyond belief in God or gods—the answer is that religion gives you very circumscribed tools for living your life in the freest possible way. It’s a paradox.
When those rules are woven together across religious traditions, you start to see even more possibilities. And if reality is truly transcendent and incredibly complex, then one of the best ways to encounter it is through the creation and practice of these traditions.
If infinite possibilities exist within human beings, all the more so with the God that undergirds all of it. So why limit yourself?