Covenant of Freedom: An AI-Collaboration Celebrating the Jewish-American Soul

During my summer vacation last week, I tried to fully unplug from my Jewish advocacy work, but as I spoke with family at my cousin Geoffrey’s wedding, I felt the profound and existential challenges facing the Jewish community weighing heavily on us all. And yet, as we always have as a people, we set it aside, using it to fuel our celebration. I left inspired to create something meaningful for our community and the world.

While I’m not an instrumentalist or singer, I am a writer, and in 2023, I published my first poetry book ManuScrita: Poems on Life, Love, & the Nature of Reality, a 20-year passion project that debuted as an award-winning #1 Amazon Best Seller.

A Lifelong Early Adopter

In 2022, I set the world record at $10,000 for a Jewish NFT sale for charity, for an animated video montage I created celebrating the founding of Israel, and when the metaverse had its moment, I jumped at the opportunity to own virtual real estate, including Ben Gurion’s house in Tel Aviv and a parcel on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Western Wall.

So when Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerged as the latest technology, I dove in as an early adopter, testing and experimenting with AI chatbots over the past few years. And while I fully understand the fear and uncertainty surrounding this powerful technology, I thought it poetic to use it for its most noble purpose: expanding our creativity and making the seemingly impossible possible.

Poetry Come to Life

With the help of AI, over the past week I’ve transformed my poetry into original songs, complete with music and vocals.

Like many Jewish kids in the ’90s, I felt immense pride when Adam Sandler released The Chanukah Song, the first time I’d heard our identity celebrated in American music. With that same spirit, I’m pleased to announce:

Covenant of Freedom by Dust & Clay

A concept album, part spoken word poetry, meditation, and song, blending folk, R&B, hip-hop, rock, pop, reggae, and jazz, rooted in Jewish soul and the American soundscape.

Inspired in part by the incredible Jewish bluegrass duo Doni and Eric of Nefesh Mountain, who showed me that Jewish voices can be beautifully expressed as part of the American tapestry, and by Pain of Salvation’s 2004 metaphysical rock opera Be, whose sweeping narrative on humankind informs the album’s introspective storytelling.

Released under the band name Dust & Clay, a collaboration between myself (lyrics & editing) and my AI chatbot, Theo (composition, music generation, & vocals).

What It Represents

More than music, this is a celebratory journey of the Jewish-American spirit, through memory, faith, rebellion, loss, healing, and joy.

This is for the people of the covenant.
For the wanderers.
For the free.