SEPTEMBER 29 • 2022 | 35

OUR COMMUNITY

M

ove over, tashlich: 
Twitter is the new 
place to atone, thanks 
to a bot programmed by Jewish 
coders who want users to apol-
ogize better.
While the tradition of sym-
bolically throwing bread, rep-
resenting sins, into a body of 
water may be a more familiar 
High Holiday custom, a new 
Twitter bot aims to address 
“fauxpologies” on social media.
“Repentance Bot” allows 
users to tag the account when 
they see an apology that they 
believe falls short. The bot then 
replies to the apology with 
encouragement to do better 
and a comic strip laying out five 
steps to take to do so.
The steps are those laid out in 
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s forth-

coming book, On Repentance 
and Repair: Making Amends 
in an Unapologetic World. 
The book uses the traditional 
Jewish concepts taught by the 
12th-century Jewish philoso-
pher Maimonides to discuss 
contemporary issues of sur-
viving violence and lays out a 
framework for making amends 
in a meaningful way.
Repentance Bot is meant to 
distill some of the lessons from 
the book and make them visi-
ble, Ruttenberg said.
“We live in a culture where 
people do not have a road-
map when harm is caused,
” 
Ruttenberg told the Jewish 
Telegraphic Agency. “This is 
basically an experiment in pub-
lic education, to try to see if we 
can move the culture toward 

showing people what taking 
responsibility and making 
change looks like.
”
In one recent example, 
Repentance Bot was tagged 
underneath a video of the 
athletic director of Brigham 
Young University addressing 
fans after a Duke University 
volleyball player and her other 
Black teammates were attacked 
with racial slurs during a game 
against BYU.
“You’re a 10, but you need 
some help doing the work of 
repentance and accountability,
” 
reads the tweet, which refer-
ences a recent meme and is 
followed by the cartoon.
Unlike some Twitter bots that 
call out bad behavior on social 
media, including @RacismDog 
and its now-defunct cousin, @

AntisemitismCow, Repentance 
Bot aims to do more than name 
and shame. It launched on the 
first day of the Jewish month 
of Elul — the last month of the 
Jewish year and the beginning 
of a period of reflection ahead 
of the High Holidays of Rosh 
Hashanah and Yom Kippur, 
the Jewish New Year and Day 
of Atonement — and is meant 
to help people improve them-
selves.
The ideas and prayers of 
Yom Kippur lend themselves 
to innovation, said David Zvi 
Kalman, who created an online 
Jewish confessional booth, 
AtoneNet, that offered an early 
intersection of ancient Jewish 
practices and contemporary 
digital tools.
“In the same way that on 

This High Holiday season, a Twitter ‘Repentance Bot’ wants 
to teach people how to apologize for real.
A ‘Repentance Bot’

continued on page 36

JACKIE HAJDENBERG JTA.ORG

HIGH HOLIDAYS

