Shiur & Curriculum Preparation
How shluchim use AI to turn a sicha, maamar or sugya into a class, handout, slides or short video in 2026: bring the real text, ask for the pieces by name, and check every source.
On this page
AI is good at shaping Torah you already have into something teachable: an outline, a handout, discussion questions, a one-page summary, a slide deck. It is bad at finding the Torah for you. Almost every failure members reported in 2025 and 2026 started with asking the model to fetch or quote a sicha instead of pasting it in.
The pattern that works
- Bring the text. Paste the sicha, upload the pages, or give the chabad.org link and the text. Clean text sources: Dach.dev, Sefaria, Daiah (now at chabad.ai) and chabad.org.
- Say what you are building. "A 60-minute shiur for a mixed-level adult class, English with Hebrew terms transliterated."
- Ask for each piece by name. Speech notes, discussion questions, a teacher's guide, a student handout, a one-page printable summary.
- Check every source. Any chelek, page or seif the AI adds on its own is a claim to look up, not a citation. See AI and Torah Accuracy.
The two prompts members reuse most:
Create structured, detailed and comprehensive speech notes based on this talk.
It should follow a logical structure. I'm not looking for a verbatim speech
script, only content notes. Include all stories and anecdotes in full.
Organize this into a 60-minute shiur with discussion questions, summaries,
and a follow-along printout: a teacher's guide and a student handout.
More, including a full "Speech, Sermon and Torah Class Builder" system prompt, are on Master Prompts. The short version of all this is in the shiur prep guide.
Which tool for which job
These are members' reports, dated. Models change every few months, so try the same prompt in two tools before you settle.
- Claude for the handout and the structure. In May 2026 a shliach who sends Claude sichos, photos of book pages and chabad.org links said it "does an amazing job" on a 60-minute shiur with a teacher's guide and handout, where ChatGPT gave him "words in a doc" and Gemini stayed short even when asked for more. In October 2026 another shliach pastes five to seven Hebrew quotes each week and has Claude translate them and lay out the class handout in about two minutes, on a free account. Upload a Word template if you want your own fonts and headings.
- ChatGPT for learning it first. A shliach who learns a maamar or sicha through with ChatGPT, then has it make large illustrated slides he prints as posters for a short drasha in shul, found plain ChatGPT worked better than Claude for this. He admits typos and nekudos mistakes and prints them anyway as good-enough; the collection is free at mitzvahworkshops.com/alterrebbe (October 2026).
- Claude Design for visuals. Anthropic's design tool, released April 17, 2026 for paid plans and now listed on every plan including Free, makes slides, one-pagers and prototypes and exports to PDF, PowerPoint or Canva (announcement). A shliach used it to lay out six Shavuos sichos as visual pages (shavuos.chassidusai.com); he gave it the actual text of each sicha, reviewed the output, and still found some mistakes. In June 2026 a member preparing a Tanya handout said Claude Design did "a much nicer job" than Gamma and cancelled Gamma.
- Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) for searching a library. Upload a set of seforim and ask across them; answers come with clickable citations. Limits on the free plan: 50 sources per notebook, 500,000 words or 200 MB per source (Google's help page). A member found it pulls only 10 to 12 sources per answer, and got around that by asking for a long list ("100 insights") so the answer had to draw on more. A shared notebook of the Rebbe's Torah circulates in the group. See Gemini Notebook.
- Daiah versus the notebook. Since Daiah opened, members have compared the two on the same questions (September and October 2026). One found Daiah's Likkutei Sichos references exact while the notebook cited a Lech Lecha sicha for Simchas Torah; another found the notebook's answer fuller and Daiah's flatter on a subtle point; a third saw a well-known sicha that Daiah missed and ChatGPT found at once. There is no settled winner. Daiah holds texts general AI cannot reach and does not let you copy them out; see Daiah and Chassidus, Copyright and Access.
From recording to class
You gave the shiur and recorded it:
- Transcribe it with Sofer.ai for mixed Hebrew, Yiddish and English, or a Whisper-based tool for English. See Transcription.
- Paste the transcript and say what it is: "This is a messy transcript. Make sense of it and ask me about anything unclear."
- Ask for what you need: a one-page printable summary, a written article, short clips for WhatsApp (the clips guide).
A Gemini Notebook "audio overview" turns sources into a podcast-style conversation. Listen before you share it: in July 2026 a member's overview of a Yiddish Likkutei Sichos added a "modern takeaway" about AI that was not in the sicha at all.
Short daily video
In October 2026 a shliach described his daily Chitas clip: paste the Chumash and Rashi into Claude, have Claude write a short script, have ChatGPT read it aloud, then assemble the video. His fix after feedback: before making the audio, ask the AI to rewrite every Hebrew word in the script in Hebrew letters with nekudos, and give it your pronunciation list. Pronunciation tips are on Hebrew & Yiddish.
Planning a learning schedule
For a goal like finishing the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch in a year, members advised splitting the job (September 2026): have the AI build a spreadsheet of the simanim and seifim with their length, agree the plan with it, and only then ask for the daily schedule. One member worked it out at about 22 seifim a day for the whole Shulchan Aruch. Sefaria's connector can supply the text, but set the translation yourself: members warned in October 2026 that some of its default English translations are not ones a shliach would use.
Drashos and speeches
- "Roast this!" Paste your drasha and ask for merciless criticism. Members have used this since 2025.
- Read it aloud first. Ask for a version under five minutes, then read it out loud before you trust it.
- A eulogy. One shliach's method (July 2026): interview the family, give the AI your notes, then rewrite the draft in your own words. His line: "Don't let your robot think for you, let it work for you."
Where AI still fails
- Invented sources. In December 2025 a member checked "answers of the Rebbe" that people had got from ChatGPT, with page references in Igros and Likkutei Sichos. All were fake.
- Counting and gematria. Use a calculator tool such as berel.me/gematry, not the chat.
- A reverse mafteach (give it a page, get every inyan on it) is still unreliable; a member suggested having the AI write a small program over an indexed text instead.
- Holding many shitos at once. Keeping five acharonim distinct across a long shiur is still an open problem.
The wider debate, whether Torah prepared with AI is still Torah learning, is on The Torah Accuracy Debate.
What changed in 2026
- Claude Design (April) and Gemini Notebook's video features gave shluchim new ways to make visuals; Gamma lost some members to Claude Design.
- NotebookLM became Gemini Notebook (noticed July 2026).
- Daiah opened at chabad.ai as a source-linked library of the Rebbe's Torah, and the group now compares it with the shared notebook.
- Free Claude became enough for weekly handouts, by members' reports in October 2026.