There is a beautiful story in the Jewish tradition about Zusha of Anipoli, an 18th-century rabbi. Zusha lay on his deathbed, worried about the legacy he was leaving. His students comforted him: “Surely you’re a great leader, just like Moses! Surely you welcome the stranger, just as Abraham did!” Zusha shook his head quietly. “When I get to heaven, they won’t ask me why I wasn’t Moses, or Abraham. They’ll ask me why I wasn’t Zusha. Why did I not live up to my own potential? Why did I not fully capitalize on the unique mix of skills and traits that are unique to me?”
The Congressional Innovation Scholars program, for me, is about the chance to use my unique mix of skills to help our country make progress in the realm of technology policy. By providing a pivot point from a doctorate in math, TechCongress is not only allowing me to use my most granular technical knowledge, but also my experience in interfaith work and love of community-building to address questions of digital privacy, platform power, and algorithmic bias.
Making sure technology plays a just and equitable role in our society will not only take “all of us” -- policymakers, civic leaders, everyday people trying to make ends meet, and marginalized groups -- it will take “all of all of us.” In the pursuit of Just Tech, we cannot leave any of ourselves behind because technology will affect every part of our lives. We need not only all the voices in our society, but all of the voices within us.
It takes a pinch of daring -- you may not have expected to read about Zusha in this blog post, and I may not have expected to write about him. I certainly did not expect that I would spend the summer of 2019 at the US Census Bureau through the Civic Digital Fellowship, which was my first taste of tech in the public interest. (I was hooked after that.) And I could have only dreamed of the opportunity to meet the stellar TechCongress leadership, cohort, and alumni, who have already inspired me. I look forward to calling up TechCongress colleagues far into the future to learn from their wisdom.
In short: Noam has the opportunity to be a little more like Noam by helping America be more like America, and Noam couldn’t be more excited to get started.
Noam is currently serving with the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation staff under Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) working with the Consumer Protection Subcommittee.