Nechama Shemtov
Last week, at The Jerusalem Post conference in Miami, Florida, I heard about an Israeli-founded neurotechnology company called Phantom Neuro. In simple terms, they are developing a way to operate robotic limbs with the mind — without the need for a brain implant. I am certainly not a neuroscientist, but the concept was explained clearly enough to be striking — even when a limb is gone, the brain has not stopped trying to move it.
When a person loses a limb, the brain continues to send signals as if it were still there. For example, if someone tries to wiggle a missing finger, the brain sends the command, and tiny muscles in the remaining limb often still twitch in response. The body remembers what the eye can no longer see. Phantom Neuro’s technology listens for those faint signals through a small sensor placed just under the skin and uses artificial intelligence to translate intention into movement. The result is a robotic limb that responds almost instantly, with remarkable accuracy.
Until now, even the most advanced artificial limbs have felt somewhat clumsy. There has typically been a delay between intention and response, turning movement into a conscious operation rather than something instinctive. By dramatically reducing that lag, this technology restores fluidity, allowing thought and action to move together again.
What makes this approach especially distinctive is its simplicity. While other companies pursue invasive solutions that place chips directly into the brain, Phantom Neuro listens just beneath the skin, avoiding brain surgery altogether and making the technology far more accessible.
Sometimes the breakthrough is not going deeper, but listening more carefully to, and working with, what is already there.
What struck me most was not only the sophistication of the technology, impressive as it is. It was the assumption behind it: that loss does not mean silence, and absence does not mean erasure. The signal is still there. It simply hasn’t been properly considered.
That idea stayed with me long after the conference ended.
How often in life do we assume that because something is no longer functioning the way it once did, it must be gone altogether? Or no longer worthwhile. A sense of purpose after disappointment. Confidence after failure. Faith after unanswered prayers. We convince ourselves that a part of us no longer works, that something essential has shut down and can no longer flow.
Yet, the more hopeful possibility is that nothing has disappeared at all — the signal is still present, simply asking for a different kind of attention and perhaps a more creative way to access it.
Perhaps we have indeed experienced loss, but that does not have to be the end of the story. The essential signal has never died. What once flowed easily can yet resume, albeit in a different form.
Jewish teaching has always insisted on this distinction. No one is ever damaged beyond repair; our essential signal — our soul and connection to Hashem — is always present. Connection does not create a new self — it realigns us with the self that was always there. Holiness is not imported from the outside — it is uncovered when we learn how to listen again.
That, perhaps, is the deeper lesson here. Success does not always mean repairing what was broken. Sometimes it means accepting the way things are and creating a different path forward.
The body seems to understand this intuitively. Even after trauma, the brain continues to reach for connection, still believing in motion, still searching for response. There is a quiet refusal to accept stagnation as the final word.
The Torah speaks in much the same language. It does not deny loss, but it refuses to define a person by it. Again and again, we are shown that when one path closes, another is meant to open — not as a replacement for what was, but as a continuation of what still matters.
Instead of asking whether something has been lost forever, we might ask what shape it is meant to take now. Instead of longing for a return to the past, we might listen for the form the future is asking to assume.
Healing, growth and return often begin when we stop trying to reclaim what was and begin engaging with all that still wishes to move.
And maybe the most hopeful thought of all is this: Just as the brain never stops sending the signal, the soul doesn’t either. We just need to tap in.
Nechama Shemtov is an internationally acclaimed speaker, educator, licensed coach and community leader based in Washington, D.C.
