Shoftim - 2018

Chevra, this week’s parsha is Shoftim (Judges/Referees). One of the interesting halachot in this week’s parsha is around the Cities of Refuge. If you kill someone by accident, then you can run to one of these cities and the family of the person you killed by accident is not allowed to take revenge upon you (by killing you). You are to stay there until either you die or the Kohen HaGadol dies. Before Yom Kippur it was customary for the mother of the Kohen HaGadol to send sweets to the Cities of Refuge so the inhabitants there wouldn’t pray for her son’s death. There were to be 3 cities of refuge on each bank of the Jordan. From an IT perspective, all 18 regions of AWS are like cities of refuge. The machines that used to be only on-prem are now congregated into 18 regions where they are much safer and more efficiently run. Shabbat Shalom.