Chevra, this week’s parsha is מַסְעֵי. There are a bunch of things happening this Shabbat. First of all, today (Friday) is Rosh Chodesh Av, which means next Shabbat will be the 9th of Av. Normally we fast on the 9th of Av, but this year we’ll be drinking wine and eating meat because it’ll be Shabbat. But that also means that this week coming up we won’t be eating meat because it’ll be the 9 days. So we will all be vegetarian (not vegan, yet). Also this week, the communities of Chu“l will catch up with Israel. Since Pesach, Chu”l has been a week behind. This week they’ll read the double portion of Matot-Masei - 2019, while Israel will only be reading Masei. So all the technical folks heading to the Tech Summit won’t be confused by the Torah reading in Las Vegas. All of the interesting, but administrative type information dovetails with the beginning of the parsha. The parsha starts with a summary of the journey of Am Yisrael. It’s important to look back occasionally and see where we’ve come from. This helps us to identify where we’re going. The next section of the parsha talks about the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael. While our data centers have physical boundaries, with the networking involved and the cloud magic we use our services can seem boundless. The boundaries of Eretz Yisrael promised to Bnei Yisrael are important. It helps us stay grounded (not electrically), but as another way to know what we are striving for. Yehoshua was never able to complete the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, but we made do with what we were able to accomplish in the timeframes provided. What we as Amazonians can accomplish seems so great in the world of technology, I still thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu daily for my technical abilities and ask him how to I can manage to keep drinking something from the firehose. Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov.