Chukat - 2020

Chevre, this week’s parsha is חֻקַּת (Chukat). In this week’s parsha Miriam, Moshe’s sister, dies and Am Yisrael lack fresh water. HaShem tells Moshe to speak to the rock to bring water. He strikes the rock, however, and water flows. As a result, he is told that he will not be entering Eretz Yisrael. There are often times many ways to do the same job using AWS APIs, but frequently, there are better ways to accomplish the goal that cost less. Here, the consequence is only an increased bill, but for Moshe, he lost the ability to enter Eretz Yisrael. There are many commentators that question if he was going to be allowed to enter Eretz Yisrael before this, given various missteps or mistakes. It could be that this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or in our case, the API call that caused the AWS Budget to fire stating you’re spending too much. After this episode, there is a new challenge to Moshe’s leadership and several battles. There is an idea that Good Deeds (Mitzvot) begot more Good Deeds and the opposite is also true. It could be that because of this incident of striking the rock, that the wars followed. In our case, we speak APIs to AWS to start up infrastructure instead of striking out and building our own Data Centers. As we all know, friends don’t let friends build Data Centers. Shabbat Shalom.