Chevre, this week’s parsha is מִקֵּץ (Miketz) and it’s חנוכה (Chanukah). In this week’s parsha we have the story of Yosef interpretting Paroh’s dreams and taking over the government of Egypt. His brothers come down to get food during the famine and he takes Shimon into custody until his brother Benyamin will be brought down to Egypt. Benyamin is accused of theft and Judah, who sold Yosef into slavery and did Teshuvah (repentance) sticks up for Benyamin.

It’s also Chanukah and as we talked about during the candle lighting in the office this week, the Maccabe revolt took 19 years to complete and resulted in the Hasmoneans taking over as rulers of Israel. Later we know about the famous Herod who expanded The Temple Mount, rebuilt The Temple, built the structure over the Maarat HaMachpela, Masada, Herodian and other works around the country. The specific story of Chanukah happened very early on in the 19 year revolt against the Greeks and included a large amount of diplomacy.

Finally, this past week was re:Invent, in case you hadn’t heard. This is the annual technology conference for AWS in Las Vegas and virtually. Lots of great new services and updates were released along with plenty of talks about how to use and build on AWS and lots of insights into how AWS is built and run. At AWS, we focus on our customers. So we don’t have a large amount of diplomacy, but one of the big announcements this week was around Sustainability. Given the status of the environment in the world today, it’s good to see that AWS is helping the world and also helping its’ customers learn how to operate their workloads even more sustainably. Even without diplomacy. Shabbat Shalom.