BeShalach - 2023

Chevre, this week’s parsha is בְּשַׁלַׁח (BeShalach). As I review the parsha this week, I’m sensing a theme of “they’re never satisfied”. The people are heading out of Egypt and Pharoah changes his mind again and starts chasing Israel and has them backed up against the Sea of Suf. (I can picture this in a movie or 2 or 3 …1000). Israel panics and HaShem says “use the Amazon LP Biased for Action” and so Nachshon ben Aminadav jumps into the water and it splits. A Miracle. They walk on dry land to the end and when Egypt tries to follow, they are destroyed by the sea. The people sing praises to HaShem in a song written in the Torah. All is great. DMS has done it’s job and the DB has crossed the dangerous waters and made it to the cloud. 

Then they get to an area of bitter water. Moshe cries out to HaShem. HaShem shows him a tree. The tree is thrown into the water and it becomes sweet. A Miracle. A simple config change they didn’t know about fixes a major problem in the migration.

They don’t have any food to eat. HaShem brings up Manna with the dew. If you leave it over till tomorrow it’ll become wormy and stinky. No matter how much you collect, you’ll have just enough. For Shabbat x2 comes down so they don’t have to collect on the day of rest. Miracles. Here we have something for nothing, we’ll call this Serverless.

They don’t have water (again) to drink. They are in the desert after all. Take the staff that you hit the river with and hit the rock. Water comes out. A Miracle. We’ll call this Kinesis Firehose.

And then to wrap up the parsha, we have Amalek attacking the Bnei Yisrael. The Midrash says that they attacked the stragglers or weakest. Warriors were chosen to fight Amalek. Moshe goes up a mountain (this is a different theme) and when his hands are up (the people are looking toward heaven), Israel is winning. But if his hands are down, they are not winning. But how long can he hold up his arms? So they stick a stone under him as a seat and Aharon and Hur help him hold up his hands so they’ll succeed. Here, this is the TAM during an IEM (Infrastructure Event Management, a big event like a migration, black friday, cyber monday, superbowl, etc where everything must work) and he/she is holding up the infra by organizing AWS Support and Service Teams to keep the lights on for the customer during this critical event. 

As someone that has been embracing EQ (Emotional Intelligence), I wish you to learn gratitude for what we have and the struggles that make us better and stronger. 

Shabbat Shalom