Chevre, this week’s parsha is כִּי תִּשָּׂא (Ki Tisa) and Parshat Parah. Parshat Parah is a reminder that Passover is coming and those bringing the Korban Pesach need to be ritual pure. The process takes some time and therefore, folks need to be ready and prepare. Our parsha has the sin of the golden calf. Moshe goes up to Har Sinai and is up there 40 days. The people see their leader didn’t come back. How many times do we feel this when working on a deployment, software install, copying a large file, etc etc. Anytime either there is no status displayed or it’s not moving so we think it’s stuck. In the computer world, you may kill the process. However, what are the ramifications of doing that? If this was a database migration, can you recover? Do you have backups? What’s your rollback plan? In the scenario with Moshe on the mountain, the people didn’t have a status. They didn’t know what was going on. Some say they turned to an alternative way to connect with HaShem while others will say they looked for an alternative higher power. In either case, the result was they did a no-no. Not just a line in the runbook that says don’t do that, but they went against one (or more) of the 10 commandments. There are some commentators that say that the whole saga of giving the Mishkan (tabernacle) to the people was to give them a structure for connecting with HaShem that would continue after Moshe. Others will say that the Mishkan was a portable Mount Sinai. This would give them a place to connect even when on the road. I see it as having a wifi hotspot. I bless you all (and please bless me back) to stay connected with the one above, each other and all Am Yisrael. Shabbat Shalom.