Chevre, this week’s parsha is Vayetze (וַיֵּצֵ֥א). This week we have the marriage of Rachel and Leah to Yaakov. Yaakov agrees to work 7 years for Rachel. At the end of the 7 years, Lavan (Rachel and Leah’s father) switches the brides and Yaakov marries Leah. He only realizes the next day after consumating the marriage.

There are several ideas brought outside of the text around how Yaakov could have gotten confused. A midrash states there was a code word (like the CloudFront Headers used to ensure traffic has to go through CloudFront to an ALB+WAF) that Rachel shared with Leah so she wouldn’t be embarrased. And it is said that, except for their eyes, Rachel and Leah looked the same. I’m probably not the only one that turned off or terminated an EC2 instance in the wrong region because they were named similarly.

Yaakov ends up working an additional 7 years for Rachel, but was able to marry her after only fulfilling Leah’s wedding week. And then Yaakov works another 7 years for part of Lavan’s flocks. The whole time, there was scheming and trickery at play. Given that re:Invent was this week in Las Vegas and the house always wins in Vegas, I felt that Lavan’s personality would fit in well in Vegas.

I wish you all a peaceful shabbat away from scheming and falsehoods. Shabbat Shalom from Highland Park NJ. B”H, I’ll be home again next week and posting around my normal time.