Chevre, this week’s parsha is Nitzavim (נצבים). The parsha this week is pretty short and a lot of the focus of Am Yisrael at this point is on Rosh Hashanah, which is next week. There are a couple of messages in the parsha that connect with Rosh Hashanah. Renewing the covenant, the idea of Teshuvah and choosing life. On Rosh Hashanah, we attend the yearly correnation of HaShem. We renew the covenant with the almighty. Rosh Hashanah is also the day of Judgement (Yom HaDin) and we have the ability to repent, to come back to HaShem and do better. And finally, we choose life, we choose to walk with HaShem and follow the commandments we are given in the Torah.

I think I’ve told this story before, but my mother told me when I was little that I didn’t come with an instruction manual. While that is true on a certain level, what we were given are the Mitzvot and how to be a Mensche.

In the tech world this has been described as being a good Netizen. Or perhaps the opposite of a “Noisy Neighbor”. There are things that we can do as technical folks to make the world better and to improve the situation of others. Some of that, recently, is coming through AI. But AI has some dangerous aspects to it. Besides the hallucinations (aka making stuff up), it can be confused through a long conversation to the point where it reveals things its’ not supposed to. As technical folks, we need to work to maintain the security of our systems, our networks and now the AIs that we either produce or use. I’m most familiar with the AWS side of AI and I know we have many guardrails in place and the ability for users to add their own.

May we all learn from our work in technology and building guardrails to also maintain the fences (aka guardrails) that the sages built around the Torah and choose life and teshuvah.

Shabbat Shalom.