Chevre, this week’s parsha is BeShalach (בשלח). This is also called Shabbat Shirah because of the song in the middle of the parsha. Paro changes his mind, again, about letting the Israelites go and sends his army after them. The people are between the sea and the oncoming army and start to panic. Moses tells the people to not fear. The angel and the pillar of smoke that had been in front of the people moved to the back, to be between the people and the army. Moses lifts up his hands and the sea splits. The people move on dry land and the army tries to come after them, but the sea closes in on the army and destroys it. The people, on the other side, sing out of joy.
When I think about the splitting of the sea and the protection provided by the angel and cloud, I instantly connect it to networking. (doesn’t everybody?) Whether you are using CloudFront, an ELB or just an EC2, you want to allow the connections (visitors) that you want to allow and deny the rest of the Internet. So we use mechanisms like only enabling specific ports and we have filtering via a WAF and other filtering by Security Groups. And all of this is protected by AWS Shield. All so that the intended connections can be opened and maintained, but protected from the invading armies at your gates.
This week, the IDF returned the final hostage from Gaza and for the first time in 14 years! there are no Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. I’m not the first or the last to make the connection with the parsha, where the people sing out of joy. Yellow pins, ribbons, posters, chairs and all the other constant reminders are being removed. We feel we can start to breath again.
Take note, however, that at the end of the parsha, Amalek attacks. They attack after the people start to complain about food and water. So while we at awed and inspired by the bravery, heroism and awesomeness of what has happened over the past 2 years, we need to learn from the parsha that we need to maintain our achdut (our cohesiveness). We may disagree on how things should be done, but we need to agree that the folks on the other side of the issues are still our brothers and sisters and that we want to work with them out of love and not fight with them out of hate. I know it’s not a simple task, but it’s required for our people to not return to the place we were at on Oct 6th.
Shabbat Shalom