Chevre, this week’s parsha is Mishpatim (משפטים). Last week we recieved the Torah at Sinai. This week we do a deep dive into the details of the laws. Civil Laws, Slavery, Murder, Murder of a Slave, Injury, Death by Animal, Danger of a Pit, Damages, etc etc. Lots and lots of details. You can imagine that the Israelites would get overwhelmed by all of this. I think about it as a person sitting at terminal and suddenly all the logs go flying by. There is too much, you can’t see and receive and process all of it at that speed.

Later in the parsha, we have the famous נעשה ונשמע (We will do and we will hear). Continuing our story, they’re saying “ok ok ok, I’ll do it and I’ll figure out the details later”. Kinda like accepting the license agreement on software, I just want it to work. Here, the people have accepted the Torah and we have spent the last 3k+ years exploring the intricate details of those rules. And we have expanded them, added fences around them to protect ourselves.

In the computer world, we have monitoring and observability to try to understand and maintain systems along with buffers, firewall rules, and a whole host of protections we have built up over the years. In the AI world, we have guardrails and context files that tell the AI what it is or is not allowed to do. All of these are fences and protections similar to what we have built up in Halacha over the years.

I look forward to see what new unique ways the tech world simulates and replicates the Torah world in the future. Shabbat Shalom.