Chevre, there is still no parsha this week. This Shabbat, in Israel, is both Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Outside of Israel, Simchat Torah will be on Sunday. Shemini Atzeret is a separate holiday from Sukkot, we exit the Succah and have a special, last day, holiday with HaShem. Simchat Torah, I learned today (really TIL), was established around the year 800 CE in Bagdad and is the youngest holiday we have. Younger than Chanukah and Purim. For that story, you can see Elon Gilad. (fun fact, I was watching one of his videos on the train in Israel and met his uncle who saw what I was watching).

This past week has been full of activities. I personally spent 1 day at home when the family (my house has been full of guests visiting for the year, visiting for a couple of weeks, our lone soldier nephew, my son home from the army for a couple days) came and went. I spent that day catching up on my personal backlog, like using an AI (thank you Eric ) to migrate docker EC2 machines to EKS.

We also went on some tiyulim (excursions). We went to Tzipori, a Gemara era city that was the home of Rebbi Yehuda HaNassi. At the synagogue there, I was moved by the story from the Gemara they told. The story is less important, but I remembered there is a version of the Gemara that is only the aggadata (stories) called Ein Yaakov. So I used 1 AI to help me find some lessons (shiurim) in English that go through Ein Yaakov. I downloaded 1 episode and listened to it. I then had my AI build me a Lambda to create and RSS feed to house on my web site which pointers to the storage locations for the shiurim. The AI generated a podcast image for me and even told me how to configure my podcatcher to download oldest first.

I then used Eric’s AI to review what my first AI generated (I was able to just share the conversation link with the 2nd AI) and it reviewed everything, wrapped it in Cloudformation and pushed it to my account. I now have a simple RSS feed that my podcatcher is subscribed to. And every time I complete a lesson, it downloads the next for me automagically. Most of this was done on my phone. The 2nd AI is easier for me to use via a computer terminal, but it is accessible to my phone if I wanted.

So our technologies are now traveling with us around the country, around the world and we can do nearly anything from the pocket computer that 10-20 years ago would have been considered a super computer.

Moadim BeSimcha, Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom