Chevre, this week’s parsha is Shemot (שמות). We start with a Paro that doesn’t know Yosef and what he did for Egypt. The Jews are enslaved and forced to do labor. The males are to be killed. Moshe is born and he is sent adrift in the “ark” (Teiva in Hebrew) which was probably like a basket of some kind. (BTW Moshe beTeiva is a small hotdog, kosher, roled in pastry dough. What is called a pig in a blanket in other places). Moshe sees a task master beating a Jew and kills him, hids the body. And the next day he stops 2 Jews from fighting and someone asks if he’s going to kill them too. So he runs away, meets the daughters of Yitro (a Midianite priest), marries one of them. He’s out tending to the flocks and has the episode of the burning bush. Moshe’s wife, Ziporah circumcises their son on the way back to Egypt. Aharon meets him and they go to Paro, who doesn’t let the people go and increases their labor. And the people complain to Moshe.
How many times have we seen customers or projects that are stuck in their ways? This works for me, why would I want to do it another way? And the process to uproot what they are using for something better can be difficult, fraught with problems and obstacles, and can take some time to see the positive results. It’s a challenge to convince these folks that what you see them doing is a problem and that with a little effort up front, there can be a better way. If you tweak this architecture in a slight way now, then in the future, you can be multi-AZ or even multi-Region for the resilience benefit of your system and for your customers.
You could say that the Jewish people here would have to go through a slightly harder time, but the benefits to them in the long run are significant. Paro here is trying to hold back progress. He has his free labor and doesn’t want to them go. We know what happens to his team in the end.
By us it’s been a rollercoaster of a week. From a funeral on Har Hertzel for a 32 year old miluimnik who had a stroke and died on Tuesday to a wedding last night. I had a thought this week. I don’t remember as a kid growing up being exposed to so many of life’s ups and downs. Most of my adult life I have now been in Israel and I definitely feel the ups and downs, but I am comforted by the community we have here. And I appreciate our friends, neighbors and family that we have who help smooth out some of the rough edges as we navigate this together.
May we have many more happy occassions together than sad ones. Shabbat shalom.