Chevre, this week’s parsha is Tazria-Metzora (תזריע-מצורע) and it’s Rosh Chodesh Iyyar (today and tomorrow). In Israel, we also have Memorial Day and Independence Day coming this week.

A large part of the parhiot are laws around Tzarat. This is a spiritual “disease” that takes a physical form on the person. We have seen this before when Moshe puts his hand into his shirt and it comes out white. And later we see Miriam was afflicted with it and Moshe prayed for her to be healed. We have a long process about identifying Tzarat and what happens. And then how to purify. There is also the possibility of Tzarat of a building. To me this is very mysterious.

Similarly, building some workflows can be mysterious. Not sure why something broke or where it broke. We would often put in print statements in various places to see where a specific program got to. Now-a-days, we would have an AI of some kind pour over the logs and the code and explain what happened and how to fix it. We may even have an alert from an automated alarm from an AI along with recommendations on how to mitigate the issue.

This week we have Israeli Memorial Day and Independence Day. These come together for a couple of reasons. Gush Etzion, where I live, fell in 1948 the day before Ben Gurion declared the state. And it is a reminder that our Independence here is paid for with the lives of our soldiers, victims of terror and civilian victims from wars. We protect ourselves and continue to pray for peace, security and better times.

Am Yisrael Chai. Shabbat Shalom.