Chevre, this week’s parsha is Vayikra (ויקרא). We are starting a new book, yesterday was Rosh Chodesh Nissan, we are starting a new month. And outside of the Parsha, we are deep into the preparations for Pesach (Passover) along with a lot of worry and optional plans for who can make it TO the US or who can make it FROM the US. Which house has guest space, which houses have safe rooms big enough for everyone at The Seder in case bombs and missiles are still flying when Chag comes in. There is a lot of uncertainty.

At the end of Sefer Shemot, The Mishkan (Tabernacle) is built and the cloud of glory enters signifying that HaShem has a presence there. And now we are going to, mostly, pause with the stories and learn about a lot of details. We start with a bunch of the animal sacrifices that took place on the altar. And to be honest, given how much Israelis have been up in the middle of the night this week for sirens (azakot), learning the parsha may have been a bit extra challenging. It’s extremely dry and technical.

In my daily life, I get into the dry technical details for my customers, but learning about a lot of this, for me, is challenging. I used to know a guy that would read (cover to cover) the updated manuals for some of our software products, once a year. He said it helped him remember a lot of the nuances and features we don’t always use. I can understand what he’s saying, but could never bring myself to do that. I can imagine there are folks inside AWS that may do that if they are specialized in a certain area. But with over 200 services, I’m not sure that’s possible at the scale and movement things are going. We do have AI to help us, but even then, I always ask for the reference links so I can verify what it’s telling me.

Luckily, the Torah rules are not changing and we do come back to them yearly to refresh and keep alive the knowledge, debates and traditions. And I hope we can all find some special piece of each week’s parsha to think about and talk about. Shabbat Shalom.