Also, make sure to watch the actual hike:

Like most weeks, this past one has been a wild one, though I may just be experiencing brain rot from spending too much time on LinkedIn. One thing no one who is keeping their eye on the AI field could miss was the article on thenextweb, which surmised that Microsoft is cancelling its subscription to Anthropic’s Claude LLM because of costs. This set off in my head a ton of different thoughts of where the field may go:

1. Macro Issues

There is a lot of talk right now about three potential AI IPOs this year. Each of them is striving for a near $1 trillion valuation. Essentially, this means that three companies are hoping that there is $3 trillion in free capital lying around for people to invest in them, and in what essentially are three identical products. This isn’t 20ish years ago, when FAANG each sort of had their own corner of traditional industry just digitized. Google, advertising, Apple, hardware, etc. Each of the three AIs, OpenAI, Anthropic, and XAi, was trained on the same exact material, and they each invest in the other one when they don’t have something they don’t need.

Having one or more IPOs not meet their goals will quite possibly set off a domino effect that could leave half-built data centers abandoned and whole other industries (electric generation, microchips) holding the bag. What happens if someone can’t pay NVIDIA for their billions of chips? Or if utilities have made significant capital investments using public bonds and can’t pay because now their expected data center customers don’t come through?

This might be a silver lining for the AIs that sit within established companies like Google and Facebook. Gemini is formidable in its own right, and Google just doubled down on AI integration at its latest developer conference. Facebook’s AI (what is it even called?) does not seem particularly focused on coding, and this too is a differentiator, assuming it can establish itself as the AI of choice for things like companionship and entertainment (both not without their own very concerning outcomes).

Anyway, look for the IPO to be the beginning of the end of the bubble. There is a reason each of them is rushing to be the first to IPO, since the early bird catches the worm.

2. Micro Issues: Cost

The main takeaway from the article cited above is that giving unlimited AI use to employees became too costly to be sustainable, despite the gains to be had from enhancing developer output. The drive behind this is that new models come with increased “intelligence” (as incremental and unnoticeable as it may be), but the compute needed to build these models is also increasing, so no gains are made through efficiency or redundancy. The article is filled with quotes from various CTOs and finance department officials who say that their entire 2026 budgeted spend on AI is already consumed, and it is only June.

Keep in mind that once one or more of the AI companies are rendered irrelevant following an IPO attempt, that it will be yet another invitation for AI providers to raise their prices. The shareholders will want to see profits, and the lack of competition (and the barrier to entry because of sheer cost) will allow them to charge whatever they want. If the gap between profitability and what customers are willing to pay is too large (which I think there is a good chance is true), then even the successful IPO companies will start struggling very quickly. Obviously, the answer here is advertising, but what does that mean? Developers are going to have to cut out ads from within their code? Ads are going to be inserted as comments so that people perusing GitHub repos can be counted as impressions? Will people even browse repos on their own in the AI future?

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3. Work Adjustments

Since reading this article, I have thought about what some logical outcomes of the bubble burst may be, and what the AI life may look like in a year or two from now, once the hype has died down.

Per Employee AI Budgets

First of all, finance and company boards will demand responsible AI spending, especially once financial gains (we are already in the second year of intense AI integration in the high-tech workplace) are seen to be minimal, even once employee lay-offs are factored in. What I mean to say is that if a company decided it could work without 20% of its workforce because of AI, but AI costs 50% of those savings, then the company would need to maintain its current forecasted profits and then also prove that AI was able to increase profits. I haven’t heard or seen anything like this, which would seem to point in the direction of AI being more of a tool than a full-on worker replacement, despite their 24/7 availability. Already last week, stories of multi-million dollar AI goof-ups hit the press. Now, obviously, humans do these things too (see Syntax’s annual episodes of costly mistakes), but between code checks/QA, and other safeguards, if they become more frequent than when done by humans, then this will obviously be a risk no one could take (especially if no one is watching to see what happens). This is kind of the opposite of the gains we are seeing with automated vehicles, where all they have to do is be better than humans in terms of avoiding accidents and deaths.

All this to say that look for employees in the next few months to be limited to a certain amount of AI spend. This already means that the need for intelligent and knowledgeable employees will return (if it ever disappeared), since those who know how to code will be sought after because of their ability to code “for free” albeit slightly slower (but the company needs them anyway). This still isn’t good news for Juniors, who are encountering a terrible market, but later on I’ll discuss why there may be some hope for them as well.

Specialized AIs/AI employee subscriptions

Another thing to expect to hit the market is what I would call “Specialized AIs”. These are LLMs that are hypertrained in specific tasks, think: Analyst AI, Frontend AI. Companies would subscribe to these services, but would be restricted to using them only in certain applications. They would run on much smaller models that need much less compute, and would also be periodically updated (e.g., a new version of React is released). This would allow companies to get a project done at a known cost, but with the downside of not getting any additional value beyond what they subscribed to. I think a model like this could be valuable because right now, the broad knowledge contained in the mass-market LLMs is too broad and requires too much compute.

Bans on AI for simple, framework-based tasks

Employees in the tech workforce should brace themselves for increased monitoring of their AI prompts. Gone will be the days when you would burn 10,000 tokens having AI set up a basic React project for you. “Go and download it yourself, and write the config files too!”, your boss will say. Anything that is simply stated and can be easily done by reading the documentation for a package will not be worth the tokens it takes to have AI do it. Downloading React is pushing a button and perhaps even faster than having AI go and do it. Companies won’t pay the $5 they are already paying the employee to do this task.

Instead, look for AI to be used in a more advisory way. Having AI write code is costly, since code can become lengthy, and again, most of it is boilerplate, and the advanced autocomplete in all of the IDEs can do a lot of the predictions without prompts at all, meaning very few upstream prompts/tokens (this was my favorite time in the AI timeline). Proper use of AI in the future will mean bantering back and forth about the best way to design a project or feature, and then going back and writing the code for free (or at the reduced price of what autocomplete does). Or to learn about something new, as I did late last year when building out an ontology management solution for my company. An AI advisor is wayyyy cheaper than hiring an actual consultant (I know because I called ontology provider companies while researching my project, and you wouldn’t believe what they charge), and if it means the product is highly functional in less time, then it would seem like a worthwhile investment of funds.

Local Token Monitoring

It is often said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We replaced voicemails with text messages, but now people leave us voice messages again on our phones, so have we really advanced as a species? I say this because I think we will soon see a suite of software that sits locally on the machine between your AI interface (Cursor, Claude Code, etc) and the AI endpoint and calculates how many tokens you are about to use. This will become critical as per-employee AI budgets come into play. Envision companies popping up that will license their technology, promising to keep AI costs in check. These will hit large databases of similar prompts that they have seen run before, and will be able to estimate the cost based on the company and model.

Internal LLMs

I saw a post on LinkedIn today where the poster was bellylaughing because the CEO wanted to know if there was a way to bring the LLM in-house in order to save on costs. I don’t think that this is all that bad of a suggestion. There are many small LLMs that are open source that can easily be run independently (I’ve even done it on my own machine at home), and while the trade-off may not be the latest and greatest, what is gained is an LLM that the employer can manage on their own, and which doesn’t use their prompts and responses to refine their own model for their own profit.

Another form of Internal LLM can exist separately or in parallel, particularly one that includes all of the company’s proprietary data. Obviously, this has been done a ton already, but I think there are very few places that have combined an internal general LLM with their own internal data. That seems like a very large value-added for relatively low cost, especially if it means they can give up their mainstream AI subscription. It may have high setup costs, but I would imagine running an AWS instance that can handle the load would still be less than burning $2000/per month, per employee on AI.

First, Prompt Engineers. Next, Dedicated Package Managers.

The AI age has already given us our first new job, that of Prompt Engineer. These are people whose job it is to make efficient prompts of AI and also manage agents and the like. Basically, someone who can work well with AI, but may not know the nitty-gritty programming behind what the AI is returning. These will fall out of favor fast as AI budgets dry up and get reduced to manageable levels.

Nevertheless, those who are best at using their AI and prompt/token allowances will still be committing to repos at 10x rates from two years ago. This will be too fast a pace for a single package/feature manager to review all pull requests to a given package (case in point, frequent outages on GitHub). So look for a new position which will be “Package Manager”. This role will entail understanding all of the features that need to be implemented, reviewing the code that was generated, and making sure that merges happen smoothly. They may be responsible for several packages at once. Basically, they are a code cop, there to direct traffic and make sure nothing is going to break when pushed to production. They may also be responsible for tracking metrics such as tokens used and time between commits, which will be used for and against employees in the AI age. I feel like this may be the next entry-level position for junior-level employees. They’ll get to learn a lot but will also be able to apply their untainted programming enthusiasm to maintaining good code.

4. Personal AI Usage

The barrier here in the next 12 months will be convincing people to pay for usage when not at the office. If token limits do find their way into the workplace, then don’t expect coders to waste them planning their family vacation (I’m not sure how much this was done anyway because on a company plan I imagine all prompts are visible to the company admins). One trend I think may occur is that vendors and brands may bake AI into their offerings. So for example, if you book an AirBNB in a given city, then you can add at checkout a $5 option to use AI to plan your trip using the AirBNB AI. Or it will be fully subsidised by adverstisers, but only accessible after making a booking. It will be interesting to see if this takes on since it will be very advantageous for these vendors to bias it in favor of their product.

Rewards for advertiser engagement

In order to keep costs low for the casual user, e.g., moms planning dinners, dads planning trips, etc., look to see tokens being awarded for interacting with advertising that is integrated within responses. For example, if one is researching a trip, an advertiser may offer 50 free tokens if the user signs up for their Niagara Falls tour. Oscar Meyer would give out codes for free tokens if you buy their hot dogs over a competitor’s.

5. Conclusion

In the workplace, its will be another round of whiplash for employees who just a year ago needed to learn how to incorporate AI into their workflows and who in addition maybe have been encouraged to burn through as many tokens as possible. Using AI for your coding is highly addictive, and the urge to just merge with abandon and fully trust the AI is strong. Employees here should be cautious not to fly too close to the sun, because today’s token contests are tomorrow’s short lists for costly employees.

For personal use, just like everything else on the internet, advertising is going to be the name of the game. The question is how many gatekeepers will there be in order to integrate your product with AI. Will the main three survive IPO and therefore keep advertising out of the reach of all but the well-financed? Or will we witness a sudden dismantling of the industry, leaving everyone on their own to generate an LLM that meets their (commercial) needs?

Achievements

First of all, it has been a very productive time for me. My parents are here visiting in honor of my daughter’s bat mitzvah, and since I am not working, I have some extra time to hang out with them. This has allowed me to join a tour that I have been wanting to do for a long time. The tour is called The Pilgrimage Road in the City of David, and I have been wanting to see this excavation for several years already.

The excavation takes you along the route that pilgrims would take to ascend to the Temple Mount during the time of the Second Temple, when they would come to visit during the three annual pilgrimage holidays that are part of the Jewish religion. It has been a long excavation performed under inhabited houses above. A few years ago, they finally opened it up to the public. It was so cool. I love walking and touching the same places that my ancestors, however many generations ago, also walked. The fact that it serves as indisputable proof that our religion has claims to the area is just icing on the cake.

Here are some pictures of highlights from the tour:

Substack’s gallery feature is terrible; my image post of Pilgrimage Road to the Temple Mount has way more details.

Finding the Form, Part 1

The next thing I have been working on during unemployment is registering my son for the tuition assistance organization for high schools. Here in Israel, it is true that a year of dormitory school is what people in America spend for one session of summer camp, but it can still be a burden on some families. It is also a little different here because everyone can be eligible, and the organization will determine what you are entitled to. It isn’t that people apply out of need; it is that everyone is invited to apply.

The organization needs a ton of things, mostly, I think, because I am also registered as an independent contractor here in Israel. Among the forms, there was one that I had never heard of. It is called the אישור זכאות שנתי. I asked where it could be found, and they told me it can be found on the website for the National Insurance (ביטוח לאומי) agency. So I registered for the site (something I would have needed to do anyway to get unemployment) and started trying to find the form. I looked under every menu. Nothing. I found something regarding my children, also not the correct form. I tried to tell them to stop asking me for it, but they wouldn’t accept no for answer.

So I did what anyone in 2026 would do, and that is: ask AI. No, I sent them a screenshot. They wrote back to me a little bit later and told me to click on a set of menus across the top, and there I would find the form. They happened to be correct, but I must say: this is terrible UI/UX. To me, when you are on a site that you need to log in to, then the menu along the side is where most of the actions should be done. The top should be reserved for navigation. Don’t put forms both along the top and along the side.

I hope this helps someone.

Finding the Form, Part 2

Meanwhile, another thing we have been dealing with is some car troubles. It would seem that either over time, or in an inadvertent happenstance, some bad oil made its way into our car’s engine, and over the course of 5 months, the car met its demise.

So two days ago, we went to buy a new-to-us car. Thankfully, most of the transaction went smoothly, but transferring my insurance to the new car has been incredibly frustrating. The phone menu for my insurance company has no way of reaching a customer service representative. This morning, I reached a lawyer somehow. I also spoke with a decent English speaker (not like the one in the court system - a story for another time), but I didn’t have all the paperwork I needed to complete the process. Then, someone else from the insurance called me while I was on the tour I spoke about above, and I wasn’t able to talk. I guess I’ll get it figured out. My insurance on the old car is running out at the end of the month and they are going to want their money, so I’m sure they’ll reach me eventually, it just means I can’t drive in the meantime.

I guess if these are my worst customer service stories from Israel (and they are), then I should be thankful.

Dovi Neuberger in Israel!!!

Another great accomplishment this week was that I finally got to see one of my favorite Jewish comedians live. Dovi, who can stand on his own credentials, but who is also the son of my Rosh Yeshiva from YU, has meteorically risen the ranks of the A-list Jewish comedians, and may even be number 1 at this point. True, it isn’t a very long list, and also, the competition is not that strong, but he was by far the funniest of all of the Jewish comedy shows I have seen since moving here (at least three). He had a good mix of routine and “crowdwork”. Personally, I think his crowdwork was just as strong as his routine, if not slightly better. He was very good at working it into his overall routine, which made the show flow. It was also the longest bit I have been to. He performed for almost an hour and a half! This might have actually been the longest performance I’ve paid for since I moved to Israel. Please go try to see him the next time he comes.

Last week, I was laid off along with about 1/3 of my company. Believe it or not, and with much thanks to the Lord, this is the first time I have involuntarily left a job in my professional career. I’m writing part of this on the day of, mostly to keep track of my feelings. Readers of the blog are used to my play-by-plays, so I won’t let you down here either.

Day 0

Already at the end of the week prior to my layoff, I was told I would have a meeting with my boss, who was in miluim/reserve duty. It isn’t unheard of for reserivists to get a break during their tours, so at face value, the fact that he would be in the was not anything extraordinary. I thought I might have a chance to learn some of the politics behind my recent title change, but otherwise, it would have been good to just catch up.

As soon as I sat down, I was informed that it was not going to be a typical update meeting with my boss, at which point I immediately understood what was happening. Overall, I took it well, especially since I was told a large percentage of the company would soon be in the same boat, which meant it wasn’t personal. I went to inform my wife and a few other close coworkers. I then completed a few tasks, packed up my bags, and headed home.

In general, right now I am taking it well. There are still a lot of question marks as Israeli law requires an opportunity for employees to plead their case to management. As mentioned in the subtitle, I’ve been continuously employed for 19 years, three more than Cal Ripken Jr. played for, and a baseball season is only 2/3 of the year. I have a list of ideas a mile long, and I had actually started a few projects in anticipation of such an event during the war, so I can work on those as well.

What am I looking for in my next role?

In any case, I am generally looking for a mid- to senior-level job in the areas of Business Intelligence or Data Engineering, preferably at a small- to mid-sized company in the Jerusalem or Tel Aviv area. My domain is health/science data, and that is where I would like to stay. I don’t mind commuting on public transit, and specifically got employed in Israel so that I could be with people during the day, so an in-office requirement is fine with me, though hybrid is preferable. You can see my profile on LinkedIn. I also have various versions of a resume for you to view.

How much did AI play a role in this?

I’m honestly not sure. The truth is that of late, my job was working almost entirely with AI to generate the code and features I needed for my assignments, all with the blessing of corporate. The 10x effect of AI meant that I was getting a lot done, but I still had my own corpus of work to complete that I don’t think could be handed off to another person without absolutely drowning them. Additionally, I think that my expertise and understanding of the subject matter still made me relevant and integral to executing the product timeline, so I’m inclined to think that other factors at the company were a bigger part of the equation than AI coming and replacing my job.

What’s Next?

This is a great question. As of Day 0, it is too soon to tell. I am working on setting up a daily and weekly schedule that will include networking meetings and also some leisure time. School ends in two months, so the urge to make this a “Summer of Josh” is compelling, especially given the potential for burnout.

Day 1

I did not sleep well overnight, but I did come up with a few ideas to discuss at my hearing on Sunday. I still woke up at my normal time, and I brought the kids to school. I think I have plenty of things to keep me busy for today, both personal projects, errands, and preparing for unemployment.

In the car, two songs played that were coincidentally appropriate for my situation. The first was “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, the second was “What Goes Around…Comes Around” by Justin Timberlake. The first drew a few tears out of me, but I was driving, so I couldn’t really let go.

I was able to update my resume and pop out a few job applications, as well. In the afternoon, I started working on a website/app idea I have had for a while. AI is quite amazing, but I was kind of surprised how bland it made the UI. I guess this makes sense, though, for two reasons:

1. If you’re starting an app, first get down the functionality, then apply the paint later

2. Bland is just the “average” of everything it ingests (see my post about AI Obsoleting Itself)

Day 2

I stayed busy on Day 2 as well. I had an appointment with a physical therapist to analyze my gait since it is very difficult for me to find comfortable shoes here. I was worried (as I have been in the past with physical therapy) that he would actually be able to help me, but the price he was charging was worth a gamble (and also to save on buying shoes that feel good to start and then end up being terrible). He did some pretty cool stuff, showing me different reflexes that get activated when you’re walking, and how different positioning of your feet can affect those reflexes. He also told me I need to work on my balance, which will, in general, make shoes and walking long distances more comfortable, so now I have 10 minutes of each unemployment day filled up!

Then, I had a few minutes in the afternoon to wrap up my second video for my Dalet Amot channel. It was a summary of my walking 11.5km from Ein Kobi to Jerusalem. I look forward to doing more hiking and making more videos during my unemployment as well. Enjoy the video:

Following the release of my video, I took a few minutes to look at and apply to some jobs. Some of them were a bit off the beaten track for me, but you never know when a data engineer can turn into a transportation engineer!

In the evening, Israel Independence Day began, and I watched my daughter and her friends do dances with the Israeli flag.

Day 3 - Yom Haatzmaut

Last night was the first good night of sleep I got since I received the news. The day as a whole turned out to be an island of normalcy among everything else going on. It is also generally a very social day, so I was able to get the word out a bit that I am looking for a job. Over the course of the day we went to a brunch at a local farm, a hike on an ancient Roman road, and a barbecue with a group of friends outside of our neighborhood.

Day 4

So far, I have managed to be plenty busy throughout the week, and today was no exception. I have been a bit under the weather since I got the news (not sure if it is related), so today was the first time I was able to work out. My younger son joined me; it was a lot of fun.

Other than that, more of the same. A little job searching among a bit of client work and trying to fix my son’s bike (I think I was successful here too - future Josh, I wasn’t, but it was only 10 shekels to fix it at the local bike shop). Shabbat is around the corner, and I don’t know why I can’t have a normal Friday like everyone else, so that is what I am going to do.

Day 5

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep (I was thinking of business ideas), so I went to vatikin (prayer at sunrise) in one of the other neighborhoods. Then I came home and chatted with ChatGPT about the viability of such ideas (I’m not too far off, so I guess that is good news).

Then, some friends of ours run a farm to help soldiers recover from the horrors of war. They have a son in the same class as my son, so they’ve been inviting the class to help out on the farm each Friday. It is the end of 8th grade for these kids, so having this activity is a great way to fight “senioritis”. This was by far way more physical than any activity I did during any of my formal education. So good for these kids!

Shabbat

Shabbat was nice, and I got a full night of sleep, and then a good nap in the afternoon as well. I only told one new person about my news, but generally I avoided it so as not to make someone (including myself) sad on Shabbat.

Sunday - Day 7

Today was the day of my hearing. The hearing is supposed to be an opportunity to justify your role in the company, in hopes that the consideration will be reversed. It almost never happens. I went into the office a little early so I could shmooze with my coworkers/friends and learn who else is in the same “storm” as one coworker put it. There were a lot of people, and a lot of surprises as to who got cut as well.

I treated myself a bit and went to my favorite salad bar for lunch. Then it was only a little bit of time till my hearing. It was scheduled to take an hour, but it only took 12 minutes. Then I basically waited around for the next train and came home. My brain is fried, so I’ll probably just watch a lot of YouTube until I fall asleep. Tomorrow should be a busy day applying to jobs and working on some projects.

Days 8-11

They all kind of blurred together. I remember that on Monday, I did hagbah for the first time in my life with a Sephardic Sefer Torah. They are quite heavy! Tuesday, I went grocery shopping, ran a few other errands, and met with a friend of mine to discuss a potential partnership. Finally, today I went on a hike with a friend to enjoy myself a bit and to record footage for my next video for my channel (then officially got let go in the afternoon).

Today, my daughter and her friends were selected to present their science project in front of representatives from the Department of Education. She, along with about a dozen other groups of students from various schools and communities in our region, exhibited their experiments along with posterboards and sometimes even live demonstrations. Aside from her project, which was obviously the best, there was another project that tested the insulating properties of various materials mentioned in the Mishna, which I thought was a true Torah U’Madda moment.

How do I feel after a week and a half?

I waver between two extremes. The first is a high level of confidence that something will work out, and that it will be better than what I have now, and that I have very marketable skills that would be valuable to many different kinds of companies. The other is an extreme fear that there is a tidal wave of change coming to the technology job market, and that it will be a very long time until I am able to find a job again in my field. The split is about 60/40 in favor of optimism. Thankfully, B”H, I am not in any dire financial trouble, so this isn’t a huge part of my thoughts, but I would prefer not to burn through a good portion of my savings. I keep on thinking of lots of different kinds of ideas that I will put into motion at various points should the need(s) arise.

In the meantime, I have you, my readers, to carry me through. No word of this blog has ever been written by AI (save for the grammar corrections, some of which I reject), so always know that you have a safe haven from AI slop here on my blog. With hopes for good tidings in the near future!

Exodus

The first new thing I started this past week was the book Exodus. How did this happen? See, the range of types of books available at the library is kind of a hodgepodge of books that have been donated over the years from other people in the community (or that were purchased with funds from outside donors). There are basically five types of books:

• Books relating to Israel. This takes up about two whole shelves.

• Paperback mysteries, thrillers, novels, like half the shelves

• Two shelves of classics

• Four shelves of science fiction

• A bunch of shelves of non-fiction but mostly emanating from the late 20th century, so it is a bit dated.

So when it comes time to find some new books to read, these are my choices. I was scanning the shelves before Pesach (because often the books are not where they are supposed to be), and my eyes came across like 6 copies of Exodus, by Leon Uris.

Now this book holds a special place in my head. I remember clearly that my parents had this book (in hardcover) in their room for years. I also remember it was huge. Like the longest book I had ever seen. I think I asked them if they had ever read it. I also remember thinking to myself:

• Who would write something that long?

• And obviously, who would READ something that long?

Well, fellow readers, I am here to tell you that I am reading it right now in order to answer those very questions. I’m about 60 pages in (the book in paperback is almost 600), and so far it is pretty compelling. Would it be as interesting if I weren’t Jewish and familiar with the founding of the state of Israel? Not sure yet, and I’m not sure I would be able to answer that question objectively. But it sold a gazillion copies, and there aren’t a gazillion Jews, so some other people must think it is a good read. Also, it came out like a gazillion years ago when people had wayyyy more time to read (I think), so maybe 600-page paperbacks are just what people were looking for back then.

At the pace I am reading, I should be done with it in a few months, so look for a review. I definitely will not skip over the longest book I have ever read (for sure in fiction).

Changing a Tire

Then, sometime on Monday, my wife calls me to tell me that the air pressure in one of the tires was low. This is a common occurrence during the transition between seasons where I live, with warm days and cool nights that can affect air pressure the same way the balls got deflated for Tom Brady back in the day. So I didn’t think much of it. I had also recently bought an air pump that would work with the plug (aka cigarette lighter) in the car, so I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal to fix, and I was even ready to instruct Tamar over the phone how to do so, but she decided to wait until I got home so that I could work on it.

I got home from work later in the day and received a text to go pick up my daughter from her friend’s house. I hopped in the car, rolled down the windows and started hearing a clickety-clack sound. It was then that I put two-and-two together and realized that I had what is known in the Israeli vernacular as a “puncher” (puncture/flat tire). This set off a cascade of logistical issues since my wife needed the car ready by Wednesday so that she could return from work in time for my son’s siddur play (more on that later).

I didn’t have the time or patience to wait for the AAA equivalent to come show up and change the tire (I was too tired, haha, to wait), and one needs to be at the tire repair place early in order not to have to wait a long time to get seen.

Sidebar

It would seem that some things are the same anywhere in the world. I remember several times in my youth, and also as an adult, going to tire stores on Sunday afternoons to fix a flat tire or get new tires for some reason or another. Usually, I would go with my father, always forgetting how incredibly boring it was to go to these places. This was a time before phones and screens, so usually the only thing to do was to watch the CNN that was on in the TV in the waiting room, or to read Car and Driver magazines from many years ago. Somehow, my dad maintained his patience (or time just seemed way longer as a kid), and then once the car went on the lift to get repaired, I forgot how long the wait was.

I’m back. What this meant was that I would have to change the tire to the spare by myself. Surprisingly, this is not something I had ever done before, probably because it didn’t happen very often in the US, and also, the many times it has happened here in Israel, I was able to get to the repair place before I ran out of air, or had the time to wait for the guy to come and change it for me. For some reason, I had in my mind that what was attached/fastened with power tools would be unable to be loosened by mere mechanical force. I spent the morning prayers pleading with Hashem that I would be able to loosen the nuts on the tire. If I were able to do that, then I knew I would be able to do the rest.

I finished davening and brought out the tools from the car to begin the repair. I raised the car up using the jack (the pictures were quite instructive), attached the wrench to the first nut and gave a good tug. And lo and behold, the nut started turning! Baruch Hashem, the rest of the nuts were just as easy, and I had the tire changed in less than 30 minutes. I was the first person at the repair place, and I was home by 8 AM, with plenty of time to start my day’s work. Now, I am pretty close to cancelling my roadside assistance subscription.

Siddur Play

Another first that happened last week, but didn’t happen to me, was that my son received his first siddur, prayer book. In Israel, this is a momentous occasion and is accompanied by much fanfare. Those who are “lucky” may get extra-special events. It is not unheard of to have Jonathan Pollard hand children their first siddur, or for the chief Rabbi of the country to be in attendance. Others do their reception on location, travelling to the Kotel, Mearat HaMachpelah, or other meaningful sites across the country.

Alas, possibly because of the war, my son’s party was at his school. But never fear, because in Israel, there is a cottage industry which specializes in running events like this. For a (I assume) reasonable price, a troupe of actors will come out and do all sorts of events for schools, aside from this siddur party, I’ve also seen them employed for Chanukah celebrations and the like.

For some reason, this fascinates me. But also, isn’t it incredible that the Jewish nation is now so large that there are enough siddur plays and other celebrations for people to make their livelihood off such things?

Mazal tov to my son!

Stargazing

There were many other firsts last week (and this week, for that matter, stay tuned), but only one other which I will share with you now. A few months ago at work, they updated my computer to run Windows 11. I so doing, they erased/removed my desktop background, which was of the space shuttle a”h sitting on the launchpad at night. My search to replace it with the same photo came up empty, but then I had an idea.

I asked ChatGPT if it could write me a script that would go and fetch the image from the Astronomy Photo of the Day and make it my background. Obviously, it could, and I proceeded to set it up to run daily. I figured I would get a pretty image on my desktop (which I rarely see anyway) and maybe I would learn a thing or two along the way.

Anyway, I was checking my desktop the other day, and I saw a comet as the background image. Immediately, I was brought back to the heydays of Hale Bopp (Halley’s comet last came by a few months after I was born), and I guessed that it was a historical image of Hale Bopp and its iconic double tail. But upon checking the website, I learned that I was wrong, and that it was actually a comet (C/2025 R3 - PanSTARRS) that is currently viewable from Earth!

This got me very excited, because one of the things I do to distract me from current world events is read Astronomy magazine, which is surprisingly apolitical even if space research and exploration is more political than ever these days. So I’ve been wanting to acquire a telescope and focus my eyes on the heavens for a while, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

The other good news here is that the comet is supposed to be visible right before sunrise, which is kind of my time of the day. So I set my alarm a bit early for one morning, only to see that it was cloudy upon waking (this was in fact the forecast, but you never know). The next time the weather said it would be clear would be two days later. So two days later, I make the same arrangements, and I check the window upon waking, and it looks relatively clear, so I decide to try and give it a go.

I went to the nearest dark spot with my binoculars and my gimbal just in case there was something to record. Unfortunately, despite it being mostly clear, it was still either too hazy, too bright, or my horizon is higher than I thought since I was unable to see anything of note, not even the few planets that are supposed to be visible on the horizon at the same time of the night/morning.

But it is still all good. I tried something, and that on its own is important and valuable, and it something I suggest all of my readers to try and do as well. So go start something new this week, even if it doesn’t stick.

Here are some other posts of mine that are related to this one:

Pesach just finished here in Israel, and I have the pitot (and cereal) to prove it! But I probably won’t eat any chametz until tomorrow. I wanted to give my readers a taste of what we were able to accomplish under the auspices of war, even though, as of tonight, there seems to be a bit of a respite in the cards.

First Day

The seder went off uninterrupted by sirens, though throughout the chag itself, we had three total. I was able to give over the highlights from these beautiful words of Rav Asher Weiss. All chag I was waiting to make some Okonomiyaki, but I never succeeded in having the right ingredients available. The current issue of Cook’s Illustrated has recipes for those interested.

Chol Hamoed Day 1

As readers know, I am terrible at sleeping late, so I was up in time for the first minyan in the neighborhood, which took place at 7 AM (sunrise is a bit after 06:00 these days). I returned home and made something for breakfast. Then we went on a hike in the next neighborhood, which has a whole water system based around a natural pool and a spring. This hike served as fodder for testing out the gimbal I bought myself a few weeks ago. I took the footage and produced this video:

Enjoy and subscribe!

It was also my birthday, and my wife surprised me with a Kosher for Passover ice cream cake!

Chol Hamoed Day 3: The Springs in Bat Ayin

Shabbat was mostly uneventful, just a couple of sirens, including the first back-to-back sirens we have had this war, and maybe ever. On Sunday, we packed up and tried to go to a place called “Eretz Ha’ayalim/Land of the Deers,” but every time we have tried to go, they have been closed. Oh well, their loss.

Instead, we headed down the road to Bat Ayin, which has several springs surrounding it (one of which I highlighted in my review of activities from last summer - this has been one of my most popular posts).

Josh’s Substack

3/4 of Summer Review: What Have We Been Doing All Summer

Yeah, so it has been a bit of time since I last wrote a post for the blog. The reasons for this are many…

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10 months ago · Josh Vogel

We parked at the top, headed into an event space to use the bathroom, then started down the hill and took a very steep path down to the first spring.

The spring then empties into a larger collection pool:

In the summertime, I imagine plenty of children wade in this water, so it is probably quite refreshing. It is also accessible by car if you don’t want to do the hike.

From there, we went to a carnival sponsored by an American community to cheer up us people affected by the war. I saw a couple of friends and caught up with them, so it was beneficial for both the kids and the adults.

Chol Hamoed Day 4: Biblical Museum of Natural History, IKEA, BBQ, and Sunset in Caesaria

Day 4 was the most action-packed of the bunch. The previous week, we had made a reservation to go to with friends to Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s Biblical Museum of Natural History, which we had not yet been to in its new space (I mean, it’s already been there for a few years, but it is new to us!). It is really nice. Still a bit of an industrial feel to the rooms and the lighting, but the overall experience is much better than it was in the old location. I also happen to agree with a lot of what Slifkin says on the current state of affairs in Israel, take a look at his blog!

Rationalist Judaism

Exploring the legacy of the rationalist rabbinic tradition, and various other notes on Judaism, science and society, by Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin. The views are those of the author alone.

By Natan Slifkin

From there, we went to grab some food at IKEA, which was free of all kitniyot. We pounded some pargiyot (boneless chicken thighs), potatoes, hot dogs, and French fries. This was my first time eating in IKEA really ever, so I’m sure I didn’t get the full experience, but as an immigrant to Israel, eating in any restaurant on Pesach is an experience (chavayah) that will never get old. Look for a full review of the IKEA food court at a later date (maybe on my channel, lol).

From there, we had an invite to friends from the alter heim (America) who now live in Pardes Chana, about an hour’s drive from Bet Shemesh where the museum and IKEA were. It was a bit of a risk to take this drive on two levels. One, we had to cross the “center” of the country, where the lion’s (no pun intended) share of missiles from Iran have been directed. Second, our car’s engine has some issue which is in the process of being diagnosed, so there was a slight risk that we would run out of oil on the way. Baruch Hashem, neither of these things became issues in either direction and we were able to enjoy quality time with our friends.

Now, Pardes Chana is just a few minutes from the beach in Caesaria, which we were told has a shelter should it become necessary. So we hopped in the car to view the sunset over the Mediterranean Sea. It was the perfect therapy!

Chol Hamoed Day 5: Rain and Park Begin

My wife had made arrangements with a bunch of friends to go on “Derech Avot”, another trail in the general vicinity of our home. The problem was that there was heavy rain in the morning, which made the whole trail less pleasant, and most of the people ended up bailing. Instead, we went 20 minutes to Park Begin, to see what trails we could find there. We parked at the top (the second time I have made this mistake) and walked and walked and walked until we finally found the trailhead to Ein Kobi. At which point I had recognized that I had done this trail from the opposite direction. It was also getting late in the afternoon, and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I conversed with the father of the other family we were with, and we decided we would return to the car, drive down, eat lunch, and then return home, which is what we did.

This being the second time that I have not seen Ein Kobi, it will most likely be the next destination for one of my videos. So stay tuned!

Shvi’i Shel Pesach: Would the World Come to an End???

We entered into the holiday with President Trump making a threat to erase a whole civilization (presumably Iran’s) if the Iranians didn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz. As Orthodox Jews, we don’t check the news over the holiday, so we had no idea what to expect over the course of the next day. We ended up having to go to the safe room once in the middle of the night, and then we heard several more interceptions throughout the night.

I also gave the dvar Torah in shul (English, Hebrew).

At noontime, our children returned from a sleepover where the family left the news up on the computer screen (the news sites also give real-time information on who needs to enter safe rooms), so they were able to tell us that a ceasefire had been declared. We ate lunch with some friends and then relaxed the rest of the afternoon, in which I read like half of a James Patterson thriller, and then I took a walk for half an hour.

Now back to a regular routine (at least for two weeks, lol).

Rav Asher Weiss addressed the Beit Shemesh Kehillah on March 25, 2026. These are my notes from the evening. Mistakes and misunderstandings are mine. Edited for clarity.

We have 3 regalim, no mitzvah on Shavuot. Sukkot has 2 mitzvot. Pesach has more mitzvot than you can count. The seder alone has 4 in our time:

• Matzah

• Maror

• Kosot

• Sippur

Korban Pesach in the future.

We repeat one pasuk four times in the Haggadah (Shemot 13:8):

וְהִגַּדְתָּ֣ לְבִנְךָ֔ בַּיּ֥וֹם הַה֖וּא לֵאמֹ֑ר בַּעֲב֣וּר זֶ֗ה עָשָׂ֤ה יְהֹוָה֙ לִ֔י בְּצֵאתִ֖י מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃

This is another instance of four in the seder that we don’t generally point out.

Rashi on this pasuk says the zeh is in order that we can do mitzvot.:

בעבור זה. בַּעֲבוּר שֶׁאֲקַיֵּם מִצְווֹתָיו, כְּגוֹן פֶּסַח מַצָּה וּמָרוֹר הַלָּלוּ:

Focusing on the four sons, Rav Weiss points out that the Rasha in the Talmud Yerushalmi is much more charif than seen in our current Haggadah, asking “what is this burden”?

בֶּן רָשָׁע מָהוּ אוֹמֵר. מָה הָעֲבוֹדָה הַזֹּאת לָכֶם. מַה הַטּוֹרַח הַזֶּה שֶׁאַתֶּם מַטְרִיחִין עָלֵינוּ בְּכָל (שָׁעָה וְשָׁעָה) [שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה]. מִכֵּיוָן שֶׁהוֹצִיא אֶת עַצְמוֹ מִן הַכְּלָל אַף אַתָּה אֱמוֹר לוֹ. בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה יְי לִי. לִי עָשָׂה. לְאוֹתוֹ הָאִישׁ לֹא עָשָׂה. אִילּוּ הָיָה אוֹתוֹ הְאִישׁ בְּמִצְרַיִם לֹא הָיָה רָאוּי לְהִיגָּאֵל מִשָּׁם לְעוֹלָם.

In the Haggadah:

רָשָׁע מָה הוּא אוֹמֵר? מָה הָעֲבוֹדָה הַזּאֹת לָכֶם. לָכֶם – וְלֹא לוֹ. וּלְפִי שֶׁהוֹצִיא אֶת עַצְמוֹ מִן הַכְּלָל כָּפַר בְּעִקָּר. וְאַף אַתָּה הַקְהֵה אֶת שִׁנָּיו וֶאֱמוֹר לוֹ: “בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה יְיָ לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם”. לִי וְלֹא־לוֹ. אִלּוּ הָיָה שָׁם, לֹא הָיָה נִגְאָל:

This is one of the times we see this pasuk mentioned during the seder.

In introducing the next section of the shiur, Rav Weiss mentioned: “In every generation…” we must try to feel and get in the mood as if we were there. Why is this important? Shouldn’t it be enough to remember what happened to our forefathers? The answer is because Hashem wants us, not our forefathers.

“Yachol MeRosh Chodesh” also has this pasuk, which Rav Weiss used as a launching point to discuss his main topic, the difference between sippur, storytelling, and zechira, mere rememberance.

Sippur Yetziat Mitrayim

What is the difference between sippur and zechira? Emek Beracha (Aryeh Pomeranchik, Jerusalem wrote 3 seforim, passed away at 34, and was a talmid of the Brisker Rav, and we only know so much about the Brisker because of him). He quotes the Bisker, who quotes Rav Chaim on three differences between the two types of conveyance:

1. Only on seder night do we have matchilim begenus umesayem beshevach

2. Only seder needs to be in the format of questions

3. Rabban Gamliel. Need to mention the three things

Rav Weiss disagrees with what Rav Chaim said, because it is not directly said by them. However, Rav Weiss thinks this is what Rav Chaim meant. The issue is that these three things are not min hatorah, since one would still be yotze seder night without doing them. What Rav Chaim meant to say is which parts are the most important (derabanan) in order to be Yotze. He meant to say what is the difference on the deoraisa/derabanan level

(Rav Weiss advises patients and soldiers to do if they have limited time is mah nishtana and avadim hayinu.)

Story demands detail, zechira does not (he illustrated by speaking of his storytelling skills vs. his wife’s). The Rambam brings down that the sippur also needs to mention the miracles. Telling the story without mentioning the miracles (even if it includes details) is devarim beteilim because it leaves out the miracles.

On Leil Haseder, we need to stress that today is the actual day it happened, which is not the case when we say it in Shema.

Of the 6 zechiros, only 2 relate to a day. Shabbat and Pesach/Yetziat Mitzrayim. This is the need to say “halaylah hazeh” in mah nishtana. We don’t know a date for Amalek.

Another difference between sippur and zechira is “not what, but how”. For other speech mitzvot, we only need to say it, but not necessarily loud enough to be heard. Move the mouth. Sippur is different because how can you tell a story if no one else can hear it? Sippur is interaction. This is the reason one doing seder alone needs to ask himself the questions (Shoel et Atzmo) because it needs to be out loud.

It is clear from the Gemara that in those times, not everyone was able to say the haggadah. Haggadah is not shomeah koneh. You don’t need this concept because a story has a natural back and forth.

To summarize, the three differences between sippur and zechira are in relation to these aspects:

• Detail/Miracles

• Hayom Hazeh

• Audible

But why the need for two different mitzvot in the first place? Rav Weiss answers with a Mashal, a parable:

You buy a new phone these days, and they all have the speed dial feature. It saves a lot of time, and you don’t need to remember all the numbers. However, it is very stressful to get all of the numbers into the phone, follow the directions, and set aside half an hour to learn how to do it. It takes patience. Leil Haseder is entering all of the phone numbers into the system. Dedicate the time. If done right, then the speed dial, which is zechira, will be fine for the rest of the year.

If you don’t stress miracles, you are wasting your time. The Ramban writes that the miracles happen only once during Yetziat Mitrayim. Because as long as you believe in the great miracles, you will appreciate the hidden and natural miracles.

We are still in the midst of a war that has lasted essentially 2.5 years, and we see miracles every day. Not supernatural ones. No barad in Tehran, no blood in the Litani, no floods in Gaza. These are miracles of yore, but those miracles will open our eyes to current ones. The miracles are the basis of our entire belief in the Torah.

“Hashem! We want to see some of the old miracles, and now is the time.”

Chag Kasher V’Sameach!

I grew up in Brookline, MA, a town that borders Boston, and as such, while not as densely populated as Boston, it is still quite city-like in its feel. My family is also Jewish, and while Brookline has quite a large Jewish population, it is still small relative to the general population. I also attended private school, so the likelihood that my friends from school would also be my neighbors was quite low. It is also a college town, meaning that many of the residents are transient, so there was a large turnover in population and in my neighbors, even from year-to-year. All this to say that while I think in general, most of America is built around the local community, for me, it was not so much the case. Nevertheless, there were still a few neighbors that I remember after all this time, so I thought I would introduce them to you as a good distraction from all the other craziness going on right now.

Anne and Herb

We’ll start in terms of geographic proximity to where I lived. That would bring us to Anne and Herb. Every Jewish family that lives in the diaspora has a “Shabbos Goy” (description in the link), and for us, Anne and Herb were the “Shabbos Goys”. They also had a Siamese cat named Chablis. The arrangement was that we would take care of Chablis whenever they went away, and whenever we needed them to help us out in a pinch on Shabbat, they would generally try their best to help. The most memorable occasion that we needed them to help out was one Seder night (the first night of Passover), where somehow we had forgotten to purchase Romaine lettuce for use as marror. At the time, there was a grocery store across the street, and they were very kind and went and purchased some for us, saving our seder!

Semi-related to this is that since none of our neighbors were Jewish (or at least religious), we really didn’t have that neighbor we went to when we were missing something in the house. We either went across the street to the supermarket (which required crossing Harvard Street, something we weren’t allowed to do until we were 8 or 9 or something - there was no traffic light at our street during my younger years), or down the block to the Kosher supermarket (which I think I was allowed to do before being allowed to go to the grocery store down the street). The grocery store across the street also closed down at some point, really leaving only the Kosher supermarket as the last resort.

The Upstairs Neighbors with the Cats

I’m going to be honest here and say that I don’t remember their names. I also don’t think I remember the names of the cats, though I want to say it was Jerry and Lucy. Definitely Jerry. They had two cats because their one cat misbehaved, and they brought the cat to a pet psychologist, who recommended getting a second cat. I feel like this is pretty much what a pet psychologist says to everyone who brings their pet. Also, good for pet psychologists who can convince people to pay for this service. But I digress.

I mention these neighbors because I took care of their cats when they went away. This did not earn them Shabbos Goy status because:

1. You don’t just ditch your Shabbos Goy. They are slowly groomed and crafted over time so that they can understand immediately what you need, so that when you give them that hint, they know exactly what to do.

2. They went away a lot, and a Shabbos Goy is only as good as they are if they are there when you need them.

Anyway, taking care of the cats did create at least one formative childhood story. I was taking care of the cats one time, and generally, I would see both cats each time I went upstairs to the apartment to feed them and clean the litter box. On one particular day, I did not see Jerry, and Lucy seemed slightly perturbed. I didn’t think much of it, thinking that Jerry was just having a bad day (remember, he needed psychological help), so I finished up and went back downstairs. The next day, Lucy was even more frantic, and Jerry was still missing. It was at this point that I noticed that one of the doors of the room was closed. A room I had not previously searched in for Jerry. I went and opened the door, and there I found Jerry lying on the futon (with a little bit of cat waste as well) in generally good health. A window in the room was open, which apparently blew the door shut while Jerry was in it. Lucy was relieved, and I was too. My mom was kind enough to explain what had happened to the neighbors, and they were cool with it. I continued to care for the cats without incident until the couple moved out.

The Exception

The exception to the rule that none of my neighbors were Jewish/Religious/went to my school was a family that lived in the next building over. We are still friends with this family to this day, and their son was at one time my best friend. Their daughter lives near me in Jerusalem, and our families meet up a few times a year. They were only our neighbors for a few years, though, because one winter day, a dryer in their building caught fire, and their apartment was flooded and, as a result, unlivable. We remained close friends, nevertheless, after they moved a few miles away.

The Yip Yip dogs

Across the street and a few doors down was a family that owned a bunch of small dogs that went yip-yip all the time.

Charlie (I originally called him Bob)

Bob Charlie was the de facto president of the street. He had one of the few single-family properties on the street, and he was a genuinely sweet man. He was a bit older than my parents, as I don’t remember ever seeing his kids around. But if there was an issue on the street that the town needed to know about, he had the connections necessary to make things happen. I think one time I got locked out of my house, and I spent a few minutes with him till my family came home. He may have also let me take a peek at his newspaper once in a while in order to check the sports scores on Shabbat.

Conclusion

All of this is to say that the neighborhood I currently live in is very different. I know a lot of my neighbors, I can (and do) borrow food from them, my kids live minutes away from their classmates, and all the cats live on the street and not in people’s homes, so my kids don’t have any cats to take care of. I hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane (quite literally, I guess).

Can we still learn new things?

I don’t talk a lot about my job on the blog, but one major change that has taken place over the last 6 months or so is that a lot of the work I do now is directing AI on how to generate or change the code I am working on. Honestly, this is something I had dreamed of for a long time. I remember when I was teaching myself how to code, I kept on thinking how I could abstract functions to higher and higher levels to get to a point where I could just string a bunch of them together and get what I wanted. Now we have AI, and it is a little different, but the outcome is the same.

Sidebar - Teaching Myself How to Code

Recently, I keep on thinking of stories that happened in my life that I would like to record for my kids so that they one day, after I live to at least 120 (I think the average lifespan will be pushing that in the next few decades) they can have a record of the things I do and think. Anyway, learning to code was a long journey for me. I first learned HTML in the early days of the internet, I think in 8th or 9th grade, when Mr. Youmans taught an extracurricular class in HTML basics (ok, HTML was only like 25 tags at the time, but it was something, and scrolling text was still totally fine in 1999). It was enough for me to get a Geocities site off the ground that hosted my twice-monthly humor newsletter. Here I floundered for a while (so did web programming, to be honest), but attempts to learn JavaScript or anything else, no matter how many 1000-page programming books I took out of the local library, always eluded me.

Fast-forward to college, and I signed up for a single programming course. I remember doing pretty miserably and always having to ask the kid even nerdier than me for help to complete my assignments. This wasn’t a big deal, though, because the focus of the class was Macromedia Flash, which was all the rage in 2005 but was destined to die a quick death in the next decade.

Following college I got married and was planning on returning to graduate school, but kind of needed some money to pay the rent. I figured that if I learned programming, I could probably make a few bucks from side projects for people here and there while still being able to focus on my studies. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to program. I had forever had a PHP for Dummies book sitting on my shelf, and one evening I came home from work determined to learn how to run a small program in PHP. I remember pointing with my finger, tracing how all the variables flowed through the program, mentally noting the value each time it was called, and then at the same time copying that code into I think notepad++ trying to get it to run. But man o man, when the code finally output the correct value, it was exhilarating. Clearing the hurdle and having everything snap into place is very satisfying. I have been chasing this feeling ever since (and thank you to all my friends and colleagues who have helped me along the way).

Back to the actual post

Anyway, I now have a new assignment at work, and it involves working with a new tool/language that I have no previous experience with. It is called Nextflow, and it is meant to assist with the running of complex pipelines, mostly those that are integral to biological analyses, which is the focus of my company.

Before I continue, I want to give a little bit more background (don’t worry it won’t be a story). While I have not had time to stay on top of Anthropic refusing to help the US government, one thing that does make it into my feed is whether or not AI will destroy the economy. I am pretty firmly in the “not” camp, and hopefully I will demonstrate why in the next few paragraphs.

See, obviously, I could take any of the AIs out there today and ask it to do my assignments in Nextflow. But then I would have a lot of trouble taking responsibility for what it produced. So instead, I took an entire two days to read through the documentation, test out sample code, and somewhat physically trace those same variable values through the program, much like I did over a decade ago. I feel a lot better now about how to complete the task I have for this sprint, and also for the bigger projects my company has planned for me in 2026.

And this is where the economy will be centered in the near future. For the first time in a long time, workers (at all levels of the organization) will need to be responsible for what they release into production. As employees with the help of AI become the developers, the ops, and the QA of their own work, so too will the full brunt of responsibility for what the code does. Release code that racks up thousands of dollars of cloud costs, that is going to be on you. Release code which can be directly attributed to increased revenue within the company, and that will also be (in a positive way) on you. Yes, anyone can now write code, but not everyone can be responsible. The unfortunate thing is that this requirement is running headfirst into what is perhaps the least responsible generation ever raised, where many of them have been pandered to by their parents, coaches, and teachers to be told that nothing is ever their fault and that feelings are of utmost importance. It is because of this that the economy will unravel and go to the responsible ones, not anything else. Companies will now hire mostly based on references, wanting to know how responsible you were with your previous employer’s work.

But this wasn’t the only time in the last week that stepping away from AI and trying to do some thinking for myself was beneficial to my brain. This story begins several years ago, really right after we moved to Israel, and we had a large floor which needed frequent sweeping and mopping because Israel in general, and Bet Shemesh, where we lived at the time, in particular, is very dusty. So, I figured it would be a good investment to buy one of the sweeping robots as the technology had matured significantly since it first debuted, and was also become much more reasonable for the average consumer with the entry of Chinese brands into the marketplace. It has been a faithful little machine, though the space has matured even more since then, so this is quite underpowered compared to its siblings in 2026.

Anyway, like any tech toy, it goes through waves of usage and non-usage, but the other night my wife asked me to do a tune up on the machine since it had stopped working (this particular model needs a 10-minute cleaning about once a week to remove hairs that have accumulated during vacuuming and empty its dustbin). I acquiesced, but went all in, basically disassembling it down to its circuit boards, and living on the edge, not taking any pictures of how it was supposed to go back together. It was more fun than I had had in a long time, and I successfully put it back together, only not finding a place for 3 screws out of like 300.

AI Cooks Shabbat

This past week I had AI generate all of the recipes I used. It gave me a wondefully delicious chicken recipe:

🍗 Roast Chicken with Paprika, Garlic & Lemon

Ingredients (serves 4–6)

• 1 whole chicken (about 1.5–2 kg), or 6–8 chicken pieces

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 4–6 garlic cloves, crushed

• 1½ teaspoons sweet paprika

• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika (optional but excellent)

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• ½ teaspoon black pepper

• Juice of 1 lemon

• Zest of ½ lemon

• 1–2 tablespoons honey (optional, for slight caramelization)

• Optional: 1 teaspoon dried oregano or thyme

Instructions

1️⃣ Preheat

Oven to 200°C (400°F).

2️⃣ Make the Marinade

In a bowl mix:

• Olive oil

• Garlic

• Paprika

• Salt

• Pepper

• Lemon juice + zest

• Honey (if using)

• Herbs (if using)

It should look like a reddish paste.

3️⃣ Prepare the Chicken

Pat chicken dry (important for browning).

Rub marinade all over:

• Under the skin if possible

• Inside cavity (if whole chicken)

Let sit:

• 30–60 minutes (or overnight in fridge if you want deeper flavor)

4️⃣ Roast

Place in roasting pan.

Roast:

• Whole chicken: 75–90 minutes (in smaller Israeli ovens, 60 minutes is when my chicken was ready)

• Pieces: 45–60 minutes

Internal temp: 74°C in thickest part.

If skin isn’t golden enough, broil 3–5 minutes at the end.

5️⃣ Rest

Let rest 10–15 minutes before cutting.

It also helped me make a “digestive-friendly” cholent. It’s major contributions here were to soak the beans for 19 hours prior to making the cholent, then boiling the entire mixture for an hour before moving it into the crock pot. It also recommended only one portion, and then to eat that portion with rice. It then advised to take a walk after eating the cholent. Another seeming advantage to cooking the cholent first is that it doesn’t get burnt or stuck to the sides of the crock pot. This is the first time I have ever had this happen to me. And so far it is fairly digestive friendly! Maybe I have stumbled upon a new product!

Bibi Learns Farsi

I’ll leave you all with this little gem.

The Scientific Process is Alive and Well

I think it is a pretty standard thing in elementary school for students to be given an assignment to conduct an experiment and report back on the results. For example, I remember being told to pour some oil into water and then figure the best ways to remove that oil from the water, essentially replicating the scenario of an oil spill (we were children of the 90s, and back then it seemed like there was an oil spill every other week).

I bring this up because one of my children has been tasked, along with some lab partners, to also perform an experiment, this time to see how best to strengthen “glue”, which for the purposes of this experiment, is a combination of flour and another liquid. My children chose to replace the water in the recipe with lemon juice (not exactly sure why she chose this, but lemons are abundant in Israel this time of year - there are literally people giving them away for free from their trees). So, kind of without knowing it, my child had a control and an experiment ready to go.
She and her friend conducted an experiment where they tried to see how much weight two “glued” pieces of paper could hold before the glue failed. Tests rounds one and two went well, with similar results where the lemon-based glue failed sooner than the water-based glue. Then, in the third round, they come to me to say they had received the opposite results. Immediately, my decades of scientific training kicked in, and I asked them, “well did you put the same amount of glue on the paper each time you ran the experiment?”

I already knew the answer, but this is how we build scientists. Essentially, you need to run the scientific process when running the scientific process. Keep on trying and learning until you can learn on your own what the issue is. I think this is the best learning that there is out there; the actual outcome of the experiment is kind of secondary. Also, she and her friends had a ton of fun doing it! Science as a whole needs to return to these basics and be more open about its failures, and then there will be a lot more hope in this world.

As an aside, if I’m allowed a bit of nachas on this blog, it would seem as if my daughter’s work is going to get promoted to a regional science fair for presentation. Cool!

Hacking My Sleep Using AI

Last week, I had had enough. For several months, I was waking up almost every night at 3:30 AM, unable to fall back asleep. It was as if my body had enough sleep, and now I was ready for my day. It was frustrating, and while I wasn’t particularly tired during the day, I kind of set aside that time for sleeping, and there isn’t much I can do at 3:30 AM anyway, especially since I didn’t want to reinforce this occurrence if I could avoid it. However, there was only one night of the week I knew I would sleep a full night, and that was Friday nights when I typically eat a larger meal and then go pretty much straight to bed.

Then I had an idea, let me tell AI about my problem (hardly novel, I know) and see what it has to say about the situation.

You can read the full discussion here: https://gemini.google.com/share/f8fea71d95e9

Reading it again, overheating is a possibility, but I would think I would have trouble falling asleep in the first place if it were too hot. Also, why would I overheat at the same time each night?

Two weeks later, things are a lot better. While I still wake up around 3:30, it isn’t with the same alertness I was having before (I plan on speaking with AI about this more), so I can usually doze until my alarm goes off. I am hopeful that in a few weeks I will be able to begin scaling back on the evening snack and then return to a more normal sleep pattern. What a world we live in!

Super Bowl LX: Worth the Lost Sleep?

Readers of the blog who know me know that my roots are in New England. I have also been worthy of living in quite possibly the best era of Boston sports history ever (though the Celtics and Bruins did win a bunch in the 70s and 80s). But that all kind of ended around the same time I moved to Israel, so I was presented with quite a dilemma when my hometown team made it to the Super Bowl for the first time in the 7 years I have lived here.

The main factor here was my son, a 14-year-old mensch who also likes sports in a healthy way. While football is not his favorite sport (like most Israelis, he is obsessed with the NBA), he followed them throughout the season and could name way more players on both teams than I could. He is also a loyal Boston fan, so he was fully in on watching the game, even though in Israel it starts a little past 01:30. (Editor’s note: I know that in light of the previous section it would seem like a bad idea to purposely not have a good night’s sleep when dealing with that issue, but, hey, priorities, ammiright?) At first, he was planning on watching it on my iPad (game rights only cost 4 shekel, a bit less than $1.50, so no complaints there), but then my wife was able to score both of us an invite to one of my neighbors’ Super Bowl party (he also happens to have a bigger TV). So with some social aspect baked in, I was also “game” to go watch my first football game in quite a while.

As games go, it was quite boring. While defense is great for teams, it is not exciting to watch. This was a defensive game, and I don’t think the end zone made it into the frame for either side until the 4th quarter, when I left to go back to bed because now my team was down by three scores and Tom Brady, Drake Maye is not.

But I was also interested in the game because it would be a peek into American culture that I also really haven’t tasted much of in the past seven years (though don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of Western influence here). I get most of my video entertainment from YouTubers who have similar hobbies as mine, so I’m not steeped in music, TV shows, or movies. The main thing I learned is that it would seem that a lot of companies were all in on “sex sells” based on the way many of the people in the commercials were dressed (or lack thereof). Though I must say, there were a fair share of commercials asking people to get screened for various diseases (and GLPs), and while I’m not sure this is the best use of charitable funds, I guess it is better reach than most other public service announcements.

Another theme that was consistent through the ads was AI. I think every major purveyor of models had an ad during the game. I find this interesting because:

1. I’m pretty sure there are very few people who haven’t yet tried AI

2. How can you differentiate your AI product in a 30-second commercial? (though I must say Google did seem to do the best job of making AI relatable to the common person and working it in together with another theme of the evening, which was real estate products).

3. Then, assuming the budgets of all the AI companies are equal to Musk’s xAI (Musk entities were curiously absent from the Super Bowl in general), which is reportedly burning through $1 billion a month, then a commercial at the Super Bowl is really just a few hours of work budget-wise, so why not?

So in the end, I think I struck a good balance. I spent some time with my son, and I got to hang out with some friends and also watch something that I enjoy. Obviously, it would have been better if the game were objectively more exciting and then even more better if my home team had won, but you can’t have everything. But at the same time, the things I did have are way more important than any one game, and - despite living in the best Boston sports era ever - I am still old enough to know the refrain: “there’s always next year”.

Introduction

Readers of the blog may have noticed that we skipped our annual Chanukah vacation. This was intentional, as my sister-in-law was planning on visiting in the middle of January, so we thought it would be a valuable move to push it off a few weeks and vacation with them. We have been to the south before. Would there be more to do that we hadn’t done before? Is Israel’s desert really the underdeveloped, open secret to Israel’s land issues that Ben Gurion dreamed of? Or is it still just really brown and rocky even in the middle of what’s been a rainy year compared to the last few winters? (The answer to the last question is yes, it is always brown in the desert).

I took a long weekend from work, which means that we departed our home on Thursday. We left about 11 after cleaning the house and loading up the car for a 2-hour ride down to our first stop at Ein Avdat. Not 15 minutes into the trip, and I was already racking up untraveled territory in my home country.

Day 1 - Travel and Ein Avdat

A little bit of background. There is an idea that Avraham walked the entire area of Israel, and from that, a further notion that every 4 amot one travels in the country is also the fulfillment of a commandment. Those who know where I live may know it is very close to what people may call “hot-spots” and as such, we don’t go out of our way to go to areas that we don’t need to. One of these places is due south of where our main supermarket is (some may even call our supermarket a “hot spot” - lo aleinu). In the 2 years I have lived in this neighborhood, and the 6 years total I have lived in Israel and visited the area I now live in, I have never gone south of where the supermarket is situated. Needless to say, today was the day we were going south (I mean, it is the title of the post). The drive to Ein Avdat along the route which the Waze directed us was quite scenic. Rolling hills gradually transition to more rocky mounds and then finally into full-on desert. After a few stops for snacks, bathroom, and more snacks, we arrived at Ein Avdat around 13:30. We get out of the car and it was cold! My kids were also surprised by this development, at which point I explained to them that technically, Antarctica is also a desert. It didn’t really help.

The entrance to Ein Avdat is at a relatively high altitude above where the waterfall is, which provides for a spectacular view of the Negev. After a few pictures, we began going down the windy road to head of the trail which takes you to the waterfall. Upon arrival at the bottom, we checked in with my sister-in-law who informed us that they were running late and would not make it before the final time they allowed visitors into the national park, so we undertook the trail ourselves. The trail is quite easy, but rocky, and can get narrow at some points. Other than that, you can get within 20 meters of the waterfall (video, above), which is quite spectacular. I had brought along with me some new cups to ritually dunk, and doing it in such a place was inspiring. After some more pictures in front of the waterfall, we turned back towards the trail head and continued on to meet my sister-in-law at the desert home of David Ben-Gurion, which is preserved as it was on the day he died (per his last will and testament). My first post about the south of Israel has the full details, but there does seem to be a new video that has been produced about his life in the past 1.5 years, which is nice, and all the construction that was taking place the last time we were there was also completed.

After touring the home, we headed to our accommodations, two beautiful tzimmerim in the yishuv of Merkhav Am. For those unfamiliar, a tzimmer (tzimmerim in plural) is a type of vacation home popular in Israel. They are often a sectioned-off part of someone’s home, or a separate, small cabin with a bedroom, a common room, and a bathroom. The market is typically couples looking to get a quick break from wherever they are, but some of them are big enough to accommodate families. In our case, the tzimmerim shared a yard, so it was a really great place to have time to bond and also our own spaces when needed. Also, the water pressure was amazing! (I live at the top of a tall hill, and getting good water pressure in my home is a challenge our municipality is currently working on). Once settled in, we make a quick trip to the local store and begin barbecuing for dinner. The owner, Amital Cohen can be reached at 058-495-5656 for reservations (she has pictures of them on her WhatsApp). Good night, day 1!

Day 2 - The Northern Part of the South

Merkhav Am is a religious yishuv, and not just any religious yishuv, but one where basically the only time they have morning prayers is as early as halachically (Jewish law) possible. This actually happens to be quite common in the south because I think a lot of people still commute to the “center” of the country, so praying early, if that is something important to you, is something that needs to happen early. Anyway, Merkhav Am set morning prayers for 6:15 that morning, so that they could pace the prayers such that we would arrive at the main part exactly at sunrise.

Being a visitor in a shul is always an experience because you don’t know if you are in anyone’s seat, and there are also a lot of distractions to your prayers since you are unfamiliar with your surroundings. I was also trying to see if I could get an idea of when prayers would be over Shabbat, since in today’s day and age, much of this information is transmitted in WhatApp groups, with no regard to visitors and those who don’t want to be in more groups. Morning prayers go on uneventfully, and there was even an electronic board/screen (another distraction, why do we need screens everywhere???) which was populated with the times for Shabbat.

I returned home and since my oldest son had not yet prayed, I proposed to my wife that we take the time while that is happening to go to Dimona to look for Israel’s nuclear bomb buy food for Shabbat, because who wants to cook on vacation (I certainly don’t, unless it is barbecuing). So we hop in the car for the 30-minute ride to Dimona. We find the take out place quite easily and we were pleasntly surprised by how much it cost. Food for 6 adults (2 sets of parents and 2 older children) and 5 kids including bakery desserts was 600 shekels, or less than 60 shekels per person. If I buy food for Shabbat here in Efrat, it would be 600 shekels just for my family alone! (I have given this issue full treatment elsewhere on the blog). The bakery in Dimona has the bakery/factory on-site, so you can see them baking the things that then come straight to the storefront. For us city/center dwellers this is unheard of since there isn’t just room to produce on the scale that is needed so the baked goods are produced in even larger factories then delivered to the stores. Dimona and the rest of the south is just too isolated to make this worthwhile I guess, so those who benefit here are the shoppers who get fresh goods and who also don’t have to pay the prices that encompass all of the logistics around delivery fresh baked goods to store. We returned back to Merkhav Am without any nuclear weapons (Dimona is the supposed site of Israel’s supposed nuclear weapon, but nobody really knows. Grammarly wants me to delete supposed in the previous sentence, maybe it knows something the rest of the world doesn’t). and from there we begin our day of touring.

The first place we visited on this day was the ancient site of Mamshit, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Mamshit (pronounced mom-SHEET) was a spice route outpost/city for the Nabateans in the second century CE. It was somewhere along the middle of the route, which culminated in Petra. While not a Jewish site (it included several churches since the residents converted to Christianity from Paganism) it was still incredibly interesting because it borrowed a lot of the architecture and amenities from the Roman culture that was prevalent in the area at the time. For me, the most interesting parts of the city were the bathhouse (they managed quite well without any modern plumbing and limited water resources) and also the flour mill, which seemed to still have parts of the millstone still present. There were also the homes of two very affluent people (presumed to be the mayor and a businessman), which remain mostly intact (they don’t build things as they used to).

In order to arrive at the site, you need to pass through Dimona proper and along the route there is a Kosher McDonald’s. The kids obviously took note of this on our way in and it was therefore pretty much a given we would be going there for lunch. So once we finished with Mamshit (set aside about 90 minutes) we headed over to the McDonald’s which is in a nice new-ish looking mall that has a food court which seems to be mostly kosher as well. In the mall, it was comforting to see several young families, which to me is a good sign that people are willing to settle here and that the city isn’t at risk of dying out. Everyone ordered their desired processed food item (it was a real experience for my sister-in-law’s family that was visiting from the United States), except for me, because I knew that if I ate at that point in the day, I would have a limited appetite for the Friday night Shabbat meal. So I waited patiently while everyone else ate, and then it was on to the next stop, the “large crater” near Yerucham.

Craters are an interesting cultural phenomenon (not the right word, I know) in Israel, because:

1. None of them are actual craters, rather geological anomalies resulting from tectonic plate shifts and water erosion over millions of years.

2. A fact that I learned on this trip is that there is more than one crater in Israel. Most of Israe'l’s residents are familiar with the crater at Mitzpeh Ramon, known as “The Machtesh”/The Crater. Then, in a bit of marketing, there is the “Big Crater” which is not the Ramon Crater, and is smaller than the Ramon crater, but bigger than the “Small crater” which is right next to the Big crater. Both the Big and Small craters are nowhere near the Ramon crater. It is all very confusing. Unfortunately, they are not really all in a row, so you can’t even make the case that an actual meteor hit at the first location and then bounced to the other two places. Oh well.

At the Big crater, we did another hike which took us down even deeper into the crater and to some water which has collected in the area as a result of the heavy rains we have been having so far this winter. This hike also happened to be part of the Israel Trail, Israel’s equivalent of the Appalachian Trail, so I was particularly excited since I have a goal for the year to walk 20 kilometers of the Israel trail so now I only have like 19 to go. The weather was great for this hike, and it only became mildly challenging towards the end when it came time to get down to the water. We spent a couple of minutes chilling here as well, then we headed back to the car because Shabbat was approaching.

Shabbat in Merkhav Am

Preparations for Shabbat went fairly smoothly, and I MacGuyvered some of the utensils in the house to suspend the food above the hotplate so it wouldn’t burn. We headed to shul, which took longer than I’m used to here in my hometown because, Merkhav Am being a small town (only 120 families live there), they try to make a tefillah/prayer that is suitable to everyone’s ancestral customs, and some ancestries take longer than others. But all good, nothing bad ever came from praying too much to God. Dinner was delicious and we ate up almost all the food and weren’t hungry, so it would seem that we bought just enough.

Back to what I mentioned before about praying early in Merkhav Am, the case is no different on Shabbat morning. Officially, the time that was called for the earliest set of morning prayers was 5:35 AM, which seems very early given that sunrise was only at 6:38 and while prayers are slightly extended on Shabbat morning, they aren’t THAT much longer. Anyway, I didn’t want to be late, so I set my alarm to get there on time and that I do, to find that there is absolutely no one else around (though for a religious yishuv, I did see two cars driving at this hour, one of which was security, the other I assume was a doctor, both of whom have an obligation to drive on Shabbat even though typically it is prohibited). So I wait around awkwardly, and I can’t go inside because to make things confusing, there are two different building that prayers take place in so I didn’t want to go into one building only to miss the start of prayers because they took place in the other building. For a moment I saw some young lads entering a building so I went in after them asking if they were part of the prayers and they were not. Finally, 15 minutes after the time it was called for, someone else showed up who was also a guest and was just as confused as I was, but sharing a prayer called lonliness is better than praying alone, so I was happy to have the company. Ten minutes after that things finally started getting rolling, but by this time it was already too late to achieve the synchronization with sunrise, and we missed it by a few minutes (though I am of the opinion that our ancient rabbis also did not know the exact moment of sunrise, so we were probably still good on that front).

Prayers concluded, and I return back to the tzimmer to eat breakfast (some of those yummy pastries from the cool bakery in Dimona). Then I took a big nap. Then I took a walk around the town looking for the rest of my family wwho was invited to another famliy following the later set of services. I was unsuccessful in doing so, but the town overall is very nice and has some room in their infrastucture to accommodate growth should the interest arise. The rest of the Shabbat passes uneventfully and upon the conclusion of the Shabbat, we pack up and head home. All in all, a very relaxing weekend with my family.

Along with turning 40 comes applying to high schools. For my kids, that is. I already finished high school. Overall, I am speaking here of my thoughts on the application process from the perspective of a first-time parent, specifically in regards to religious (Nationalist Zionist) educational institutions for boys. Here is a mid-process report live from the front lines:

Three Key Factors to Keep in Mind

1. Most important, like just about everything, is to stay calm. This is key to a lot of things in life.

2. I think it is important here to keep in mind what I call the 10% rule. The 10% rule is that in any situation where there is a competitive market, the standard deviation between any one product in any criteria is going to be 10% in either direction from the mean. For example, let’s take supermarkets, you may like Supermarket A over Supermarket B for any number of reasons (close by, decor, prices, freshness, etc.). If I choose the other supermarket, the difference on the whole between any of these traits will be at most 20%, but much more closer to 10%, which is generally negligible (ok, it might end up being a few extra [choose your currency] over the course of the year, but if your budget can handle it and all things considered you prefer one over the other, go for it!). The same is most likely true here. Your child will at most come out 10% more in some categories based on what you choose to assess for, but know they will also come out 10% less in others.

3. Then, of course, like all things with parenting, your role is to help your child in whatever way they need, but the way things turn out is in the hands of Hashem (God). Prayer here (and in general) is key.

You Need to Know Your Kid

Hopefully, this goes without saying, but knowing what kind of kid your kid is is crucial to finding the correct high school for them. High school intensity here is a scaled system from low intensity to high intensity. By intensity, I mean the rigorousness of the learning program. There are options of all kinds, from a typical high-school setting (6-7 hours a day, period-like class structure), all the way up to basically full-time Yeshiva learning with just enough time in the schedule to squeeze in secular academics (but with the thought being you’re smart enough to basically do well on these subjects with minimal instruction). Within this second group, the length of the day of study can also vary dramatically, and in the intensity of the learning expected. The yeshiva-track programs are basically exclusively boarding schools (though the amount of time spent in the dorms can also vary significantly), so keep that in mind.

These are kind of the first questions you want to ask your son when kicking off the process, though, you, as a parent, may have already decided which type of program your child will be going to based on your ideals and learning goals for them. But also keep in mind that your child is old enough to have discussions about this (see below). It is also important to know that these are not boarding schools in the sense of the word that the staff is there to reform your child. If they are not excited about learning Torah (more) intensively, then pushing them into that setting is going to backfire horribly and harm them more than help them.

Choice Paralysis

One thing I am definitely suffering from is choice paralysis. Applying to high schools in Israel is a national affair within the Religious Zionist school system, so any high school in the country (in this system) is a potential candidate, especially the ones with dormitories. This can lead to a wide range of choices, and it would seem from the meetings I have attended, in addition to data released by the school, that some 50% of Israeli high school students choose to attend a school that is not in their general vicinity. So another choice you will need to make is if you or your child wants to remain close to home, or be farther away (the schools provide transit to various regions of the country when it is time to return home, e.g., various weekends and holidays, also sometimes once a week so that the students can attend their youth groups).

On top of that, being a recent immigrant, I have another level of choice paralysis, because generally in the diaspora (at least in the Modern Orthodox world) there is generally only one school to choose from, and many go straight from Kindergarten through 12th grade. I did not really have any choices when it came to high school so the fact that there are even two, let alone hundreds of schools to choose from, is quite a luxury and difficult for me to wrap my head around.

College, Four Years Early

I think one of the things that differentiates the Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox population is our emphasis on both Torah and Secular studies. That each one informs the other in a way that you can’t understand one without the other. The caveat here is that higher education in general Israeli society is not the given that it is in other Western cultures. What this ends up meaning is that much of your education and your thoughts about your career path begin and take place in high school rather than in undergrad. National army service also plays a role, since that is often a time when soldiers learn applicable skills that they may be able to parlay into a career without further private education.

But not to the extent that this is the last chance to make these choices. The system stresses Torah because these are the years of your life when you are relatively free to learn Torah, and when the Torah can shape your outlook on life, so I think this emphasis is correct. Learning Torah well translates into being able to learn other things well as well (well, that was a lot of wells in that sentence).

49%/51%

For many kids, this is the biggest choice they will be making so far in their lives. It is possibly the first big choice they are going to make. As I’ve said previously in this column, this takes guidance fromthe parents. It is also important to remember that the parents are still the ones who have to make the decision here, albeit with a lot of input from their kids. They are not yet of the age of the majority, and they also are not the ones paying for the schooling. Also, teenagers are notoriously bad at making decisions on their own. So let them give a lot of input, let them speak their minds about what they think is important, and then take all of that into consideration when making the choice.

Vicarious Living

One other hazard you need to look out for is to not try and make your child walk in a path you would want to go if you were to go through high school again (why anyone would want to do high school again is beyond me, but hey, you do you). Anyway, for myself, looking back, I would have loved to have an extra 4 years of learning Torah at the level or with the amount of opportunity that my son will have. But I can’t push him in that direction just because with 20/20 (they say 6/6 here in Israel) hindsight I would have made a different choice if I could have. This is not the time to atone for non-existent sins you have.

Exclusivity

I also want to bring up one other apparent issue that I’m not sure is really an issue. Going to the parent nights, you’ll see 100-150 families, and then the principal gets up and says that there are only 35 spots in the class. Wait, what? Then you go to the next, and there are the same number of parents or more, and they have 75 spots in a grade. There seems to be way more demand than there is supply. On the other hand, though, I have never heard of anyone not being able to get into a Yeshiva (you can apply to up to three) so this would seem to mean that there is enough space for everyone.

A Note about Parent Nights

Schools: this is your time to shine. Don’t make me sit through 90 minutes of talk that was the same as the other schools I visited. You need to stress your X factors and tell me the kind of kids you are looking to “produce”. You all have “amazing rebbeim”, and a yoetzet/advisor on staff who gets to know every boy over their time in the school. This is what a school is supposed to have. But maybe those same staff also play sports with the kids, or maybe your math team has won the national championship 10 years out of the past 12 despite having more hours of Torah learning than schools A, D, and R.

Also, have your prize students practice what they are going to say to the parents who are gathered. Let them share an essay they wrote, or a chiddush they came up with, or run a game with those who are visiting. The rest of the stuff I can get from your website and a couple of PowerPoint presentations.

Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful to whomever reads this and to those who will read it in the future. In terms of the logistics of actually applying, it is important to follow along on the chat that your child’s school will probably set up. There are established dates for everything in order to prevent constant spamming from the kids from the moment 8th grade begins. Good luck to everyone and remember that Hashem will find the best place for your kid. Shabbat shalom.

The first book I finished in 2026 is a children’s book that I have been reading to my kids before bedtime for the past few weeks (opposed to my review of Keeper of the Lost Cities that I read on my own). For all the parents out there, reading chapter books is way more fun than reading picture books for several reasons. First, these half comic/half book/half graphic novels (similar series are Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc.) are a good balance for non-readers since there is still something for them to look at while following along with the story. Additionally, as a parent, you do not get story fatigue from reading the same story over and over night after night. Finally, the length of the chapters are often a 5-10 minute read, which makes it easy to stop and explain where you’ll be stopping to your child.

In reality, the book is terrible. It is incredibly silly, wholly detached from reality, and typically, I am not a big fan of anthropomorphising. The dilemma in the book could easily be resolved in about four sentences, and it is quite amazing that the author was able to stretch out the story for as long as he did. The couple of throwaway pages at the beginning where the author reviews what exactly Stick Dog is (spoiler, it is a dog drawn like a stick figure - the graphics don’t get better than this throughout the entire book) should have been edited out but maybe they were too many pages off from a full folio so it had to be included for manufacturing reasons, who knows.

That being said, there are two solid aspects that I think are silver linings and perhaps even redeeming qualities to the book. The first thing I would like to point out is that it strongly emphasizes the steps involved in problem solving, and also the role that imagination plays in solving a problem. Critical thinking is something that is critically lacking in today’s society, so I’ll take it any way I can get it. Second, it was super-refreshing to see the main character treat his friends with respect. The chapters of the book cycle through each dog in the possy trying to come up with an idea for how to obtain used pizza boxes and then presenting it to Stick Dog for consideration. Instead of rejecting each idea as being “stupid” or “ridiculous” (which they are), the book has Stick Dog kindly critiquing each idea and helping his friends figure out why any given idea may not be the best to achieve their goal. This is how people should always be treated, and maybe we can all learn a lesson from Stick Dog.

At the end of the day, I’m a big believer that any reading is good reading. Silly books, which unfortunately seem to be following in the footsteps of silly movies that have no plotline, are still something that holds the attention of a reader for more than the 30 seconds of a YouTube short, and sometimes even sneaks in a lesson or two. I guess you can’t have everything, and that is something on which I’m willing to settle.

Will AI Obsolete Itself?

This savory tidbit came across in my TLDR today:

AI's impact on Tailwind (2 minute read)

75% of Tailwind's engineering team lost their jobs due to the impact AI has had on the business. Traffic to Tailwind's docs is down about 40% from early 2023. The docs are the only way for people to discover Tailwind's commercial products, so this is resulting in less income for the project. While Tailwind is growing faster than ever and is bigger than it has ever been, its revenue is down close to 80%.

It seems that soon we may have the first high-profile company failure directly attributed to AI. The issue here is that if Tailwind fails, then Tailwind will be unable to continue producing additional features, and on some level, AI may be unable to continue iterating or working with this package. The relationship between AI and documentation is inseparable (this is partly why AI excels so well at code), and presumably, if the company runs out of money, then there will be no more documentation available.

It also highlights another issue. Let’s say AI generates a novel approach to some CSS problem using Tailwind. Great! The user/developer now has their problem solved, but no one else has access to this development because AI doesn’t close the development loop, whereas a human developer may be inclined or incentivized to add the enhancement to the open source code.

But it could get even worse. Let’s say Tailwind goes away. It is unclear if the entire knowledge of what Tailwind is is stored locally on the AI’s side, so its knowledge of Tailwind is somewhat ephemeral. If it goes back to look for documentation, it will not find it, and start to assume that it no longer exists, thereby starting to exclude it from future requests for Tailwind assistance or where Tailwind may be of assistance. The loop continues and AI becomes generally corrupted in general when it starts to work with Tailwind, all because of how “good” it was in the first place with Tailwind.

Now, are there solutions here? Of course there are. I’m sure it is easy enough to instruct AI to keep knowledge of a certain thing locally so it can be referenced at a later point, even if it doesn’t exist (still doesn’t fix the falling out of favor issue). Then I know for a fact that AIs can and do contribute to open source packages (the quality of these contributions is questionable). Though neither of these things fixes the problem that people have lost their jobs due to this.

I think I had more to day on this but I am tired, and I’m way behind on my TLDRs and on YouTube so I’m going to wrap it up here and learn a little and then YouTube and chill.

So I know I made a lot of promises in my last post, and I also know that it has been a while since my last post. Mostly this comes down to time and energy, but it is a Thursday night (Israel’s Saturday night, except way more low-key) and I can sleep in tomorrow if I want to, so I’ll crank out a short post here.

Along with the lack of time, I also haven’t been browsing the internet as much (I’m even 3 days behind on tech news, which I follow with the TLDR newsletter), so I haven’t read as many end-of-the-year summaries. I also don’t use Spotify, so I didn’t get one of those, but I did happen to get a LinkedIn wrap-up when my friend, who uses it way more than I do, didn’t, so how’s that for an algorithm?

Also, before I dive into the book list, I also just today noticed a message from my cousin that he digitized a VHS video from my grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary party in 1988. There were obviously a lot of mixed feelings seeing the people in the video, many of whom have passed on from this world. On the other hand, there is a good (out-of-focus) 30 seconds of me eating something; they were quite enthralling. I’ll see you all in LA at the Oscars next year. But I must say, our video-making skills have improved tremendously in the past three decades. I understand that personal video was pretty much a new concept back then, and that is pretty clear as the video kind of is more of a “moving photograph” than an actual video. There are no video wishes, skits, or speeches recorded on the video. We do more in a reel today than we did in 20 minutes of video in 1988.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the books I read, or attempted to read in 2025:

• The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

• Empire

• Longitude

• Zero Day - Fun fact: this is actually the blog post that shows up the most in organic search results. I could probably make a decent living reviewing old books.

• Never Caught - A book about one of George Washington’s slaves who ran away. It does a good job of portraying the political tightrope he had to walk while owning slaves while representing both free and slave states in the nascent union and doing his job from Philadelphia, the hotbed of the freedom movement at the time.

• Empire of Pain - A book describing the origins of the opioid epidemic in America. I felt it had a little bit too much of an agenda, but the Sackler family sure is an interesting one. Couldn’t come up with a more complicated character than Arthur Sackler, non-fiction rules.

• The Defector

• The Time Machine (didn’t finish) - In my drafts, I have a blog post about why the 1800s are quite possibly the worst century to live in throughout all of history. This book is just fuel for the fire.

• Code Name Nemo - A very cool book I read on my phone through Libby about the only enemy ship to have been captured by American forces during WWII, and the first in like over 70 years at the time. And it was a submarine, no less. The capture was a B or C-level factor in helping to end the war. The submarine lives in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, definitely on my bucket list to see after reading this book.

• Jerusalem: The Biography (didn’t finish) - Honestly, the introduction was just super gory (now that I think of it, perhaps this is a reason why Josephus did not make the canon), and then I felt the author gave too much voice to Palestinian scholars. It was also still wartime when I read it, so we were living a lot of what was going on in the book, which isn’t really what I needed before bedtime.

• Babel (didn’t finish) - no good reason here, though I think it was a little boring. The book I think was either an algo recommendation or it had actually been sitting on my “To Read” list for a while.

• Private: Monaco - James Patterson delivers as always

• Cajun Justice - I really like James Patterson

• Julia Child biography - She had an interesting childhood, and the introduction describing her first time on television is just pure gold. I haven’t finished it yet, but I probably will eventually. What amazes me about biographies is that rarely is the individual born into greatness.

• Net Force - Tom Clancy tries his hand at predicting the future when the internet was in its infancy. It goes hand-in-hand with an article I recently read (also courtesy of TLDR), which detailed how the original concept for internet addresses/URLs was for them to mimic their real-life location. Thankfully, this did not happen. Overall, he does a pretty good job, specifically imagining something resembling an iPhone in his book several years before the first one came out. The gaming environments he describes are just now becoming a reality.

• Patriot Games - If I didn’t tell you that Net Force and Patriot Games were by the same author, you would never believe me. I picked it off the shelf because I had heard the title before and because I had liked Net Force. The book is 500 pages long and is classified as a thriller, but had only 3 action scenes in all those pages. This book was absolutely terrible.

Should I choose a book of the year? Why not? Of the books I read (I’m sure there were more), I would have to choose Longitude. It is a good story, and it solved a major problem that had repercussions throughout the world and society. That right there is my jam.

Also, my readers should note that 95% of my reading is done in 15 minutes before I go to sleep. I paced a book a month just by doing this. It is highly advised and will probably help you sleep better.

See you all next year!

The day started before it even began because I had an incredibly vivid dream in which I was having another dream/vision of bowing the Beit Hamikdash while being embraced by a rabbi who then said that my vision was very pure, or something along those lines.

My alarm went off at its proper time (05:20) and I decided I wanted to shower, the only problem was that my gas water heater was still disconnected from Shabbat, so I was relying on whatever solar hot water I had from the day before, and let me tell you, it wasn’t much, but it was very refreshing!

I proceeded to prayers and then to the bus to the train. As the train approached the airport (the first stop), there was an announcement that another train (not mine, thank God) had hit someone (nice speak for something much worse). So we all had to get off the train and figure out what to do from there. I traipsed around the airport for 45 minutes until I decided that my best course of action was to return home.

Once home, I had to make a call to a government agency (which will probably be the subject of another blog post in the future), so with my day already busted (if you can’t tell by my wakeup time, I am a morning person), I decided to further destroy it by waiting on hold for 19 minutes, only to receive an Arab customer service agent who didn’t speak my accent of Hebrew. He took my number and said someone who speaks English will call me back. And about half an hour later, someone who spoke better English than I do (they were British, so automatic win there) did indeed call me back, and after another 14 minutes where she literally just told me which button to push on the menu bar (if only I knew it was so simple), my business with the state was completed, for now.

Monday

I again attempted to make it to the office in Tel Aviv, which necessitated davening at a shul (synagogue) outside of my neighborhood. Upon arrival, I saw that during the course of the night, someone had graffitied the entranceway to the shul with messaging that encouraged aggression against the many enemies that Israel has. Obviously, this is upsetting for many reasons:

1. I don’t think this sentiment is representative of most, if not almost all, of the people who live in my area.

2. The location of the vandalism makes no statement at all, and only causes strife and worry within our community. Yes, there are Arab workers who have been working in the vicinity of the shul over the past few weeks, but they are working to help us. Aggravating them in their place of work, especially when that work takes place across from your homes, is not necessarily the greatest strategy.

3. Graffiti is just ugly. No one wants to live with that or deal with cleaning it up. Go print some flyers that can be easily ripped down or something. Same effect, less ugly. The fact that half of it was illegible (and the part that was legible was still misspelled) just makes the whole thing even more dumb.

4. Terrorism is terrorism, no matter the side involved. We live in a civilized, democratic society. Taking matters into your own hands is not how things work in a democracy, whether you think that democracy should exist or not. If you don’t like something, go run for office and test out how popular your policies and sentiments really are.

It turns out that the person responsible for this has additional issues. I still think most of what I said holds true for graffiti in general. I also think that mental health issues are the underlying source of most criminal acts, which makes you wonder a few things:

• If we act against the law because of a mental issue, are we truly guilty for that?

• If we lived in a society that treated mental health as the illness that it is, how many laws would we really need? Are laws not essentially the definition of what is expected of a normal functioning society?

Thursday

Wednesday night into Thursday, I had a dream that a terrorist infiltrated our town. Thankfully, it was just a dream.

On that note, I introduce to you the first annual (can something be annual the first time it happens?)…

Cholent Gift Guide

This year on Substack, it seems like gift guides are all the rage. I don’t know where people get all the money for the gifts they suggest on their blogs; maybe they have more successful blogs than I do. In any case, under no circumstances should one go into debt in order to acquire gifts. The best gift you can give yourself is financial stability. What also sets my list apart is that it is also more of a wish list than things I can actually recommend to you. Also, none of these are affiliate links. So here goes:

1. Recreation: Lego Sets

Can’t go wrong here. I just got a small one from a good friend who went on a trip abroad (thank you, again!), and it was a fun 30-minute distraction from life. If you buy a bigger one you can do it with your kids. Either way, it will hit you right in the nostalgias.

2. Inspiration: Rav Rimon Sefarim

Rav Rimon is possibly already considered one of the leading “Nationalistic Religious” of our time (in my head, I have a whole post about “The Making of a [“Nationalistic Religious”] Gadol in 5786, maybe I’ll get to it). His writing is clear and detailed, and he often includes insights from his family members! I currently own his books on Shmittah and the Pesach Haggadah. He also just came out with another volume in his series on the laws of Shabbat.

3. Relaxation: Parks and Recreation Series

Join the “owned media” bandwagon and buy yourself the best parody of government agencies ever created. I’ve worked for the government, and the show hits the nail on the head and includes great characters to boot.

Those are my main suggestions. It is getting late. Till next week, my friends!

Stay tuned! Next week for the blog, I will be doing the second annual (I think you can call it annual once you do it twice, no?) album review. I haven’t even chosen the album yet, but this post has received the most feedback. Then, before the end of the Gregorian year, I will post about all the books I have read.

Ein Karem Tour with Raanan

This past Friday, my wife found for us and some friends a wonderful tour of one of the lesser-known neighborhoods of Jerusalem: Ein Karem. Today, it is mostly known for the hospital that is located there (opened because the main Hadassah hospital was inaccessible between 1948 and 1967), but the history of the neighborhood stretches way back to the time of the bible, New Testament, all the way to today.

The tour started at the Ratisbonne Notre Dame De Sion Convent, and even though we didn’t see any hunchbacks, it still has an interesting story, including being founded by a Jew who converted to Christianity. The story goes that as the Ottoman Empire wound down, messianic fervor within the Christian community began increasing, since 2000 was only 100-something years away. Thus, they started buying property where they could in order that Jesus wouldn’t be offended that there were no followers in Israel upon his resurrection (spoiler, he didn’t resurrect in 2000). The former Jew purchased the land and set up an orphanage on the land. Today, it is a conference center.

Down the block, we toured some old houses that were part of a children’s village established by the First Lady of the Second President of Israel. Her son was killed in the War of Independence, and this is how she chose to continue his legacy.

We moved along quickly, hearing of a headline-making intermarriage for which a hotel is named after the wife of the union, an Israeli who took over an abandoned home that had Arab money stored in the wall because the Arab occupant was a miserly doctor, and the ancestral home of one of Israel’s most famous chefs (who I had never heard of but then again I’m not really on top of the Israeli culinary scene).

The tour wrapped up outside the Church of Saint John the Baptist, who apparently was Yochanan, the son of Zechariah the Kohen. It was a lovely morning, and I hope we can tour with this guide again. He is just starting out after a career in corporate sales. Contact Raanan at 054-399-3009. He speaks English and Hebrew (at least).

Book Review: Cajun Justice by James Patterson

Patterson delivers again in this book about a secret service agent who is forced to resign over a scandal not of his doing, and then goes to do private security for a Japanese executive. This leads to a run-in with the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, from where the book moves to its conclusion.

Obviously, these books are silly, but fun. They are the perfect way to end the day, and I really liked that it took place in Japan, a place I will probably never visit, but about which I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I think part of Patterson’s secret is that he keeps his storylines straightforward, with few, if any, secondary plots to follow. This book I think had 4 or 5 characters, which is about all I can keep track of, and they all had dissimilar names, which is also quite helpful. Patterson co-authors his books, and I often wonder who wrote which parts or if Patterson was more of a consultant on the project. Maybe I’ll write to him. Turns out I need to go to the post office in the next few days, so I’ll probably stick a letter in the mail, though it only goes to his agent and not directly to him.

Did your week really end here? No, no, it didn’t.

I was really hoping that something would happen to me that could make it into the blog before I wanted to post it (my target time is sometime on Thursday evening in Israel). I guess I could have written about the beautiful new offices the company I work for moved into this week, but I don’t think that really interests most people. What does interest people is me telling you about other people, and trying to do it in a way that takes up as many words as possible. So, because we opened said offices just yesterday, and because yesterday was filled with excitement at the office, I wanted to go back and enjoy them on a peaceful day. I wasn’t sure how crowded the office would be because normally there would be a good crowd on Thursdays, but since we all had to be in the office for the opening, I didn’t know how that would play out in terms of in-person attendance. All this to say that I went into the office today, which means I was on the train, which means I went down a bit before the train arrived at my station so that I could be in good position to go up the stairs and get on the escalator when you can still walk some of the stairs which is necessary in order for me to catch my bus (it would be less necessary if the trains ran on time, but the past two days the tain before mine has been delayed which makes things even tighter than normal).

Vogel, get on with the story!

Right, so I was down waiting by the doors of the train car, and there was this young woman who was talking to this young man, telling him that isn’t “really” Israeli because she wasn’t raised here, to which I butted in and said that she is Israeli in the technical sense. This kicked off a three-way conversation between me, the young lady (let’s call her Jen), and the young man (let’s call him Adam - gotta use names that are easily distinguishable!). Jen is here fighting for the Jewish state, which was surprising to Adam because in America very few women volunteer for the U.S. Army and even fewer go and fight for a foreign one. Then Adam asked if everyone had to fight, at which point I told him up to a certain age, but that they will really take anyone (shoutout to my buddies who volunteered to fight in this war). Then I asked Adam, who was visiting Israel for the first time from Phoenix, Arizona, how he felt missing out on the turkey (today is Thanksgiving).

His response was an unexpected one, but also eye-opening. He said that Israel was his third tour in recent times of an ancient civilization, having recently been to Rome and Egypt. He continued saying that he was born into a narrative, but it was one that he was open to disproving or learning more about. He professed that he was part Native American, to which I agreed that his coming from that demographic in America he was justified in his views. Adam was a very nice fellow that the world needs more of. People who are genuinely interested in learning and seeking out the truth, whatever truth may be for that person. He plans on touring the temple mount and the Dead Sea in his four days in our beautiful country, the country that is a place of prayer for all the nations!

I was out the other night with a friend visiting from out of the country, and since we are both middle-aged and we were meeting later in the evening, and at this age, eating late at night is not something you do without consequences, we decided to go grab a beer at one of the local establishments.

But sometimes things get the better of us, and I was getting a little peckish (I’ve been watching too many British YouTubers), so I asked if I could order some fries. However, before the order went through, I thought to check the price with the bartender.

“That’s like ₪25, right?” I asked (for the record, ₪25 is still an insane price for fries).

“Actually, it is ₪40, sir,” the bartender responded.

“No, thanks then,” I told him politely (this is a place frequented by Americans, so they all speak English.

And since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. Not really, but it has also really been irking me.

Let’s start with what I don’t know.

• How big the serving was going to be. It is entirely possible that this was going to be the largest serving of fries I would have ever seen, though I feel this is unlikely to be the case.

• The artisanal level of these fries. Perhaps there was a person in the back hand hand-carving each fry and then hand-dipping each one in a house-blend of spices, then gently lowering them into the deep fryer for exactly the right amount of time.

• The fries may have been powdered with edible gold. I wasn’t sure this was a thing, but then I googled it, and it was, so my joke is actually a real thing.

• The current status of potato supply for restaurant use. There might be a shortage of high-grade potatoes available, so they need to restrict their supply by keeping prices high.

Then there are the things I do know:

• Fries are a high-margin menu item

• Fries are an item often ordered in bulk from restaurant supply delivery companies. I lost count of how many times I have seen 5 kg bags of frozen fries left outside of a food establishment. Ever notice how fries are pretty much the same everywhere you go? It is because they all order from the same place. Economies of scale, baby.

• I was in a bar. I am probably not getting artisanal fries.

• Potatoes are currently for sale at the local supermarket for ₪2.90/kg. For those used to standard units, that comes out to less than 50¢/lb. So, even if they were to give me a kilo of fries, and even if we said deep frying them would take a shekel of oil, and the 5 minutes they were in the deep fryer for when they were paying their line cook ₪60/hour is ₪3 of cost right there, we still only got to ₪7 of costs (and let’s be honest, I’m not getting a kilo of fries, and the line cook can do other profit generating activities while my fries are in the deep fryer), so this comes out to 470% profit! At least!

This isn’t even the first out-of-control restaurant experience I had this week. See, I work in a set of buildings that are connected to a mall, which has a food court, and the mall has an app which offers coupons to various restaurants and stores. One of my coworkers often asks those who don’t use the coupons if they could use theirs for a certain salad at a certain place. The picture in the coupon clearly has bits of protein (most likely chicken, since it is a meat restaurant). So behold my wonderment when I go to pick up my salad and the salad is comprised of three vegetables, lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. I asked what about the chicken, and they responded that I didn’t buy that item. THIS WAS A ₪29 SALAD FOR THREE VEGETABLES!!!! They gave me some sweet potatoes as a consolation, but like still what did I buy? I can come out with almost 6 kilograms of cucumbers for ₪29!

I’m typically not one to go and rail about excessive corporate profits and the like, but crazy expensive french fries is the snowflake at the tip of the iceberg. Today’s headline on the Wall Street Journal (which I get a free subscription to through my library back in the US - I pay taxes people!) was that Nvidia did $57 billion in sales with $31.9 billion (127%) in profit. If my math and understanding of basic sales is correct, that means that when a consumer (or a company with lots of money) goes and buys an NVIDIA graphics card, the cost to make that graphics card is less than half of what the consumer is paying. The rest (~60%) is profit for the company. That’s kind of bonkers (not french fries bonkers, of course, but still pretty bonkers)!

Do I have a point here? Is there a problem with the supply and demand continuum? No, I don’t really have a point. Things are expensive, and things are getting more expensive. And it probably won’t stop. And I’m not sure there is really anything that can be done. The way this gets undone might be very bad. A good place to start, though, is to just say no, like I did to the fries. Enough people do this, and prices might come down.

First, let’s count the tefillot that we have. The first, and perhaps tied for the most famous, is the tefillah that Eliezer makes when he arrives in Aram Naharayim.

וַיֹּאמַ֓ר ׀ יְהֹוָ֗ה אֱלֹהֵי֙ אֲדֹנִ֣י אַבְרָהָ֔ם הַקְרֵה־נָ֥א לְפָנַ֖י הַיּ֑וֹם וַעֲשֵׂה־חֶ֕סֶד עִ֖ם אֲדֹנִ֥י אַבְרָהָֽם׃

הִנֵּ֛ה אָנֹכִ֥י נִצָּ֖ב עַל־עֵ֣ין הַמָּ֑יִם וּבְנוֹת֙ אַנְשֵׁ֣י הָעִ֔יר יֹצְאֹ֖ת לִשְׁאֹ֥ב מָֽיִם׃

וְהָיָ֣ה הַֽנַּעֲרָ֗ אֲשֶׁ֨ר אֹמַ֤ר אֵלֶ֙יהָ֙ הַטִּי־נָ֤א כַדֵּךְ֙ וְאֶשְׁתֶּ֔ה וְאָמְרָ֣ה שְׁתֵ֔ה וְגַם־גְּמַלֶּ֖יךָ אַשְׁקֶ֑ה אֹתָ֤הּ הֹכַ֙חְתָּ֙ לְעַבְדְּךָ֣ לְיִצְחָ֔ק וּבָ֣הּ אֵדַ֔ע כִּי־עָשִׂ֥יתָ חֶ֖סֶד עִם־אֲדֹנִֽי׃

Thirty seconds (when reading with the te’amim, and we all know everyone in the Torah spoke with te’amim, like in a musical) is all it took Eliezer to formulate and present a plan that changed Jewish history.

Chronologically, the next prayer we see is that of Rivkah’s siblings prior to her departure with Eliezer:

וַיְבָרְכ֤וּ אֶת־רִבְקָה֙ וַיֹּ֣אמְרוּ לָ֔הּ אֲחֹתֵ֕נוּ אַ֥תְּ הֲיִ֖י לְאַלְפֵ֣י רְבָבָ֑ה וְיִירַ֣שׁ זַרְעֵ֔ךְ אֵ֖ת שַׁ֥עַר שֹׂנְאָֽיו׃

When Rivka arrives to , we are told:

וַיֵּצֵ֥א יִצְחָ֛ק לָשׂ֥וּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶ֖ה לִפְנ֣וֹת עָ֑רֶב וַיִּשָּׂ֤א עֵינָיו֙ וַיַּ֔רְא וְהִנֵּ֥ה גְמַלִּ֖ים בָּאִֽים׃

This is universally recognized as Yitzchak establishing Mincha for future generations to come.

Finally, depending on how lenient we want to be, we could include the eulogy that Avraham said for Sarah in the category of refillable as well. So that gives us 3 or 4 different instances of tefillah in the parsha.

I would like to say that each of these tefillot represent a different kind of prayer. Eliezer’s tefillah is direct and deals with a present issue. He is in distress and needs to be saved. Perhaps this is how most of us think about prayer, and it is certainly how much of our daily prayer is formulated. It is for this reason that, as the Emek Dakar says, Eliezer’s prayer is formulated like our shmoneh esrei, which has an introduction that praises Hashem, a specific request, and then a thanks at the end when the prayer is answered.

The prayer given by Rivkah’s family has other aspects to it as well. This is a prayer for the future. The usage of Gods name by Rivkah’s family is something interesting to analyze, but this specific wish when Rivkah is sent off is absent of God’s name. Nevertheless, Rashi says that it is based off of, and a continuation of the blessing that Isaac was given at the Akeidah.

The last two prayers I mentioned are obviously a little harder to work with, since we don’t know much about them. But we know that to this day we still pray mincha on a daily basis. Not only this, many say that mincha is the most important tefillah of the day. It comes, just like Eliezer’s did, when we are most often at a time of need, in the middle of our work or daily lives. Mincha, like our Avot is eternal.

Finally, there is praying for our past, which the hesped represents. Our past has a lot of influence on our future, and it is important to pray that our accomplishments, and our mistakes, all contribute to making us a better person, just like the loved we are mourning hopefully did. Praying for the deceased one to be a representative for you in front of the King of All Kings is a common practice that can help one focus their tefillot.

There are some other take home points we can learn from the prayers in our parsha. First, all of them are short. Eliezer’s is 3 pesukim. Rivkah’s family’s blessing is one pasuk. Yitzchak’s and Avraham’s are summarized in one word. In fact, most of the tefillot we see in the Torah are quite short, even Az Yashir, which takes up an entire column of the Torah, is many fewer words than our shmoneh esrei.

But keeping things short is only half of the equation. We see that the key for Eliezer’s prayer to be answered is that he said it “אל לבי”. Proper focus, even on a short prayer, can have amazing results. Often, with prayer, it is not quantity, but quality that counts.

But what if it doesn’t work? Well, then give it another shot. Even Eliezer, who did have his prayer answered, repeated it again when relating his story to Lavan. We ourselves over the past two years know what it is like to pray for something every day, and we also know how it feels when we are finally answered.

Which brings me to my last point. When our prayers are answered, and even if they are not. We must always be giving thanks to Hashem for what he has given us. Upon having his prayer answered, Eliezer bowed, just as we bow during modim in the shmoneh esrei. Hopefully, these tips from our fathers and mothers can help us with our own daily service to Hashem. Shabbat shalom.

The Background

So kind of cold turkey, I stopped opening/visiting Facebook. I have maybe opened it five times since right before Yom Kippur. I would like to say my screentime is down, but my kids use my iPad, so that taints the screentime numbers for myself. I’m sure there is some way to adjust this so that I get accurate numbers, but I’m a luddite and I don’t have time to fiddle with this. I spend enough time regulating my kids screen time from my device. But here are some screenshots showing the changes in app usage from before and after the change in my usage habits.

I take that back. Apparently, usage stats on the iPhone are only kept for a month. So you’ll just have to take my word for it. In any case, I have been trying to use the time I do have on my phone for constructive things and learning. A lot of this has come courtesy of an app many of us probably already have access to: Libby. Libby is a library app that lets you borrow books and magazines through your local library (if they participate, which many do). Check with your local library! I myself just found out that my library here in Israel has Libby as well, which is super cool and helpful becuase their selection of English books is meh (though better than a lot of other places) and they have no magazines at all (at least not anything up to date).

So over the past few weeks, I have read several “longreads” as they call them and some of them were pretty good! I have rediscovered magazines I knew I liked, and enjoyed some new ones as well. Here is a sampling:

Cook’s Illustrated

Even before my Facebook fast, I tried to read this bi-monthly cooking magazine. I enjoy the science and testing they put into each recipe, and while many of their recipes have intricate steps and obscure ingredients not readily available in the Yehuda and Shomron (“West Bank”), the eternal homeland of the Jewish people, for the one or two recipes that I can scrounge up the ingredients for, I usually enjoy them immensely. This month, I whipped up some excellent gnocchi (store-bought: hint fry, don’t boil) that had a cherry tomato base and was topped with some feta cheese (paywalled, but go open it and take screenshots in your Libby app. It is from the September/October 2025 issue).

I’ve screenshotted several other recipes (which I am happy to share privately, but for which posting them here would be a copyright violation) which I am excited to try out. Like a delicious-looking apple cake and maybe homemade English muffins (both in the September/October issue). From the November/December issue, if I can get my hands on some powdered pectin, I would like to try the candies for which they have a recipe.

Wired Magazine

I was a long-time subscriber to this magazine when I lived in the United States, but magazine subscriptions here in Israel are an iffy endeavor, so I’ve gone without. They also have gone along with the general turn to the left and wokeness movement, which makes it difficult to read sometimes. But their articles are still interesting, and I’m actually woke enough to read past the things they let into their articles, so I went and borrowed this month’s issue. I read three articles. One was about Elon Musk and how he is low-key (did I use that right) the emperor of the world, a common fear of the left. While sometimes I do agree that he has his hand in too much, I think overall he has been acting in the greater good of humanity. The second article was about the improbable death of Mike Lynch, Britain’s most famous billionaire (I had never heard of him, but his death was kind of bizarre). Then there was the third article.

This article was about a woman who had frozen her eggs and then, after she got married in her late 30s, set about to find a surrogate mother (gestational carrier, or GC) for her child. She actually worked with two GCs and was expecting to have something close to resembling twins if both pregnancies had worked out. Spoiler, one of them didn’t, and she went absolutely nuclear on the carrier, suing her multiple times, doxing her, threatening the carrier’s biological son, and badmouthing her to her employers. The article makes it pretty clear that the carrier didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to lose the pregnancy. While I’ve never been in this position, I would hope that most people know that there is an incredibly large aspect of luck and things going just perfectly for it to work out. It is a miracle of modern science that this is even a possibility. The article highlighted how there is almost no legislation around these kinds of arrangements, no regulation of the industry, and that if the contracts aren’t crafted juuuust right, either or both parties could be on the hook for human trafficking. Contrast that to here in Israel, where the insurance companies cover the costs in many cases and also provide extra time off for both parents to become accustomed to the children afterwards. Legislators, do your job!

National Geographic

Back in the day, my father was a subscriber to National Geographic. Part of my love for maps probably came from this magazine (they used to include a few every year, along with the magazine). We always had a few in the bathroom, and while the articles were way too boring (at the time) for me to read, flipping through and looking at the incredible photography was definitely something I was able to enjoy at a young age. Admittedly, with reading this magazine on the phone, the photography is something that gets lost a little bit, the photos are still that good that it gives you a little bit of awe.

The one article I have read so far (I guess I’m no longer too young to enjoy the articles) was about the construction of the largest tokamak machine in the world (paywall, but download Libby already!) that has been either in discussions or construction for over 40 years now, and may still be for another 20. It is huge. It is open source, which means that even the commercial startups that are competing with it to be the first to generate electricity using nuclear fusion (the nuclear we are familiar with is fission, which separates atoms instead of fusing them together) can learn from what they are doing in France for free.

Conclusion

Hopefully, there is enough here to convince you to break free of the doomscroll. Sure there has been a bit more time on Substack, but I would rate that content 100 times better than anything on Facebook, which is now probably 50% all AI-generated stuff anyway. There are probably several magazines of interest to you, not to mention tons of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Let me know what things you’ve learned from using Libby!