By the Grace of G-d Dear Friend, How long is too long. In reverse, how short is too short. It really depends on the situation. And it depends on who you ask. A child will tell you that school holidays are too short. The parents may argue that school holidays are too long. On the eve of Pesach after the Seder, some sing the ‘who knows one’ song. One is Hashem in the heaven and the earth… it continues number by number till it reaches nine. Who knows nine? Nine are the months of a baby’s birth. This number is embedded into nature by G-d Almighty. For some aspects of life, we see clearly that it is G-d who determines the pace of life. Other things seem much more dependent on human intervention and they are constantly changing. Like travel speeds for example. How far can a person move in one day? Up to one hundred and fifty years ago approximately the furthest a person could travel in one day was the speed of his horses. Once we had automobiles that changed. Airplanes changed the dynamic even more. For decades now we have been ‘stuck’ at subsonic speeds. Flying from New York to Thailand took around 17 hours when there was a nonstop flight. Hypersonic planes are not yet feasible but if the challenges are overcome, one would be able to have breakfast in Bangkok and lunch in New York before even getting hungry. It’s simultaneously thrilling and unnerving when I think about it. Let me home in on the topic of speed of travel for a moment as its related to our weekly Parsha of Beha’alotecha. This week we read about the continuation of the journey that the Jews took through the desert. Initially Hashem had the Jews traveling at a divinely fueled supernatural speed. Instead of the eleven-day journey it would naturally take to enter Israel from Mount Sinai, G-d shortened the way supernaturally to become a three-day trip. In this week’s parsha they were still on the intended ‘G-dlysonic’ track. In next week’s parsha of Shelach we read about the sin of the ‘spies’. The Jews cried and wailed in fear of the mighty and awesome inhabitants of the land. This threw all the plans of expedited entry into Israel into awry. The inexcusable lapse of faith and trust in G-d and the serious ingratitude towards G-d’s prior miraculous treatment of plunged the newly formed nation of Israel into a forty-year delay. The journey now included a slow-paced wandering of forty years in the desert before entering Israel. To use a modern analogy, it would be like looking at the flight path screen in an airplane and watching the ‘approximate arrival time’ change from next week to forty years later. To me the discussion about speeding and rushing is one that seems to be increasingly relevant. Maybe it’s because I am no longer in my twenties. I have seen enough cases where delays were blessings in disguise. Also, things that looked like they were about to happen didn’t always materialize as quickly as I thought. Hashem directs everything. Even the things that look like we are in charge. Last week I wrote about saving time and effort by using AI. Thank you to all those who assured me that they enjoyed my writing more than AI’s writing. This gives me the needed inspiration to invest myself fully into communicating these Torah thoughts. This week by Divine Providence the following PS to a letter by the Rebbe in 1968 came to my attention. It points in the same direction. Inasmuch as it reminds us that we must be careful about the technological advances that we include in our lives. The things we choose change, the ‘hacks’ we use to speed things up. We cannot embrace every new technology immediately. There is a long-term effect that is easy to overlook till it becomes a real issue. P.S. In reference to the matter you raise in your letter, relating to the endeavor to increase soil productivity by means of electrical currents, etc., I wish to make the following point (though, technically speaking, this is not my field). It is that it surprises me that no one has yet suggested doing basic research in the nutritive aspects of those plants and crops whose manner of growth has been artificially interfered with, whether by means of electricity or radiation, and the like, not forgetting developments in hydroponics. I think it is high time that a study was made of the effects of such foods upon humans in general, particularly those who are still going through physical growth and development, namely children and youths. Even to a layman like myself it seems incredible that the methods of speeding plant growth by means of techniques which are quite abnormal to it should have no effect on the food in relation to humans, who for thousands of years have been accustomed to eat only naturally-grown foods – all the more so since such effects would be cumulative. As already mentioned, this is entirely unconnected to my field; but that a problem exists here seems to me so plain and logical that surely even a layman may call attention to it. This was fascinating to me as I think about the year it was written. To give some perspective the letter was written to someone who had just visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem which had just been liberated. The Rebbe’s incisive look at the developing advances in farming were incredibly ahead of the times. While todays generation sees AI as incredibly beneficial, there are some side effects which we may not yet be aware of. For example, here is an issue that came to my attention (probably via an AI algorithm) from a study by University of California, Riverside, titled “Making AI Less Thirsty,”. Every short AI request—just a simple email—can quietly consume a bottle of water, hidden behind the screen. Vast, unseen data centers hum day and night, draining water and energy at a staggering scale to sustain the illusion of effortless intelligence. As usage explodes, this invisible demand could surge into billions of cubic meters of water, putting real pressure on already strained global resources. And with all this, a troubling question emerges: are we creating more value—or silently causing more harm than we realize? (I asked AI to summarize and it delivered the above). Bottom line: We must embrace the gifts of technology. Human advancement is a gift given to us by G-d. It is He who endows humans with intelligence. How much more so we must expend efforts to strengthen our faith, trust and dependence on G-d. However long it takes, we need to invest the time and energy to ‘get to our promised land’. We are all on a journey. From our Egypt, our land of constraint, be it physical, emotional or spiritual bondage. To our ‘land flowing with milk and honey’ – our ‘promised land’. Some may get there with more (seeming) ease. Others may have a longer, more challenging journey. Click here for great article on this topic. Happy traveling. If the ‘destination’ seems elusive, remember the journey is also the destination. Till we reach the ultimate collective destination. Of all of humanity. Spanning the entire history of the universe. The coming of Mashiach. There is a prophecy by the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah 66:23): And it shall be from new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath, that all flesh shall come to prostrate themselves before Me," says the Lord. I am thinking out loud here, how do you think everyone will travel to the temple mount every week? Will it be on ‘clouds of glory’ literally? Hypersonic vehicles? Or some other interpretation. The answer of how it will exactly look is unknown to me, but that is fine. The word of G-d is eternal and true and when it happens we will see exactly what the Almighty meant in His prophesy. Till then, we do everything possible to hasten the coming of Mashiach. When Mashiach comes, we will find out the answers to all of our questions, this one among them. Let him just come already! Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Yosef Kantor
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