If you’re house is like 118 million other households in the US, you have an internet connection in your house. That would be about 89.7% of all households in the country. The top internet providers range by region, but it would be safe to assume you’re using Comcast Xfinity, Verizon, Spectrum, AT&T, or T-Mobile. Fifty five percent of households use cable connections, 21% use fiber-optic, 8% still use DSL, and the remaining 16% use a combination of 5G wireless, satellite, or other niche technologies. I can’t tell you who you use, or what type of connection you have, but I can tell you with a great degree of confidence who you don’t use, and that is the Spread Network.
How do I know this? It’s the economics. When Spread Network went online, a service plan locked you up for twenty years, cost $1.2 million dollars, with an additional $235,000 for maintenance costs. Why in the world would anyone pay that much for an internet connection, and how much did it cost the Spread Network to build their fiber optic line?
Let’s go back in time to 1815. The world was gripped in the Napoleonic Wars that were wreaking havoc across Europe from as early as 1803. Although Napoleon and his Grand Armee of 600,000 soldiers seemed invincible at first, the Russians had done a magnificent job of crippling Napoleon by introducing their scorched earth policy. They lured Napoleon deep into Russian territory, and then burned everything as they retreated, leaving Napoleon stuck with no local supplies, and a long supply line in tatters. Then the frigid Russian winter set in. With troops sick and hungry, Napoleon’s forces were overwhelmed and by the time he retreated, only one in six of his men were still standing.
This opened up an avenue for other countries to renew their fighting, and by June of 1815, the decisive battle was fought near Waterloo, in what is today Belgium. Napoleon and his men fought heroically, but the Duke of Wellington and his British forces with help from the Prussians won a clear victory. Four days later, Napoleon abdicated. As soon as the British victory was clear, a bunch of carrier pigeons were released with news of the victory. Those pigeons flew long and straight, coming back to their home in England, carrying the news of Napoleon’s defeat. The recipient of this news was the Rothschild branch in England, which immediately shorted as many French bonds as they could, making a killing when the news eventually reached the English stock market and the French bonds plummeted.
In real estate, there are three rules, and famously they are location, location, location. In financial markets there are also three rules, but they are timing, timing, and timing. The first person to get the news is able to buy or sell based on information not available to others in the market and profit tremendously through that. Even when everyone gets the news simultaneously, the fastest person to make the move makes the most. He can buy before everyone else, and everyone after him is pushing up the price above what he paid, or he sells before everyone else, and as they all sell, he makes the most because he sold at the highest price.
Market participants have always tried to improve their speed. In 1845 Paul Julius Reuters entered the news business by having a fleet of carrier pigeons that reliably brought the prices of the Paris stock exchange to London before anyone else. In 1865, American financier Jim Fisk made a fortune by outfitting fast schooners that outran the mail ships and brough him news of the Confederate surrender before anyone else. In the Roaring 20’s, the firms that had the fastest boys running their buy and sell orders on the market floor got the best pricing. In 1964 the New York Stock Exchange introduced IBM machines that gave automated stock quotes to everyone simultaneously. But the game always gets faster.
We are currently in the era of High Frequency Trading (HFT), where the majority of trades taking place in the stock market, commodities, derivatives, and crypto markets are executed by computers using algorithms, and trading faster than humans can type let alone speak or think. Way faster. A typical HFT trade is between 10-100 microseconds. There are one million microseconds in a second.
This means that a trade that takes one thousandth of a second is considered slow, and won’t have the best pricing because the computers making trades at 10 microseconds are 100 times faster than it! There are algorithms that trade millions of times a day, dozens of times every second. They only need to make a penny or less per trade, but over the course of the day, they can make tens or hundreds of thousands!
This takes us back to the Spread Network. Their original product was an internet connection going from Chicago to Carteret, NJ. The Chicago terminal was right near the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, the most important markets in the world for commodities and derivatives. The NJ terminal was right next to the servers of the Nasdaq, the world's largest technology stock exchange. Of course, there were plenty of internet connections already existent, but their routes mostly followed rail networks, were the rights-of-way were already bought by the rail networks.
Spread Network wanted a faster connection, and they determined that if they laid a much straighter fiber optic cable, they could cut about 100 miles off of the length of the fiber optic connection from the Chicago markets and the Nasdaq. Fiber optic cable work insanely fast because they send information using light which travels pretty fast (the speed of light is the official speed limit for the universe, nothing goes faster than light), but by shaving off 100 miles of light travel, they could cut down the time for information to travel from Chicago to NJ by three milliseconds.
To us that seems insane, three milliseconds is 3 thousandths of a second. Could that really make a difference? But as Forbes reported,
"That's close to an eternity in automated trading," says Ben Van Vliet, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "This is all about picking gold coins up off the floor--only the fastest person is going to get the coins."
Being fastest was so important that the Spread Network spent over $300 million laying the fiber optic cable that would save 3 milliseconds, and then charged trading firms millons for access to their internet connection. Which all brings us back to the fact that I don’t know who you use for your internet connection, but I know who you don’t use, the Spread Network.
In the world of spirituality, there are three rules, closeness, closeness, and closeness. Closeness to Hashem, the Creator and Sustainer. Closeness to Hashem, the source of all life and happiness, the source of blessing and bounty. How do we achieve closeness to the creator? The same way we achieve closeness to anyone, by giving of ourselves to them. Parents love their children so much because they give so much to them, spouses deepen their closeness over the years because they give more and more to each other. But what can we give Hashem, He doesn’t need anything?
There is one thing He wants from us, as Rabbenu Bachya Ibn Pachuda tells us in the introduction to his eleventh century masterpiece Chovos Halevavos, Duties of the Heart. “Rachmana liba ba’ii, Hashem wants our hearts.” Hashem doesn’t need money or sacrifices, he doesn’t want prayers or study, if it’s being done like an automaton, out of rote, and without meaning and intent. Hashem wants us to want to be close to Him, He wants us to do actions that show that we want closeness, and the more closeness we want, the more we are willing to give for it, the more closeness He rewards us with.
In this weeks Parsha, we are introduced to the Nazir. The Nazir is someone who wants to be closer to Hashem and in order to facilitate that closeness he removes himself from things that are totally permitted, but can lead to distance from Hashem. He doesn’t drink any wine, because wine can cloud the mind, and smudge the mind connection the Nazir is trying to create with Hashem. He wants the fastest connection, and the wine can cause a 3 millisecond delay in the optic fiber link between him and Hashem, as the Zohar proves from the fact that the Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve was with the grape, the fruit that can create connection but can also create confusion and distance.
The Nazir also recognizes the vanity often associated with our hair, the hours spent styling and curling, combing and cutting, the many moments spent in the mirror getting our hair just right, so he commits to letting his hair grow wild, untrimmed and uncut. He knows that the more vanity we have, the greater the ego, the less room for Hashem, and the Nazir wants as much room for Hashem as possible.
The Nazir also commits to not coming in contact with corpses, the “grandfather of ritual impurity.” Corpses represent the total removal of all potential, the moment someone dies, the Neshama leaves and there is no longer free will and challenge, but also no more ability to grow. The Nazir is singularly focused on growth, on overcoming challenges with his free will and using every bit of his potential, and to remember that he commits to staying away from corpses and all they represent.
And what does the Nazir get in return? Exactly what he was seeking, closeness to Hashem of the greatest magnitude. The Alshich (16th Century Torah commentator) points out that the High Priest is described (Leviticus 21:12), “the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him” which means that the crown on the High Priest is the oil of G-d. But the Torah description of the Nazir is (Numbers 6:7), “because the crown of his God is upon his head.” The crown on the Nazir is not the oil of Hashem but Hashem Himself! The Nazir sought out closeness to Hashem, he sacrificed so much to attain closeness and with closeness he is rewarded!
Today, we don’t have Nazirites, we don’t have the Temple and part of the closing ceremony for the Nazir involves sacrifices in the Temple. But we can still follow the Nazir playbook. We can still seek out more closeness with Hashem by taking on special projects whose sole goal is to create more closeness with Hashem, and He will surely reward us with what we seek. We can do this by taking on an extra commitment to do something that will foster more closeness or to not do something we know is creating a blockage in the fiber optic cables between us and Him.
If one wants to go the extra mile, they can create a Nazir notebook, somewhere that no one else should see it. And in that notebook they can write down commitments they want to take on, to do or not do certain things, for a day, for a week or even for a month, but all with the express goal of fostering more closeness to Hashem. If we do this, we can climb closer than the High Priest, we can reach the place where “the crown of Hashem is upon our head.” It’s not about the Spread Network, it’s about Divine Proximity.
Parsha Dvar Torah
Last week’s Torah portion described the census that was taken of the tribe of Levi, starting with those 1 month and older. This week’s parsha continues with another census of the members of the tribe of Levi, this one only of males between the ages of 30-50. In both countings, we find a surprisingly low number: 22,273 in last week’s portion, 8,580 in this week’s - far fewer in number than any other tribe.
What makes this even stranger is the fact that Levi was the only tribe that was not forced into labor in Egypt. The Medrash records that the slave labor in Egypt was started by a massive public works campaign, one in which Pharaoh himself participated. But soon afterwards, the Egyptians slipped away and forced the Jews to remain. The tribe of Levi, who were preoccupied with Torah study, never joined the labor, and were thus never forced to remain. Knowing this, one would think that they should have been the largest tribe.
Nachmonides explains that it was precisely the fact that they were not subjugated that led to their small numbers. He explains that G-d gave a special blessing to the Jewish people that the “the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied, and so did they gain strength” (Exodus 1:12). Thus it was the tribes that were oppressed that grew with prodigious blessing, while the tribe of Levi only grew at a normal rate, and consequently had the comparatively lower numbers they had. Oppression, though something few would welcome, can sometimes be the harbinger of special blessing.
This message is reinforced in a verse in Psalms. The Psalmist praises G-d by saying, “He covers the heavens with clouds, He prepares rain for the land,” (Psalms 147:8). Rav Tzadok HaCohen explains that we often go through difficult times - times in which the horizon appears dark and cloudy - but what is really happening is that G-d is preparing for an outpouring of rain, and blessing. We see this in the germination of seeds, as well, the process that allows for all life on earth. At first, the seed disintegrates, seemingly beaten to nothingness. But then a new life sprouts forth. G-d’s miraculous nature has a way of showing us the light when all we can see is darkness.
A friend shared the following slice of life that underscores this point. Growing up, he had two classmates who were stepbrothers. The mother of one was a divorcee who married a successful attorney who had two children of his own. The woman indulged her child, taking care of all his expenses, providing him with a nice car, and not requiring him to work. The father, who achieved his success through hard work, treated his children much differently. He made them work hard for everything they received. That classmate constantly worked odd jobs, earning low wages in order to buy the things he wanted.
Ironically, the indulged son of the woman is today a baggage handler in a local airport. The husband’s son is a world renowned psychiatrist, who has published dozens of articles, written two books, and is frequently featured on CNN. The hard work, the stress, and the difficulty he went through as a teen certainly paid off. In a similar vein, people with physical handicaps, or who have undergone a serious illness, surprisingly tend to score much higher than others on tests that measure levels of happiness.
Many people are facing new challenges today, due to the economic climate and the market meltdown. This week’s counting of the tribe of Levi gives us a perspective that may help us see the silver lining behind those challenges. That silver lining may come in the form of some bountiful rain about to be showered upon them, or it may come in the form of us developing a deeper appreciation for our family, our health, or other aspects of our life that we may have neglected to appreciate.
Parsha Summary
This week’s Parsha starts off where the the last Parsha finished, namely, the jobs given to different families within the tribe of Levi. Here, the Torah describes the parts of the Tabernacle that the families of Gershon and Merari carried when the Jews moved from place to place in the Desert.
The Torah then commands us to treat our camp with holiness. In order to do so, people with specific levels of ritual impurity are not allowed into different parts of the camp based on the severity of their impurity. (It is interesting to note that the only group that has to leave the entire camp and sit alone is the people who contracted Tzara’as through speaking badly about others and alienating them. What goes around comes around!) After that, the Torah tells us what to do if someone steals, swears falsely to deny it, and then admits. OK, I won’t keep you in suspense; he pays an extra fifth and brings a special sacrifice for atonement. If the victim dies and leaves no heirs, the money goes to the Kohanim.
The next law discussed, is that of the Sotah. This is a wayward woman, who secludes herself with a specific man, despite having been warned not to do so by her husband. In order to determine if she committed a sin while in seclusion, she is brought to the Temple where a procedure is done to determine if she is as innocent as she professes to be. (If, at any point, she admits to being guilty, she goes home without doing the procedure.) The procedure includes a Kohen reading her the passage regarding the Sotah, and dissolving the parchment into water. She then drinks the mixture after bringing a meal offering. If she is guilty, she immediately dies a difficult death, (as does the adulterer wherever he is at the time), but if she is innocent, she is rewarded with an easier birthing in the future, and great children. (Even though she shouldn’t have secluded herself with someone her husband asked her not to, since the procedure was a difficult one she is rewarded for being innocent.)
The parchment which was dissolved contains G-d’s name. If G-d considers marital harmony to be of such import that he allows His name to be erased (for if the wife lives past this procedure, the husband will be placated and no longer think that she betrayed him), how much more should we be willing to go out of our way to keep our marriages peaceful even if it occasionally costs us a bruised ego. After these laws, the Torah discusses the nazir, whom we discussed above. The two are juxtaposed because when one sees the sotah in her degradation, he should be inspired to take measures to insure that he never fall in that way.
After the laws of the nazir, the Torah tells the Kohanim how to bless the people, a practice still done daily in Israel and on the festivals here in the Diaspora. The final art of the Parsha deals with special offerings the leaders of the Twelve Tribes brought to inaugurate the Tabernacle. The first thing they brought was six sturdy wagons and twelve oxen to pull them. These were to be used in the transportation of the Tabernacle, and were divided amongst the tribe of Levi.
The Kehas family didn’t get any wagons, because their job was to carry the holiest vessels and it would be inappropriate for them to relegate such vessels to wagons. In addition to the wagons, the tribal leaders each brought a number of sacrifices during the first twelve days that the Tabernacle was in service.
Although the Torah never uses an extra word, in our Parsha, it spends over seventy verses repeating the sacrifices that the leaders brought even thought they were exactly identical. The Torah is telling us that although on the outside the sacrifices were the same, each leader had unique intentions and meaning in his sacrifice, thus making them different. This underscores the idea that even though we may all pray the same prayers, and do the same mitzvoth, each one of us can have an incredibly unique and individual relationship with G-d based on our intentions and thoughts. Let us all continue to develop that relationship, and grow closer with our Father in heaven!
Quote of the Week: Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever, plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow. - Ibn Gabirol
Random Fact of the Week: Wood frogs freeze solid in the winter, and then thaw back to life in the spring.
Funny Line of the Week: Money may not buy you happiness, but I would rather cry in a Bentley than on a public bus.
Have a Chic Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham