Living with the Parsha
Just How Fast?

"Welcome," Ben said as he showed of his bedroom to his friend Michael, who had come to stay at his home for Shabbat.

"Hmmm," Michael said as he looked around.

Ben's mother had been very happy that, at least for once, Ben's bedroom had been tidied up by Ben himself.

"Here is my new computer," Ben said proudly. "It has 4 gig RAM and a 500 gig hard drive."

"It must be pretty fast," Michael said. "I bet you don't have to wait long for things to start up when you turn it on!"

"My parents tell me that only twenty years ago most people didn't have a computer in their house," Michael said, "and today almost everyone has one and they are getting faster and faster."

"I wonder what people did on a Sunday afternoon," Ben said. "How was it back then without Pentium Three or Inter-Core processors?"

"Well," Michael said, "if you think that's bad, let's go back one hundred years when most people didn't have cars and there were no planes..."

"People must have been kind of stuck in one place," Ben said. "They had no idea that things could be moving so quickly in just a few years!"

"But you know," Michael said, "not everything went so slow."

"Why do you say that?" asked Ben.

"This week's Torah reading speaks about how Abraham's right-hand man, Eliezer, managed to make a trip that would normally take many days and he did it in just one day," Michael said.

"How did he do that?" asked Michael.

"He was going to find a wife for Isaac. Rashi's commentary says that G‑d helped him travel very fast. It was a kind of miracle. He set out on the journey, and then, suddenly, he had arrived!"

"So you mean he had a million gig RAM journey?" said Michael.

"Yes," said Ben. "And because of that quick journey, he was more quickly able to find Rebecca who would be a wife for Isaac."

"I suppose," Michael said, "that the gigs and RAMS and cars and planes are good things because they can help us do good things quicker, like Eliezer traveling to find a wife for Isaac."

"Yes," said Ben, "they are like our miracles today, helping us do good things."