Refactoring Your Bitachon: Moving From Monolith to Modular

I was recently learning Shaar HaBitachon (“The Gate of Trust”) — a section of the classic 11th-century work Chovot Halevavot (“Duties of the Heart”) by Rabbeinu Bachya ibn Pekuda dedicated to cultivating trust in G-d — with my Chavruta (study partner). (By the way, shout-out to this amazing book! If you aren’t learning it yet, I highly recommend picking it up! It’s a game-changer for your mindset!)

We were learning a part in Chapter Five which discusses the proper attitude one should have towards the “means” (hishtadlut, or personal effort) we employ to make a living.

Rabbeinu Bachya, the author, explains that there is a fundamental difference between someone who has Bitachon (trust in G-d) and someone who trusts in their own efforts:

“While a person who relies on G-d also involves himself in various means of obtaining his livelihood… he doesn’t rely on them, nor does he expect them to either benefit him or cause him harm unless G-d wills it to be.

The only reason he involves himself in them is his choice to carry out the service of the Creator, Who instructed him to involve himself in the world…”

Contrast this with the person without Bitachon :

“However, a person who does not rely on G-d involves himself in the means of pursuing his livelihood because he relies on them for help and protection… If they do indeed help him, then he will praise them…

If, however, they do not help him, then he will abandon them, reject them, and turn his desire away from them.”

As I was reading this, it hit me: This is exactly the concept of Decoupling in programming.

Spaghetti Code vs. Modular Design

As developers, we know the pain of “tightly coupled” code. That’s when Module A is so knowledgeable about, and dependent on, the inner workings of Module B that you can’t touch one without breaking the other. If you want to swap out your database from MySQL to Postgres, but your business logic is writing raw SQL queries directly inside the controller, you’re in for a nightmare. Everything is tangled. The logic depends on the specific implementation.

Good architecture, on the other hand, strives for Decoupling.

You define an interface. Your business logic requests data, but it doesn’t care how that data is retrieved. You can swap out the database, change the API, or refactor the entire backend — and as long as the interface remains the same, the application keeps running smoothly. The logic is independent of the implementation details.

Refactoring Your Bitachon

Shaar HaBitachon is teaching us to refactor our lives to be loosely coupled.

A person with true Bitachon has “decoupled” their livelihood (Parnassah) from their job.

• The Interface: G-d’s promise to sustain us.
• The Implementation: The current job, gig, or business deal (the means/effort).

When you are tightly coupled to your job, you are living in a legacy codebase full of dependencies. You think, “This job is the only way I can pay my mortgage.” That’s a fragile architecture. If that specific “module” (the job) crashes, your whole system goes down.

However, when you live with Bitachon, you realize that your livelihood comes from the “Sustenance Service” (G-d), and your job is just one interchangeable module used to deliver it.

If you lose your job, or a deal falls through? It’s not a system failure. It’s just a hot-swap. G-d is simply deprecating one method and initializing another. You don’t panic because your “Sustenance Provider” hasn’t changed — only the delivery mechanism has.

The “Why” Matters

What really struck me in that chapter of Shaar HaBitachon is the motivation. The person with Bitachon still works just as hard! But why?

Not to get money, but to fulfill the will of G-d.

Just like we write modular code to make our applications robust, scalable, and maintainable, we should strive to make our trust in G-d robust and modular. We do the work because it’s the right thing to do (the spec), but we know that the result is handled entirely by the Core System.

So, the next time you’re refactoring a messy class or abstracting away a dependency, take a second to think: Is my own Bitachon tightly coupled to my job, or is it modular enough to handle whatever life throws at it?

Do You Even Wordle?

If you’re on social media, chances are that you are one of two kinds of people; those who post their Wordle results every day or those who are extremely annoyed by the yellow and green boxes flooding their feeds.

What is it about this word game that took the world by storm and made it so popular (at least until the next trend comes along)?

There are plenty of takes out there, but it seems to me that people find Wordle so wholesome because it stands in contrast to so much of what makes the toxic parts of the internet so toxic.

Unlike most apps and games out there, Wordle isn’t spying on you, it isn’t trying to drive engagement, it’s not addictive, and it isn’t trying to suck you into playing for hours every day. In fact, by only giving one word a day, it sets a pretty tight limit to how much time you can waste on it every day.

A lot has been said about the toxic parts of internet culture, and the large tech companies have been blamed for putting shareholder profits over the well-being of their users.

In Parshat Mishpatim, the first Parshah after the Jews got the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Torah goes into great detail about the laws of civil liability and the responsibility we have for damages caused by our actions and our property.

Just as a person can’t say “I just let my goat graze; it’s not my fault she ate up your tomato patch,” similarly, we can’t absolve ourselves from responsibility for the products and the technology we create.

Sure, profits are important, but they can’t come at the expense of the first principle; don’t be evil.

P.S. Really? “Knoll”? What’s up with that?

Talmudic Gems For Rails Developers

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at RailsConf titled Talmudic Gems For Rails Developers.

In the talk I discussed lessons I learned from a lifetime of Talmudic study that helped me in my journey as a developer, and which I felt could benefit other developers in their growth.

The talk is geared at any developer looking to grow using the timeless wisdom of the Talmudic sages, not just Rails developers.

I shared a transcript of the talk in the Torah && Tech newsletter issue #123 (if you haven’t yet, you can sign up to the newsletter, and get the first year’s worth of newsletters in book format, at the Torah && Tech website: torahandtech.dev).

The talk has just been posted to YouTube, and I’m happy to share it with my audience!

If you would like to delve into some of the sources I mentioned, you can find links in the source sheet I prepared here.

Happy Learning!

A Tale Of Two Inaugurations

Wednesday, the United States and a large part of the world watched as the US swore in Joe Biden as their 46th president.

In his inaugural address, President Biden spoke about unity:

“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: Unity.

“In another January, on New Year’s Day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote: “If my name ever goes down into history, it’ll be for this act. And my whole soul is in it.”

“My whole soul was in it today. On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause.

Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things.”

There is no question that the political discourse has devolved into extreme divisiveness over the last few years, and it’s refreshing to hear from a leader who will do his best to heal the divide rather than fan its flames.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe around the time he assumed leadership of the Chabad Lubavitch movement (1951)

But what does unity even mean? Does it mean that everyone has to conform to the same ideas? Do we have to give up our individuality? Are we required to overlook hate and intolerance in the name of “unity”?

Seventy years ago to the day, on the tenth of Shvat 5711 (Jan 17, 1951), a different inaugural address took place.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson assumed the leadership of the Chabad Lubavitch movement after the passing of his father in law, and in the first public talk he gave after accepting the position, he said the following:

“When my father-in-law, the Rebbe, arrived in America, he quoted the words of the Sages “When you come to a town, follow its customs.” Here in America, people like to hear a “mission statement,” a declaration that is novel and preferably sensational. I don’t know whether there is a need for things to be done in this way, but “when you come to a town, follow its customs.”

“The three loves — the love of G‑d, the love of the Torah, and love toward a fellow Jew — are all one. They are by definition indivisible, like one essence. If a person has a love of G‑d but is without a love of the Torah or love of his fellow Jew, this indicates that something is lacking in his love of G‑d, too. On the other hand, when there is Ahavas Yisrael, then even though this is [merely one] mitzvah, it ultimately leads to a love of the Torah and a love of G‑d.”

Real unity is around a shared goal and a shared purpose. In the context of Ahavat Yisrael (love of your fellow Jew), that shared purpose is Ahavat Hashem (love of G-d) and Ahavat Hatorah (love of the Torah).

I believe that in the context of political unity, the shared purpose is a love of one’s country. When we acknowledge that, at the end of the day, we all want what’s best for the country, we can put aside personal and political differences and work together toward a common goal.

But just as a person can’t have a true love of Hashem if they don’t love their fellow Jew, similarly, if we let patriotism and love of our country get in the way of our respect for others’ humanity and dignity, then our faux patriotism and love of country aren’t real. They’re merely a cover to justify our disdain for the “other.”

Let us take this moment to reflect, put aside our differences, and work together to build a world that is better for all of us.

What’s In A Name?

Programmers spend a lot of time thinking about names.

We name variables, functions, classes, and more. And the names we give can make a real difference in our code’s readability. We’ve all had the experience of working on an old piece of legacy code and wondering; is the variable temp holding the current temperature, or is it just a temporary placeholder? Or the programmer who named all of their variables x, x1, x2, etc.

It gets a little trickier when it comes to naming people and, more specifically, what they do.

Here some people start arguing that naming doesn’t really matter.

“Does it really matter if you’re called a Software Developer or a Software Engineer?” “Who cares if you get the title ‘Sr.’? As long as you do senior work and get paid a senior salary, does the title matter?”

At first glance, it may seem like they have a point; do names really matter? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” in Shakespeare’s words.

But the truth is, names and titles do matter, especially to those of us who are usually marginalized and have a hard time getting their voices heard and respected.

In this week’s Parshah, Yaakov meets an angel. After a struggle, Yaakov insists that the angel bless him.

The angel told him, “Your name shall no longer be called Yaakov, but Yisrael because you have commanding power with [an angel of] God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

The name “Yaakov” was given to him because he was born on the heel (“akeiv” in Hebrew) of his brother Esav. Sure enough, up until that point, Yaakov’s life was dictated by the fear of his older brother, eventually causing him to leave home and hide for 20 years in the house of his uncle Lavan.

When Yaakov met the angel, the angel told him it was time to leave that behind. Instead of calling himself Yaakov, on the heels of his brother, his name would be Yisrael, from the Hebrew word “Sar,” or minister, he was now the ruler of his destiny and would have the upper hand over his adversaries.

Sure enough, Yaakov went on to meet his brother Esav, but this time from a position of power, they establish a truce, and from that point on, Esav is no longer a presence in Yaakov’s life.

So names clearly do make a difference. Maybe not to you, but to people who are used to being marginalized, that “Sr.” title can mean the difference between being ignored and being noticed. Between being talked over and being listened to.

So let’s find the “Yaakovs” in our work and be the angel who will help them discover their inner “Yisrael” (and yes, that Yaakov may very well be you)!

The #101DaysOfCode Challenge

This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To order volume one of Torah && Tech containing the first year’s worth of Divrei Torah or to subscribe to get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.

Last week we hit a milestone; Torah && Tech published its 100th newsletter! But as exciting as hitting that milestone was for us, this week with the 101st newsletter, is arguably more important.

A few years ago, when I was in the middle of my career switch to tech, I took part in the #100DaysOfCode challenge (actually, in a variant of it that took Shabbat into account, which I called #86DaysOfCode).

For those unfamiliar with the challenge, the participant commits to spending some time each day for 100 days on code related stuff; either learning, working on projects, going through tutorials, whatever. The challenge usually involves some form of accountability, usually by posting on social media using the #100DaysOfCode hashtag.

Taking part in the challenge was not easy. It involved many late nights and long weekends. Finishing the challenge felt like a huge accomplishment.

But beyond the accomplishment of coding for 100 days straight, the real effect of the challenge became clear to me the next day, day number 101.

On that day, without any tweets and hashtags, when I just sat at the computer coding, that’s when I realized how the challenge changed me. Coding was now a habit; it was something I did without needing any special commitments or challenges.

There’s a fascinating Gemarah regarding the significance of 101:

Bar Hei Hei said to Hillel: What is the meaning of that which is written: “Then you shall again discern between… one who serves G-d and one who does not serve Him” (Malachi 3:18)… Hillel said to him: The one “who serves Him” and the one “who does not serve Him” are both referring to completely righteous people. But the verse is hinting at a distinction between them, as one who reviews his studies one hundred times is not comparable to one who reviews his studies one hundred and one times.

Bar Hei Hei said to [Hillel]: And due to one extra time that he did not review, the verse calls him a person “who does not serve Him”? Hillel said to him: Yes. Go and learn from the market of donkey drivers. One can hire a driver to travel up to ten parasangs for one dinar. However, he will travel eleven parasangs only for two dinars. This shows that any departure beyond the norm is considered a significant difference.

• Chagigah 9b

What is the meaning of the Gemarah?

In those days, books were hard to come by, and most of the transmission of knowledge was done orally, from teacher to student.

After each lesson, students had to commit their studies to memory or risk forgetting it all. The common practice was to review each lesson 100 times.

Hillel was telling Bar Hei Hei that a student who reviewed their studies 100 times still wasn’t worthy of the title “one who serves G-d,” the student was merely doing what was expected of them. But a student who reviewed 101 times? That was a student who went above the norm! They weren’t just reviewing to “tick off a box”; the learning became part of them; they were now ones who “serve Him.”

Sure it’s nice to hit milestones, and seeing that “# 100” in the subject line felt like the culmination of so much hard work! But the # 101 shows that we moved beyond that! We’re in it for the long haul, and we hope you will stick around with us for the journey

Shabbat Shalom,

Yechiel

A New Beginning… Again!

This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To order volume one of Torah && Tech containing the first year’s worth of Divrei Torah or to subscribe to get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.

This week we will be reading Parashat Bereshit, the first Torah portion, starting yet another cycle of reading the Torah, which we will conclude next Simchat Torah.
 
 A story is told about an old bubby who, one year, when the story of Yosef being sold by his brothers was read in Shul, couldn’t hold herself in and sobbed loudly at the injustice of it all.
 
 Next year, when Parshat Vayeshev came around, and Yosef’s story was read again, the kindly bubby had had enough. “No!” she shouted to the dismay of the whole Shul, “I will not feel bad for Yossef anymore! He should know better! Doesn’t he remember what happened last year? Why did he go out to his brothers again! Of course they will sell him! The fool does not deserve my sympathy!”
 
 Every year we read the Torah again, but is it really the same?
 
 Think of it as a loop in programming.
 
 We’ve all accidentally gotten ourselves into an infinite loop at some point, but in code that’s properly written, each iteration of the loop, while it might look just like the last iteration, is different. Counters have been incremented, the program’s state has changed, events have been fired off, etc.
 
 The code might be the same in each iteration, but it acts on a different program with a new state.
 
 Similarly, while the words of the Torah we will read this Shabbat might be the same words we read last year and the year before and before that, the person reading those words has changed.
 
 You are not the same person you were last year; you’ve grown, and the way you relate to the Torah, the lessons you learn, the parts that speak to you, all that has changed.
 
 So as you read the words of the first Parshah this Shabbat, don’t look at it as more of the same. Try to find something new; look at it from a new perspective, maybe learn it with a new commentary or a new study partner.
 
 After all, what matters is not how much Torah you learn; it’s how much the Torah taught you!

Shabbat Shalom,

Yechiel

Forging A Connection

This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To order volume one of Torah && Tech containing the first year’s worth of Divrei Torah or to subscribe to get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.

A few weeks ago, we spoke about the concept of Teshuva. We mentioned that the common translation of “repentance” is inaccurate, and how the real meaning of the Hebrew word Teshuvah is closer to the idea of “return” to your true self.

This week I would like to examine another term commonly associated with the High Holidays, the concept of Tefillah.

Tefillah is commonly translated as “prayer,” but “prayer” in Hebrew is not Tefillah but bakashah.

These terms are opposites. Bakashah means to pray, request, beseech. But Tefillah means to attach oneself (see Rashi on Bereshit 30:8).

In bakashah, the person asks G‑d to provide them, from above, with what they lack. Therefore when a person does not need anything or feels no desire for a gift from above, bakashah becomes redundant.

But in Tefillah, the person seeks to connect to G‑d. It is a movement from below, from humanity, reaching towards G‑d. And this is something appropriate to everyone and at every time.

Similar to how when you need to access a website, you do it with an HTTP request. The meaning of the word “request” here is not the same as what laypeople mean with that word; you aren’t asking the server to please be nice and serve up a webpage. The server is ready to serve the web page, you just need to connect to it via the HTTP request, and as soon as the connection is established, the server can send over the webpage.

And, just as there are different kinds of HTTP requests, there are also other kinds of Tefillot. There are GET requests, where we ask G-d to provide us with our needs. PATCH requests where we beseech G-d to annul any harsh decrees that may have already been decreed against us. And (most relevant to Yom Kippur), DELETE requests where we ask G-d to erase our sins.

The Jewish soul has a bond with G‑d. But it also inhabits a body, whose preoccupation with the material world may attenuate that bond. So it has continuously to be strengthened and renewed. This is the function of Tefillah. And it is necessary for every Jew.

For while there may be those who do not lack anything and thus have nothing to request of G‑d, there is no-one who does not need to attach themself to the source of all life.

Shanah Tovah,

Yechiel

Technical Holiness

This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To order volume one of Torah && Tech containing the first year’s worth of Divrei Torah or to subscribe to get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe (credit: Zev Markowitz)

Today is a day that has much meaning for me.

The 3rd of Tammuz marks the 26th anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson OBM in 1994, better known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

The Rebbe might be best known for the worldwide network of Chabad Houses that span the globe serving some 3,500 communities and providing for their needs, both spiritual and material. But for me personally, it was the Rebbe’s approach to technology that has informed my career and has found its expression in the creation of the Torah && Tech newsletter and, more recently, the book.

When the Rebbe took leadership of the Chabad movement in 1950, the Jewish world was reeling from the losses of the holocaust. The few Chassidic dynasties that survived and made their way to the new world were trying to rebuild themselves from the ashes and viewed the technological marvels of the “Goldene Medinah” (the “golden country”) with suspicion. They were afraid that these outside influences would pose a spiritual threat to their way of life, after narrowly escaping the physical threats that almost destroyed them.

The Rebbe saw things differently.

“Everything the Holy One Created in his world, he has created for His honor” (Pirkei Avot chapter 6:11)

Nothing in this world happens by chance. These technological discoveries can not be a threat to the Torah and a Godly way of life. On the contrary, argued the Rebbe, they can and must be used to help us serve G-d better.

And the relationship both ways. Technological advances created without the moral guidance of the Torah are in danger of becoming tools for evil, while a Torah life that doesn’t use the G-d given tools provided to us is at risk of limiting itself and not maximizing its G-d given potential.

In a sense, where others felt that the worlds of Torah and technology where incompatible, “Torah ^ Tech” in programming terms, the Rebbe saw it as “Torah && Tech” where both sides of the operation need to be true, and both complement each other.

To that end, the Rebbe encouraged his followers to use all of the cutting edge tools at their disposal to spread the light of Torah to the world. Whether it be by giving Torah classes over the radio, holiday broadcasts on TV, or public Menorah lightings via live satellite hookups.

When the internet came on the scene, the Rebbe’s Chassidim were among the first to realize its potential (chabad.org was registered in 1993, 2 years after the launch of the world wide web!)

This passion the Rebbe had is what drove me when I was a Chabad rabbi giving online Torah classes to children in isolated communities. It’s also what drives me now in my career as a developer, continually reminding me that my technical decisions aren’t divorced from their ethical and moral implications.

It’s also what drives me to write a newsletter every other week where my friend Ben and I try to find a Torah lesson to apply to people in the world of tech, and what drove me after a year of that to publish it all in a book for posterity.

Don’t Go At It Alone

This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To order volume one of Torah && Tech containing the first year’s worth of Divrei Torah or to subscribe to get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.

Burnout.

We’ve all been there. We start a new job, the work is interesting, we’re eager to prove ourselves, we take on more and more responsibility. By the time our bodies let us know we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, we’re already in way over our heads; the coming crash is inevitable.

In Parshat Beha’alotcha, we read about the Jews doing what Jews do best; Kvetching.

At one point, Moshe can’t handle it anymore and cries out to G-D in a rare outburst:

“Why have You treated Your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in Your eyes that You place the burden of this entire people upon me? …I cannot carry this entire nation alone, for it is too hard for me. If this is the way You treat me, please kill me if I have found favor in Your eyes, so that I not see my misfortune.”
 — Bamidbar 11:11–15

What was G-D’s response? Get some help!

“Gather seventy of Israel’s elders… and I will draw upon the spirit that is on you and put it upon them; they shall share the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it alone.”
 — Bamidbar 11:16–17

Very often, we try to be the martyr. We’re convinced we’re the only ones who can put out the fire or carry the deploy.

If we just learn to let go and delegate, we will discover that not only will our own mental health improve, but our team health will improve as well. Others will learn to do the jobs we think only we can; knowledge silos will be eliminated, and our team’s “bus factor” will improve dramatically!

Remember, even Moshe had to learn to delegate!

Shabbat Shalom,
 
 Yechiel