I know who you don’t use… and I know why…

by MRS. BAYLA BERMAN | June 6, 2025 5:58 pm

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 (16 th 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

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