My blackberry broke this week and I was in a quandary.  I had never backed up its data before and I needed to do so before scrapping it.  But how?

Download some software somewhere and sync it up, I thought.  I’d never done that before -  it is three plus years of carefully acquired data.   Maybe I should ask someone how to do this?  Nah.  That’s for non-self-reliant wimps.

So, it turns out I downloaded an upgrade rather than the basic desktop program and the sync erased everything.

I’m not an instructions guy that often, and I must admit that I had no epiphany that I become one from this mishap.  But it did give me pause to consider:  Torah, the Hebrew word, literally means “instructions.”   A fundamental of Judaism is that life is a wondrous, complicated, and consequential endeavor that works best with instructions.

I’m fine with plugging in the clock radio without ever reading the instructions.  The blackberry, at this moment, has earned a little respect.  Life, all the more so I realize, works best with instructions.

Shabbat Shalom,

Henry Harris