Challenging Modern Multitasking: Insights from the Torah and Lessons from the Angels

0:01 Samsung, the tech giant, has a new marketing pitch, sales pitch, for their new device, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, and in selling this tablet that can also be used as a portable computer, they are lauding the device's great ability to multitask. With this new addition of multi-window, where the computer, when used in DEX mode, can do three separate tasks all at the same time in full screen, and tens more if you're using some sort of side-screen. Whatever, that means Multitasking with its new processor, it makes their device unbeatable the best on the market.

0:45 Generally. Multitasking is a very lauded practice and skill in any human. Many people will pitch their skill of multitasking to potential bosses and people that are hiring. I can get you coffee and I can type an essay, and I can, and I can and I can all at the same time. Western civilization thinks multitasking is a great thing. Well, why not? But when you look at this with a second eye, with through the lens of the Torah, the Chokhmat Hashem, you find something astonishing. You see, when Avromavini was standing outside of his tent and there were Shloyshaan Noshim, there were three men. They were camouflaging themselves as men, but they were really angels.

1:26 Rashi picks up on why there were three sent to Avrom. She explains, because one was coming to give Sura the good tidings that she was going to have a kid within the year, a second angel was needed in order to turn over Sedom. And a last and final angel was needed to go and heal Avromavini. Who, hence three separate angels. Rashi concludes with the words Shein Maloch Echad, one angel cannot osa steh Shalichos. Two separate jobs. And Rabbi Ruchem is Medaik. We see clearly here, unbelievable. It needs an entirely separate angel to do one task and bring it from its inception until its completion.

2:11 It takes a lot to do something right. And if one angel would want a multitask and go from the good delivering of the news to then going ahead and destroying Sedom, no, it takes one angel to do something completely and entirely to bring it to its culmination and completion. This is for an angel. What are we supposed to say? If it was the Torah that the angel was trying to complete, it would take 613 separate Maloch Echad Shavakos to get the Torah done. And while humans do have this Milah, this great ability to do multiple things at once, it may not necessarily be such a Milah. And Manoach, when he asked the angel's name and one of the half Torah, is one of the places in Tanakh.

2:57 The angel said I don't have a name. It changes is the way that the commentaries learn it, based on my job. So when we're learning Torah, my name is Talmud Torah, and when I'm benching, my name is Birch HaZamozon, and today my name is Kibiravayim. So multitasking. It may be lauded in other certain societies, but in the Torah's eyes, it shows us how much it takes, how much centeredness, how much groundedness, how much focus and concentration and being totally absorbed in an action is needed in order to do it right. So be like an angel when you do something that there's nothing else here.

3:37 I am osake by mitzvah and therefore I am putrimen on mitzvah because this is the only possible task on my plate. And like an angel, I do one thing from very beginning until the very end. Only after that do I move on.