I'm Not a Robot | Rabbi Moshe Taub

You know, a Rov has many jobs. Not just answering Shailos. One of the jobs of a Rov is to decide what Sefer do you give to a Bar Mitzvah Bochur. I used to give out a Sefer Hachinuch and other Sefarim until I realized that they sit on the shelf, often not used. One day I decided, Let's give them a biography of R’ Moshe Feinstein. That at least it's possible, it's light, they'll read it and they'll grow from it as a Yeshiva Bochur. One day, my secretary was on vacation and she called me up and she said: Rabbi, I think we're out of Reb Moshe Sefarim and we have a Bar Mitzvah this week. I want you to go into my office, sign up for the Shul’s account and purchase about a dozen. All right. I go in and I log on and I'm about to purchase, when a screen comes on. And it's a screen that many of us may be familiar with. Prove that you're a human and not a robot. Now, it used to be you would prove that you're a human by looking at some scribble, some odd number shapes that somehow computers couldn't read, but eventually computers graduated and they were able to read that. Then it switched to Click on any button that shows a motorcycle. And you always had that Shailah, that left corner that had a spoke of the motorcycle, does that count as a motorcycle, is it not a motorcycle? Apparently computers graduated from that, because the screen became blank and on it was a single little check mark section and all it said, I’m thinking to myself: This makes no sense. We have a rover on Mars. Computers can do everything. They can’t figure out how to click a button? So I did a little bit of research. The company, really based off the government, that designed this is called Captcha and what they're looking for today is not if you could press a button. Certainly computers can do that. But the way a computer presses a button is very different than how a human presses a button. When a computer presses a button, it goes directly to it, doesn't miss a beat. That's not human. A human being puts the arrow a little bit too high, puts the arrow a little bit too low. The arrow begins off to the left, off to the right. Ah, the imperfection. You must be a human being and not a robot. And I realized this is such a great Mashal for life in general, and in particular, in this generation. Sometimes with all the Nisyonos around us, we take on too much and we feel guilty we fail. We take on too little, we feel guilty and maybe I'm not worthy. We go to the right, we go to the left. Take a wrong turn here, a wrong turn there. Far from having עצבות, sadness, which, as R' Chaim Shmuelevitz writes, could lead to Aveiros we can never imagine, that is only proof of one thing. That you are a human being. This is why Hakadosh Baruch Hu put you in the world, to make mistakes, certainly, but to learn from them, to grow from them, so that you can embrace Kedushah v’Tahara b’Shleimus.