It was already twenty minutes after Dan's mother had called him for supper. First she had called out to his room, "Danny, darling, it is time for supper." When after ten minutes he still hadn't come, she decided to send him a text message, but he still didn't come. Then she tried to email him, but all to no avail. Finally he strolled in to the kitchen.
"Hi, Mom, what's for supper?" he asked, apparently oblivious to the efforts which had been made in trying to reach him over the past twenty minutes.
"Where were you?" everyone asked. "We have been trying to call you for the last twenty minutes!"
"Oh, sorry," he said apologetically. "I didn't realize. You see, I was busy showing our cousin Michael my new robot."
"But Michael lives in Australia," Sara, his younger sister, asked, slightly confused. "How could you show him your robot if he is on the other side of the world?"
"Well, in my room I have a little box called a computer, and on this box is a little eye called a webcam. When the eye on my computer sees something, it shows whatever it sees to the computer in Michael's room in Australia, through a system called 'Eyeball.'"
"Ah, I see," Sara said. "You are talking about showing him your robot on Eyeball Chat."
"Isn't that funny," his mother said. "You are in the same house as the rest of the family and you cannot even hear me calling you to come and have supper. But Michael, who is on the other side of world, can see you and talk to you!"
"It's like the song Ha'azinu in this week's Torah reading," Dan said. "Moses says he is speaking to the Heavens and to the Earth, asking them to be witnesses to what he is telling the Jewish people. But when he speaks to the heavens he uses the word 'listen,' which implies that he is speaking to someone close. And for the earth he asks that it 'hears,' using an expression one would normally use for someone far away."
Sara looked puzzled. "I learnt about that in school as well," she said, "but what's that got to do with Michael in Australia?"
"Well," said Dan, "so there you see, cousin Michael is far away, like the Heavens, but he can listen to what I'm saying. You are very close, like someone on the earth, but I can only 'hear' you, which means you sound very far away and faint."
Dan's mother suppressed a sarcastic comment about people making up all sorts of reasons for not coming to supper when called.
"My teacher told us, that it is because Moses was such a holy man that he was really 'closer' to the heavens than he was to the earth," Sara said. "And because the Torah is talking to everyone it means that we all have the power to be holy like Moses. We can also be 'closer' to the heavens as well, being able to be close to holiness and to G‑d."
"And that's why some people cannot hear when they are being called for supper," said their mother, unable to keep it back any longer.
"Yes, that's true," said Dan, not showing any sign of remorse. "If you are close to Heaven you don't even need to eat supper, do you?"
