Let it Rain! Let it Rain! Let it Snow!

בס''ד

Although, over Shabbat the rest of the county was blessed with abundance of rain, Mount Hermon Israel’s winter wonderland received an abundance of snow.This will make skiers very happy.

Tel Aviv recorded the most rain with 200mm. I don’t know the official amount for Ma’agalim, in the Negev, where we live, but I can attest to the fact that we had a lot of rain and at times very high winds and it is still raining.

Lake Kinneret Israel’s major water source received some help from the rain, but the water authority said it is still in terrible trouble. The shortage has been disastrous for the past seven years and Lake Kinneret now is almost 68 centimeters under the bottom red line.

The last time I saw a major snow storm was in 1999 when I went back to Toronto to visit my mother a”h who was in the hospital. I remember walking in snow knee-high with the wind blowing and the temperature with the wind chill was -50F. Those were the days……..

 

Living in the Negev, we will never have snow… that makes my husband very happy, but sometimes I really do miss a good blizzard. Whenever the temperature drops and they forecast snow for areas 1 kilometer high and more, some of my grandchildren, who live in Gush Etzion, can hardly wait. Their kibbutz is 900+ meters high.

 

A few years ago when the area was having a major snow storm, my children and grandchildren who live in the Negev, came to the Gush, to play in the snow. They took back a pail of snow, to bring to gan [kindergarten] the next day for ‘show and tell’. 

One day dreaming about winter and snow I wrote this poem.

Winter

The snow is falling,

the wind is gently blowing,

as I look out of my window

at the winter wonderland.

 

The trees are dressed

in their beautiful white clothes.

The children are playing and rolling in the snow.

I see someone built a snowman with a carrot nose

and charcoal for eyes and a mouth.

Cars are careful not to slip and slide.

The snow is still falling

the accumulation is starting to rise.

 

The weather report says 15 inches.

Tomorrow the sun will shine

and today’s beautiful snow

will start to melt.

 

A winter wonderland

has many beautiful sights.

BUT……………

For me

I’ll take the long lazy days of summer

with it’s cool, cool nights.

 

January 5, 2005. 

Until next time

Miriam   

בס''ד

Let the Fun Begin!

Shalom everyone! I hope everyone had an easy fast.

Now that the two biggies Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are over it’s time to have fun. This Shabbat is the first day of Sukkot. We will have to wait until the first day of Chol H’Moed to wave the Luluv and Etrog.

On Moetzi Yom Kippur my husband and son put up the frame for our succah. It’s a tradition that after asking Hashem for forgiveness all day on Yom Kippur, that we start off on the right foot with a mitzvah of at least starting to put up the succah.

In our neighborhood and I’m sure in yours too, we could hear banging until very late at night.

Sukkot is very different in Israel than where I come from in Montreal, actually Chomedey, a suburb of Montreal. I can remember more than one Sukkot, my brother and I eating in the succah with snow gently falling all around us.

Boy was it cold! But we had a succah and we couldn’t let the fun and mitzvah of eating in the succah go to waste because of a little snow. The steam from the hot chicken soup would curl up to the roof. My father a”h would make kiddish in the succah and he and my mother a”h would then eat their Yom Tov meal in the house. One year, after I was married, it snowed on Sukkot and my husband joined my parents in the house. All I can say was that he was too ‘chicken’ to eat in the succah. I know of people who put heaters into their succah.

My parents would hang lollypops in between the decorations and on Chol H’Moed invite the neighborhood children to come and find a lollypop. Every kid on our street would come.

I have some great stories of my parent’s succah. Like the time when my parents who lived on a ground floor duplex and came home one day to find their Greek neighbor drawing a pattern for windows on the outside of the succah. He wanted to do a ‘mitzvah’ for them by cutting out windows to give extra light.

The succah is supposed to remind us of B’nei Yisrael who lived in ‘succah huts’ during the 40 years of wandering in the desert. Many people today live, eat and sleep in their succah.

Now in Israel it is easy to camp out in a succah. The weather is genually nice [we don’t usually get the rain until after Sukkot] but in Canada, the wind is already blowing cold air. It could be raining or snowing.

I remember one year in Hamilton, there was a terrible wind storm at night and in the morning everyone found their succah in shambles all over the place. Camping out in a temporary built succah shaking from the wind is no picnic.

So why do people do it? The answer is simple. Sukkot is a seven day [eight days in the diaspora] holiday of joy, where we express our complete trust in G-d. So what’s a little wind............

Since the succah is our temporary home for a week, it is fun to decorate and personalize our home.

In our family, decorating is my job and pleasure. Every year, I try to out do my decorating creations from the year before. Sometimes it’s fun not to grow up..........


Here are some pictures of our succah.

Wishing everyone Chag Sukkot Sameach!

It has become ‘fashionable’ in some circles to organize a boycott of Israeli products, universities & professors, team players etc. I would like to tell you about a group who is fighting back. Buycott Israel is a joint project under the coordination of the Canada-Israel Committee.

Their link is: http://www.buycottisrael.ca/about.php

This is their symbol.

I have written two previous blogs about being diagnosed and living with diabetes [see archives]. About a month ago, I started writing a blog about my diabetes for a health site called Everyday Health.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/diabetes/type2/understanding.aspx

This site has a daily newsletter called Managing Diabetes. If you are interested in seeing my blogs, they can be found at:

http://www.everydayhealth.com/blogs/diabetes-tpe-2-the-ins-and-outs

Saba Avraham and I would now like to brag and we are shepping nachas. Our 8 year old granddaughter Adi submitted a picture she drew to the Makor Rishon newspaper, and it was published in their last Shabbat’s edition....So to our published artist Adi....Kol HaKavod!

original picture

published picture

Until the next blog........

Please feel free to comment and pass my blog around.

Miriam