Jerusalem’s Biggest Blizzard in 2 Decades
This morning I opened my eyes and lay in bed watching Israel’s biggest blizzard since 1992.
With the silent snow falling in the white glowing light, It felt sort of like being in Heaven.
Israel is positively giddy with the snow. During a walk around I saw a group of 50 highly animated yeshiva students bantering in Yiddish as they constructed an igloo. And a man with spiky hair rolling down the window of his black sports car to take a photo as his girlfriend peered around with glee. And hundreds of Jerusalemites converging upon the city’s largest park, Gan Sacher, to throw snowballs and sled on pieces of cardboard and celebrate this white stuff falling in massive quantities from the sky.
Living in Israel, you get accustomed to a lot of infighting. During the elections, especially, there’s a lot of baseless hatred flowing in all directions. For the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing a lot about how the secular Jews hate the Charedim. And the Charedim look down on the secular. And the Sephardim hate the Russian immigrants. And the Russian Immigrants detest them back.
Unfortunately, in Israel it often seems to take a disaster to bring us together. During the terrible intifada and the wars that break out once every few years, we pull together like a crowd of kittens seeking warmth from the raging winter wind in their mother’s bosom.
But my sweetest memories of living here are those magical times when the entire country unites together to celebrate something wonderful, as Israel is today.
Happy blizzard, Israel!
so nice and beautiful. It looks like a bride on her wedding day.
What really struck me was the utter silence (as the silence is also noticeable in NY after a huge snow and the airports etc are shut down. But a silence so stark that a single voice echoes in the street as though someone is speaking in a big hollow stone room! Well, in this pre-election season of difficult strife, HakB”H may be imposing a little silence on us all, to get us to unite and think about what is really important. A little “kol demamah dakka” effect, no?