"Who Causes the Wind to Blow and the Rain to Fall."
Right after the end of the holiday last night (5:45 p.m., as you'll recall), Jen and I went out to dinner and watched a DVD afterwards. It was nice just to hang out while the wind was blowing, clouds were forming, and the rain was getting ready to fall because apparently, our prayers for rain worked - it rained hard this morning for about a half-hour here.
One certainly would not have wanted to be in a sukkah when that happened. In future years, once I'm back home, I'm going to have to watch the Jerusalem weather forecast online for the days after Shemini Atzeret to see how close to that holiday does the rain actually start to fall. I'm just thrilled with this year's close correlation of Shemini Atzeret and rain.
The headline of this post ("Who Causes the Wind to Blow and the Rain to Fall") is the line that was added to the central daily prayer yesterday to acknowledge the season and power of rain for an agricultural-based society which lacks rivers. This line is said until Passover, when the rainy season is over and one ought not pray for miracles that can't happen.
The holiday season is over and the country gets back to business. I think it can be equated to the first week of January in the U.S. In the U.S. the time from Thanksgiving to New Year's is just over a month of celebration, parties, and eating and not a lot gets done during that time. I think the same is true here in Israel. Universities start after the hagim (holidays) and stay in session (with a Hanukkah break) until late June. Our friends who are here for their third year of rabbinical school start their orientation this week.
We go back to school tomorrow (Monday) and everyone says, "The Yeshiva doesn't really start until after the hagim." I'm not sure what that means because I feel like I've been working hard and learning a lot over the past month. However, a lot of the studies have been holiday-related. We studied Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot in great detail in our Talmud class.
When we start up again this week, we're going to be studying the Mishna section on Nezikin (Damages), a whole set of laws relating to Jewish civil and criminal law. We'll be focusing on Nezikin for the remainder of the school year. Each year the yeshiva studies a different of the six orders or books of the Mishna. I guess that keeps the instructors from getting bored.
After the rain stopped this morning, I walked to the commercial district to buy printer ink, which I desperately needed. I wore jeans, a long sleeved shirt and a jacket (for the first time yet) but minutes after I hit the sidewalk, the sun came out and it was warm. Thus, I ended up carrying my jacket throughout most of the trip. Others on the streets of Jerusalem were better dressed for a warm fall day. But, I had a pleasant surprise when I put on my jacket as I discovered that I had brought my gloves and had not left them home as I suspected. Whew!
Speaking of jeans, I wore jeans a few nights ago to go to the Old City and Chaya exclaimed, "I've never seen you in jeans!" I replied that it has been too hot for pants up until now. The seasonal change is even having an impact on my fashion.
[Note: Immediately after I posted this, I noticed that Danya also posted about today's rain and she used the same exact headline for her post as I did but her headline is transliterated from the Hebrew. Too cool. I'm still waiting for someone to introduce me to Danya, she's been a blogging hero of mine for a few years. Someone told me that we were apparently in the same place on Friday morning for Hoshana Raba services but I didn't get meet her.]
One certainly would not have wanted to be in a sukkah when that happened. In future years, once I'm back home, I'm going to have to watch the Jerusalem weather forecast online for the days after Shemini Atzeret to see how close to that holiday does the rain actually start to fall. I'm just thrilled with this year's close correlation of Shemini Atzeret and rain.
The headline of this post ("Who Causes the Wind to Blow and the Rain to Fall") is the line that was added to the central daily prayer yesterday to acknowledge the season and power of rain for an agricultural-based society which lacks rivers. This line is said until Passover, when the rainy season is over and one ought not pray for miracles that can't happen.
The holiday season is over and the country gets back to business. I think it can be equated to the first week of January in the U.S. In the U.S. the time from Thanksgiving to New Year's is just over a month of celebration, parties, and eating and not a lot gets done during that time. I think the same is true here in Israel. Universities start after the hagim (holidays) and stay in session (with a Hanukkah break) until late June. Our friends who are here for their third year of rabbinical school start their orientation this week.
We go back to school tomorrow (Monday) and everyone says, "The Yeshiva doesn't really start until after the hagim." I'm not sure what that means because I feel like I've been working hard and learning a lot over the past month. However, a lot of the studies have been holiday-related. We studied Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot in great detail in our Talmud class.
When we start up again this week, we're going to be studying the Mishna section on Nezikin (Damages), a whole set of laws relating to Jewish civil and criminal law. We'll be focusing on Nezikin for the remainder of the school year. Each year the yeshiva studies a different of the six orders or books of the Mishna. I guess that keeps the instructors from getting bored.
After the rain stopped this morning, I walked to the commercial district to buy printer ink, which I desperately needed. I wore jeans, a long sleeved shirt and a jacket (for the first time yet) but minutes after I hit the sidewalk, the sun came out and it was warm. Thus, I ended up carrying my jacket throughout most of the trip. Others on the streets of Jerusalem were better dressed for a warm fall day. But, I had a pleasant surprise when I put on my jacket as I discovered that I had brought my gloves and had not left them home as I suspected. Whew!
Speaking of jeans, I wore jeans a few nights ago to go to the Old City and Chaya exclaimed, "I've never seen you in jeans!" I replied that it has been too hot for pants up until now. The seasonal change is even having an impact on my fashion.
[Note: Immediately after I posted this, I noticed that Danya also posted about today's rain and she used the same exact headline for her post as I did but her headline is transliterated from the Hebrew. Too cool. I'm still waiting for someone to introduce me to Danya, she's been a blogging hero of mine for a few years. Someone told me that we were apparently in the same place on Friday morning for Hoshana Raba services but I didn't get meet her.]
posted by Matt | 2:50 AM
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