Rain, Blessed Rain!

It started Friday morning as I was buying food for Shabbat and actually for the entire upcoming week. I was at the checkout counter when the cashier noticed that it was raining outside. After putting all the food in bags and back into the shopping cart, I payed (with a check dated for sometime in February 2006), headed to the car and unloaded the groceries in the car, getting thoroughly wet in the process. I got in the car and called home from the cellphone, in order to tell my wife to take in any laundry in that may be hanging on the clotheslines. There was no answer, because my wife was already busy doing just that.

The rain continued to fall on and off Friday and Shabbat. On the Sabbath day in Jerusalem almost all of the businesses are closed , and there is very little traffic. All of these things combined gave us some nice clean mountain air to breathe this Shabbat. As Naomi Shemer wrote, "Avir Harim Tzalul KaYayin, Vereiach Oranim." (Mountain air clear as wine, and the scent of pines.)

There are some places in the world where rain is thought of as a nuisance. A song of the Beatles comes to mind:

When the rain comes,
They run and hide their heads,
They might as well be dead,
When the rain comes.

What may be true for Liverpool, is certainly not true in Jerusalem. As I mentioned in another post, we are highly dependent here on the winter rains and are very happy when they fall. G-d, please bring us some more!