Raining Down

When it rained on Noah and his family, it rained for forty days and forty nights. This was no mere case of scattered showers: “All the fountains of the great deep burst apart, and the floodgates of the sky burst open” (Bereshit 7.11).

Last Wednesday, the Jewish calendar turned over to the winter season, the rainy season. In our daily prayers, we stop calling on God as the one who “brings down the dew” and instead address God as the one who “brings down the rain.”

Right on cue, the rains fell in Jerusalem. Friday afternoon, as I rushed home to dress for Shabbat, the Jerusalem sky became dotted with grey rain clouds, low and patchy, leaving swaths of blue sky and rays of yellow sunlight. I thought, if I were a deer, I could jump gracefully between the rainy spots and avoid getting wet. It was the kind of sky and rain and mood a photographer relishes—all shadow and contrast.

I don’t really like the rain. Perhaps I should rephrase. I don’t like going about my daily chores and activities in the rain. If I could sit by my window and look wistfully at the interplay of grey and blue in the sky and imagine stories from the forms of the clouds, I would love the rain. But I don’t like umbrellas or wet cuffs or ugly waterproof shoes or feeling cold and clammy.

It’s raining in Jerusalem, and it will be on and off for the next few days. And, from what I hear, this is what winter in Jerusalem is, or at least, this is how it begins. It is the season of the rains.

And even though I don’t really like the rain, the rain in Jerusalem is different. In Israel, there’s really no fall (I do miss the drama of the leaves’ changing in Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, in the Hudson Valley, and in Prospect Park). But the change of seasons here happened, and happened noticeably. During the summer, I almost never saw a single cloud in Jerusalem. Now, clouds and rains are becoming an expected part of the horizon. It’s making me think about rains and seasons differently, in a more agricultural way. These are the rains that will nourish the crops I will purchase at the shuk later in the year. These are the rains that will determine the success or failure of much of the economic life of Israel and her citizens and residents.

Of course I know that rain everywhere is crucial to human sustenance. But I am simply more aware of this fact in Jerusalem, where I cannot readily find every type of fruit or vegetable in the local market, where my dinner table follows more closely the seasons of the year.

Rains can also be floods, of course, but even the flood we read about this coming Shabbat in the story of Noah ends with a promise, a covenant. Part of that promise is God’s reassurance to us that the rhythm of the world will continue: “So long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Bereshit 8.22).

For the first time in my life, I am praying for rain. I don’t mean that I am engaging in some kind of “rain dance”; I don’t believe that I need to ask God for rain else we face a drought. Rather, I am including in my daily prayers an acknowledgement of the importance of the rhythm of the seasons—even the seasons I don’t enjoy. I am grateful for the rain. I am grateful that the year has a rhythm we can at least in part predict, that the seasons repeat and endure. There’s something comforting about the rains in Jerusalem, and something comforting about the fact that they rolled in right on cue.

In Joel, the prophet urges us to be glad: “Rejoice in the Lord your God, for [God] has given you the early rain in kindness, and now makes the rain fall as before—the early rain and the late—and threshing floors shall be piled with grain, and vats shall overflow with new wine and oil” (Joel 2.23).

Perhaps this is the wine I’ll drink at Passover, at my table in Jerusalem, the Holy City, in Israel, an ancient land of deserts and mountains—a thirsty land that needs the rain falling outside my window.

Touring Israel

Several of you have noticed the long lapse in posts, and I hope to be more on top of things as the semester gets rolling again after our long break for Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (the holiday break ends on Tuesday with Simchat Torah). I am cheating on this post by directing you to my pictures site. Rachel came for a visit; we spent the first few days in and around Jerusalem (and went to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea), then traveled with friends to Haifa (making day trips to Caesaria, Rosh HaNikra on the Lebanese border, and Akko), and ended up with a visit to Rachel's family in Tzfat.

Turning and Returning

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, doesn’t come like a bolt out of the blue. The entire preceding month offers opportunities—personal and communal, formal and impromptu—for teshuva, often translated as “repentance” and related to the word “return.” Some Jews pray for forgiveness in the synagogue, pouring out emotion, crying, throwing up their hands. Some ask others for forgiveness, initiating honest conversations about wrongdoings of the past year. Yom Kippur itself, the day of judgement, begins with Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur, and ends at Neila, the closing of the gates, when Jews ask God to forgive us as an entire community, acknowledging our own small existence relative to God’s power.

In Brooklyn, I would walk to shul on Kol Nidre among the diversity of people in my neighborhood. Some, observing the custom of not wearing leather on Yom Kippur, I could spot straightaway as Jews walking to synagogue—dressed in fancy clothing but donning flip-flops, for example. Most were on their way to the park if it were a warm night, or headed to dinner, or coming home from work, relieved. In Jerusalem, I walked out of my apartment building to find dozens of people in the street, many wearing either the white kittel (a garment worn most by Orthodox men, resembling the garment that will cover them in death and burial) or wearing white clothing more generally—both serving as reminders of the unique and awesome significance of this day, the day on which God decides our ultimate fate. It seemed like everyone was headed to the same place, for the same purpose. This turning felt nearly automatic, not even a conscious choice.

Walking to shul on streets empty of cars, with traffic lights taking a rest for the entire day, in a community and a city where most of the other people on the streets were also headed to pray, I started to ask myself about turns and returns. What happens next year, when the walk to shul on Kol Nidre again becomes a choice I make? If my decision to pray on Kol Nidre, to fast and spend the entire day in shul on Yom Kippur, is challenged, how will I respond? What kind of turns will I take?

In many ways—and these ways are complicated by the fact that I am a Reform convert, a woman, and a lesbian—being a Jew and not living a Jewish life in Israel would be impossible. On Shabbat in Jerusalem, buses stop running and businesses shut down. There is practically a shul on every corner and people walk around the city dressed in their finest, celebrating and gathering with friends. I have a community of people to share Shabbat dinner with every week. The school year and the work year here run according to the Jewish calendar. The entire country, in one way or another, observes Yom Kippur (whether in synagogue or not). On Kol Nidre, after services were over, I walked with my friends to a nearby neighborhood. We must have seen hundreds of others dressed in white, walking, in the middle of the street, past closed shops and restaurants.

Teshuva for me begins this year and carries into the next. I hope that I can turn my own Jewish practice back in Brooklyn a bit towards Jerusalem. Just as we face East, face Jerusalem, face the Temple, face the Holy of Holies when we pray, I want to turn my “home” observance toward this place, where Judaism infuses nearly every aspect of life.