Last week, here in Israel, we began to pray for God to “give us dew and rain to bless the earth” in our daily Amidah. We now find ourselves, after a long, hot summer, waiting for the Yoreh, the first rain of the season — a rain that will soak the dirt and give life to all kinds of plants and little critters.
Preschool children eagerly await the return of snails, hoping to delight in the wonder of their small wet bodies emerging from their protective shell. We as adults, after two years of death and destruction, pray for rain to bless us — a rain that can contain our grief, and soothe some of our pain, that will cleanse the world and make space within us and our society to heal, to grow and to renew.
