Rain, Rain, Don’t Go Away…

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven…A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted; A time for slaying and a time for healing…A time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

Millennia-old words, simple and profound. Fourteen binaries that seem to imply that life is neat and compartmentalized; that for every human experience and emotion, there is a time.

But life in Israel is neither neat nor compartmentalized. It is messy and jumbled, and it can be bewildering. Because in Israel, nothing has its own time.

In Israel farmers at the northern and southern bounds of this country plant, even as their fields are being uprooted. And doctors in the midst of healing are called to war. In Israel, children skip to kindergarten while rockets shriek overhead, and brides twirl encircled by radiant, smiling friends, guns bouncing on their shoulders. In Israel, beaches and restaurants bustle, even as the revelers fear for those they love, and music plays from grassy patches as shirtless soccer players, who have seen too much, kick their ball and laugh – at once, boys and men.

In Israel, there is everything. Always. All at the same time.

Except for surrender.

It is a commodity we cannot afford.

So, we don’t slow down. Ever. Lest our enemies misconstrue it for fear. And we don’t break routine, lest they confuse it for defeat. We remain stalwart and we keep going, even as we feel fragile and desperately want to halt. We keep going. Day in and day out. Shigra, shigra, shigra. We are indomitable.

Until it rains.

Or snows. Or there are strong winds.

Then we stop. Hard stop. The radio and TV stations tell us we must. So, we do something Israelis never do- we comply. And then, we do the next thing Israelis never do- we capitulate. Just like that. Offices are emptied and after-school clubs are cancelled. Events are postponed and in-person meetings are transferred to zoom.

When the weather gets bad, Israelis stop. And secretly, we love every minute of it, because it is our only safe surrender.

It is our reprieve from telling our kids to “go” and “do” while our insides are screaming “stay home” and “be safe.” It is a flicker in time when we get to admit that the forces we are up against are big, and fierce, and unpredictable, and that we don’t want to fight anymore. We want to close the front door behind us, take off our shoes, and nestle our weary bodies into our blankets.

We want to be okay being weak.

But only for as long as the lightning lasts.

So, we savor the mugs of hot chocolate because we know that soon enough the sun will begin to peek out from behind the clouds and cars will return to the roads. Our kids will replace their slippers with Blundstones, and as they do, we will put our own armor back on so we can smile for them as they leave.

We will open our windows, savoring the last droplets that drip off the pane, and we will inhale the fresh scent that we know brings with it the paradoxes that make up our lives. As abruptly as the storm rolled in, shigra will resume, and we will go back to laughing and crying, to grieving loss and celebrating life to its fullest, to fighting and loving; to everything at once.

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Yael’s new book, Ezra-Nehemiah: Retrograde Revolution (Koren, 2025) is now available for pre-order at Amazon.