The big snow: A story by kids, for kids

The latest Israeli snowstorm of the century dropped about a meter of snow onto the small community where I live, Har Bracha.

For three days, my family was trapped at home and disconnected from power.

My wife saw this as an opportunity to exercise my kids’ creative brain power and write this short story.

The text was written by my kids, aged 3-8, edited by my wife, and illustrated by my 7-year-old daughter.

This book is dedicated to the people of Har Bracha who helped each other during “The Big Snow!”

We heard that it was going to snow. We were so excited. We really hoped that we would be able to play in the snow.

On Thursday morning, it began to snow. We built a snowman and a snow-fort too!

On Friday morning, we woke up and there was so much snow outside. We couldn’t believe how much snow we had. It covered up all of our bushes. Some of them even broke. The snow broke our fort and covered our snowman so that we couldn’t see it at all!

Then the lights turned out for three days!It was warm for us because we had a kerosene heater, but for others it was not. A ton of people came to us. Abba lifted their children up one by one and brought them to our house.

On Friday night we lit a lot of candles. We couldn’t see what we were eating during the meal, but we could taste that it was good. We put our food in a plastic box outside to keep it cold.

That night, some people slept in beds and other people slept on the floor. We used a lot of blankets to stay warm.

The next day, on Shabbat, the snow continued to be almost a meter high! We played inside the whole day since the snow was too deep to walk in.

Some people’s roofs broke open so they came to our house too. We played together in the dark and then we went to sleep. It was difficult to sleep with so many people in the house.

On Sunday our guests left in 4×4’s to their Sabas and Savtas. We stayed home and went for a walk in the deep, slippery snow. Cars were buried so deep that they looked like mountains. The streets were covered in snow so deep that you couldn’t walk down them. Our school was covered in snow.

We came home, we heated up water in a big pot so that we could all take baths in one big bathtub. At night we went to the makolet to buy new flashlights. The walk there was difficult, slippery and cold. We saw generators working.

When we came home, we made a shadow show on the wall with the flashlights. Suddenly the lights came on! We couldn’t believe it, we were finally hooked up to a generator! We heard from people outside who were so excited to get lights in their houses.

On Monday the snow melted so that we were able to see a bit of yellow of the top of our snowman’s hat. The snow began to melt and drip down from our roof. We wanted to go out, but the roads were still too icy.

Now we wonder when we will go back to school, when we will have hot water, when the snow will melt, when our friends will come home, when we will be able to play outside, but mostly we wonder if we will ever see so much snow again.

We know we will never forget “the big snow,” and if we do, we will remember everything from this book.