Blog/January 2015/Jan 9th

January 9th (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

The dreaded “Jerusalem snowstorm”. Another busy week of work. Weddings and birthdays. It takes a lot out of you!

The local weather authorities had been warning for the past week that Jerusalem and the surrounding areas would be hit with a “major cold weather system” this week, and that Jerusalem in particular “could see up to 50cm of snow”. That’s about a foot and a half, for you non-metric folks — a huge amount of snow for us here in the Holy Land. Because the city’s response to last year’s snowstorm was so anemic and caused so many problems, they decided to be proactive this year and really prepare.

They had 150 snow-plows ready for action. I hadn’t realized there were even 150 snow-plows in the entire country! The mayor of Jerusalem said that he would order the highways leading into Jerusalem to be closed “as soon as any snow falls”. Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the “weather situation room” at the capitol. I didn’t know there was such a thing; after all, the weather in Israel is pretty much the same from year to year, and usually mild. But I’m sure all Israelis were reassured, knowing that Our Leader was Touring and had the Situation under Control.

Israelis are quite unused to inclement weather, and the threat of a (middle-eastern-style) blizzard threw them into a panic. Stores were denuded of produce and essentials as people circled their figurative wagons awaiting the Great Storm, which was scheduled for Wednesday through Thursday. As one person put it, Israelis can handle dozens of rockets falling on them with aplomb, but a snowflake sends them into a panic. Even we were affected: we had a wedding to attend in Jerusalem Thursday night, one of Sarah’s best friends’ wedding — and it was looking like we would be unable to get there. And since my (secular calendar) birthday was Wednesday, we ended up delaying our plans such as they were. Fortunately we have another couple weeks until my (Hebrew calendar) birthday…

Then the storm of the century hit! Well, to make that accurate you would have to start counting the “century” from the day the storm hit, but still — it was indeed a storm. Strong winds of up to 120kmh (about 75mph for you non-metrics) blew branches off trees and interrupted electrical service for thousands of people. The clouds glowered on the horizon, sulkily threatening us with hail and snow and all manner of Cold Things. But alas! Jerusalem was hit with only a minor dusting of snow, and the holy city of Ma’aleh Adummim only received a lot of rain (and branches and leaves…). The north of the country did get snow — almost a meter (about three feet…) on the Golan, and significant amounts in Tsefat and other high locations in the north.

So Thursday arrived, and the winds had died down, there was only a minimal dusting of snow on the high peaks of Jerusalem, and we decided we could brave the roads into the city for Sarah’s friend’s wedding. So we did, and there was no traffic to speak of, and the roads were clear, and we got to see an Ethiopian/Anglo wedding. The young couple will be living in our holy city, so we look forward to having them over for shabbat from time to time.

Now they are forecasting more snow. I hope they forgive me for being a little sceptical.

In other news:

• a decoder ring for Israeli elections
• Apropos that, Feiglin leaves Likud. Just like I told him to do… except for the part of forming his own party
• Another loser tries to be a winner
• Some middle-eastern irony
• And cherry-picking data is never good science

The saga of 8th continues to unfold. We’re planning on making the first public release this coming week. In preparation we spent some time trying to convince “Google” and “Bing” to know about our site, and we updated our site with some more information. My beta-testers have continued to give good feedback, and the time has come for me to make the determination as to what will or will not be in the 1.0 release. That’s not so hard, since in the few days remaining there’s not too much damage I can do. So next week’s blog should have the announcement of our public release, and hopefully we’ll be able to start counting customers as well.

Besides ourselves, we have no idea who’ll be here this shabbat. On the menu:
soup, salads, pastel de papas, and leftover birthday-cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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