By Cantor Emma Lutz
Our beautiful Southern California home is known for its first-rate weather. I have to agree…
My husband Adam and I spent the past four years in New York City. Although we didn’t “walk 15 miles in the snow each way,” we had quite a daily trek from our apartment to the subway. In the cold winter months, we craved the mild and tempered winter of our California home. Before our time in New York, we spent a year in Israel. Our homeland, whose capital, Jerusalem, shares the same latitude as Los Angeles, offered us a climate that was familiar and favorable.
Our sacred texts provide us with images of the meteorological landscape of the Holy Land: bountiful harvests (Genesis 8:22), winds blown in from the southern shore (Psalm 78:26), and descriptions of the hoped for rainy seasons (Leviticus 26:4). This past week, we were blessed with heavy rains in our region. Although many of us suffered power outages and it was difficult driving in the downpour, this precipitation offered our thirsty earth a much-needed refreshment.
Living in a Mediterranean climate here in Southern California gives us a unique opportunity to connect even closer to the seasonal cycle of Jewish ritual laid down by our ancestors in ancient Israel. Every single day during these winter months, the liturgy of our Amidah (the central standing prayer of our services) includes a call to God for rain: “Mashiv haRuach u’morid hagashem, You cause the wind to shift and rain to fall.” This primal call to our Creator, this beseeching on behalf of our earth laid down centuries ago by our ancestors, helps connect us to the environment in which we live. Although we pray these words silently on Friday evenings, I invite you to mark them during our standing prayer. Look out the windows of our sanctuary and notice the gentle winds and the miracles of our landscape. Join us for prayer on Thursday or Saturday mornings when we say these words aloud in community. Or perhaps, go out for a walk in one of our rare California rains, don some rainboots, splash a few puddles, and remember these sacred words of our ancestors—our prayer for rain—with gratitude and joy.
