Browsing All Posts filed under »jewish holidays«

Tipping the Seasonal Scale

June 6, 2014

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In the Galilee the year is divided about equally into two seasons.  The first, which starts in the fall, can be called the rainy season, although it is more accurately described as the period during which rain may or may not come.  In the second season, quite surely it will not. As one would expect […]

Relating to Wheat

April 12, 2014

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These spring days, the roaring of combines rumbles in the background – rending thick fields of wheat into neat rows of shorn stalks.  In the pre-industrial order of local agriculture, not only would this method of harvesting be unfathomable to a farmer watching from the side, but also the timing.  Why would anyone cut down their good wheat […]

The Garden of New Year

September 4, 2013

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How confusing to celebrate two New Years each year.  Can I pledge allegiance to one of them, or at least find some resonance beyond the occasion for a holiday meal or a midnight kiss? Because I live in the Galilee, from whose agricultural landscape the practice of declaring a New Year at the end of […]

What to Expect from the Heavens

May 11, 2013

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In the broadest of strokes, there are basically two seasons in the Galilee, a brief verdant winter that melds into a vast spring- summer-autumn stretch of dry heat.  Yet at the cusp between the two – as those who have lived here throughout time have come to understand, one never knows what to expect from […]