Rain and Resurrection
Friends,
This is the first year I can remember waking up to the sound of pouring rain the day after Shemini Atzeret. I walked to that Simhat Torah morning in the rain, the words of the previous day’s Tefilat Geshem (prayer for rain) entreaty ringing in my ears. Was this actually an answer to our prayers?
It is true that when we pray for rain on Shemini Atzeret, we really are praying for rain to fall in the Holy Land, in eretz yisrael. Still, it led me to stare up at the sky and smile at my Maker.
When rain pitter-patters on our roofs, and we often curse the weather. We are concerned for our clothing, for our hair, for our warmth and for our schedules. The weather at this time of year challenges us to deviate from original plans. Inclement weather gives us grief as we struggle to stay on time and as we yearn for sunshine to help brighten the affect of our days.
Irrespective of our dismay and delay, the parched earth following the summer, here and in Israel, thirsts for the sluices that come with autumn and winter. Without these rains we could not survive. All life on this planet would cease to exist. If there is one thing upon which we depend, with utter certainty we can say the blowing wind and the falling rain. And the Holy Blessed One is just that: the One who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall-mashiv haruah umorid hageshem.
We add this line during this season at the beginning of the Gevurot section of our Amidah-the second blessing detailing the Almighty’s Might. But beneath these four simple words rests significance much greater than a simple addition to our daily prayers. This phrase is a straight-forward epithet for God’s sublime greatness.
And while the beginning of this section is straight-forward, the end is not. Generations have fought over the meaning and semantics of the closing blessing (hatimah) of this second section: Barukh atah Adonai, mehayeh hametim – Blessed are You, Adonai, Who gives life to the dead. This last blessing, a statement of praise extolling God for resurrection, has always been controversial. So controversial that Maimonides taught that in order for a person to be Jewish, s/he had to believe in resurrection. So controversial that the Reform Movement once modified the liturgy of the Amidah to read mehayeh hakol (gives life to all), a much more metaphorical transmission of life, rendering the blessing to suggest a present rejuvenation in place of future resurrection.
Nevertheless, our tradition does encapsulate God’s great power by way of the vehicle of resurrection. God not only is the One who set the world spinning, but God is the same One who can transcend the laws of nature. God gives everything a beginning and an end, but God can also give each end a new beginning. And this resurrection is uniquely tied to the change of the seasons and to the opening of the floodgates in the sky.
But what if this resurrection is not only about the restoration of breath to lifeless souls at the end of days? What if this resurrection happens daily? We look around and we see the changing of the colors of the leaves, just before they fall to the ground, defeated by the wind. We look around and we see the grass fighting through the frost and struggling beneath the piles of fallen foliage. We see the flora around us begin to enter its death stage. And as it withers and dies, God showers over the earth blessings in liquid form. And the cycle of nature ensues: the winds blow and the rains fall.
Some months from now, we will open our doors to the greens of spring and summer yet again. But only because God caused that wind to blow and the rain to fall, for that rain is the power behind mehayeh hametim. The rain is God’s driving force of resurrection.
I smiled up at the sky rejuvenated. I smiled up at the heavens knowing that the Mekor Hayim (source of life) was ensuring that life would continue. And now, every time I hear the wind howl as I utter the words of the Amidah, I am grateful to our Creator for providing each day as another page in the Book of Life and the Book of Death – resurrection the mediator of the two-causing the wind to blow and the rain to fall.
May we all come to feel the wind on our neck and the rain on our cheeks.
Faithfully yours,
Rabbi Avi S. Olitzky
