Fires on Hanukkah

The fires burned, the world responded and then, the rains came.

At last word, the Carmel fire took the lives of 42 Israels and consumed 15,000 acres. It has also caused Israel to reassess its emergency preparedness of natural disasters.

International aid, including 13 firefighting planes and helicopters from the U.S., U.K., Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Turkey, France, Russia, Italy and Jordan, helped contain the fire. (Israel currently has no aerial fire-fighting capacity of its own.)

And on Monday morning, Israel time, the rains came.

It was just about that time, too, that the Jews in the diaspora began to add the prayer for "dew and rain," tal u'matar, in the daily Amidah.

Now, we all know that correlation does not equal causality. And I am not suggesting that the prayers of world-wide Jewry brought the rains and put out the fires. Indeed, it took the hard, generous and brave work of the international community to do that.

But still there is poetry in the gift of rain at this moment.

May the last nights of Hanukkah bring a new light, a healing light, an or hadash, to all Israel.