Snow

You learn a lot about yourself and your community when relentless weather snarls all your plans . . .

Watching the snowy blizzard outside my window, I can imagine now the upside down blizzard that emanated from this neighborhood when baby Rachel was diagnosed.

I am looking to follow in other's footsteps—to trace the paths that those ahead of me have tested. She is intrigued by forging her own new path where no one has stepped.

We each have to find and define our own individualized path to a relationship with G-d. We must follow the guidelines of our leaders and teachers, but not get lost in the exact emulation of their personal journey.

I looked at it, and I wanted to crawl back under my warm covers. My children saw it, and to them it was something to experience, to feel, touch, handle and manipulate

Learn whether and how one may shovel, make snow forts, salt or otherwise interact with snow on Shabbat.

“Wait!” I say, after sipping a warm glass of tea. (The lemon helped.) “I’ll have my minyan—and then some.”

Before I managed to take the next confident step, I slipped down the snowy hill.

On it’s own, a snowflake cannot do much. It’s too fragile, it melts. To maintain its existence, it must connect with the other snowflakes.

How my decision to venture out into a historic snowstorm on Shabbat brought me closer to Judaism, Torah and my neighborhood Chabad center.