I’m writing these words while cruising in afternoon sunshine above the clouds in mid-Mediterranean. Yes, we’re on our way to Portugal!

There’s a good story to tell about our negotiation, over the last few days, of the various obstacles placed in our way by a range of commercial and governmental interests. However, as I said to Bernice, I can’t possibly expect you all to sit through another catalogue of bureaucratic woes, not least because, at the end of the day, we actually made it into the air.

So, let’s just say that the last three or four days lasted, for Bernice and myself, about a month, and aged us about a year. Still, no complaints. The actual airport process today was remarkably smooth; ground staff were efficient and helpful; and when we presented the printouts of our Passenger Location cards, the El Al check-in desk clerk held them aloft and announced to the passengers checking in at adjacent desks: ‘You see! This is the document you need.’ I told her that I had never been singled out as the star pupil before, and she promised that after the lesson she would give me a sweet….but did she? Did she heck as like!!

We left Israel at an interesting time, The media today are full of speculation that Bibi Netanyahu is about to strike a deal with Attorney General Mandelblit to avoid serving prison time. Since Mandelblit leaves office at the end of January, this is probably a story that will dominate the Israeli media for the next two weeks, which seems like another good reason to fly to Portugal.

COVID, principally Omicron, is spreading at an alarming rate in Israel…and, indeed, in our own community. Over the last few days we kept hearing about friends and acquaintances who have tested positive. I’m inclined to believe that the wider Omicron spreads the better. Who knows: by the time we return Israel may have achieved close enough to herd immunity for the country to decide that the pandemic is over. Yet another reason to see now as the perfect time to retreat to rural Portugal.

Even the weather decided to encourage us to leave. We had been enjoying an early winter that largely ranged from crisp and clear mild winter weather to warm and sunny, and that featured, at least in our area, only a little, occasional, mostly night-time, rain,

Then, on Friday, winter arrived, even in Ma’ale Adumim. Plummeting temperatures; thick, dark cloud; then heavy driving rain and strong, swirling winds. Staid olive trees, usually the model of sobriety, were tossing their canopies as if they were frisky fillies, and their leaves were chattering like a flock of bickering starlings. My wide-brimmed leather hat, which had spent the previous three years gathering dust on a shelf in the wardrobe, had soon doubled in weight as it drank rainwater. I realise, of course, that I am writing for a worldwide audience, and some of you in North America will be telling me that I don’t know what winter is. However, we all know that there are other factors in determining how wintry it feels. Just as the wind-chill factor can make it seem several degrees colder than it actually is, so a lack of adequate home insulation and suddenly realising that you left your really warm coat in Penamacor can have the same effect.

The end result is that my walk to and from shul on Friday evening was Dickensianly bleak.

If you are reading this on publication day, then you may know that this day is Tu b’Shvat, the 15^th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, which is regarded as the New Year for trees. The reason why trees warrant a New Year is that there are many Jewish laws, of tithing and of enjoying the fruit of trees, that require determining which year of growth the tree is in. Tu b’Shvat marks the beginning of another year in this calculation.

The reason why Tu b’Shvat is chosen for this purpose is because it is taken to mark the transition from winter to spring. Here we come to one of the curious features of the Hebrew calendar. It is largely a lunar calendar; however, it is also a calendar that, in many of its festivals, is agriculturally based, which means that it needs to be a solar calendar.

The way in which these two are reconciled is that, in every cycle of 19 years, there are seven leap years, in which not a single extra day but an entire extra month is added. This creates an irregular pattern in which, typically, for a couple of 12-lunar-month years the Hebrew calendar edges ahead of the Gregorian, so that Pesach, for example, can end up falling in later March and Rosh Hashana in early September. There then follows a leap year, and suddenly Pesach is in mid-April and Rosh Hashana in late September.

It so happens that this year is a leap year. In two weeks’ time a leap-month will be added. This means that, this year, Tu b’Shvat is close to being as early as it can be in the solar year. As I walked to shul on Friday, with the freezing rain driving horizontally into my left ear, I wondered in what sense this could be considered to be two days before the end of winter.

Then, as I walked back from shul, with the freezing rain driving horizontally into my right ear, I started to see that this can serve as a reminder that we cannot take the patterns of the natural world for granted. The uniqueness of the Jewish calendar accentuates this, and makes it clearer for all to see; but we all know, even following the solar calendar, that we can have an Indian summer, that we must ne’er cast a clout till May be out (don’t strip off a layer of clothes before June), and so on.

Perhaps the period in the Jewish year when we feel this most strongly is the period when we throw ourselves on the mercies of Nature most explicitly. In Sukkot, when we move out of our houses and into our booths. I know this doesn’t hold true in Montreal, for example, but in Israel, Sukkot can bring almost any weather. There are years when we have to retreat from the sukka because the sun is relentless. And then there are the years like one of our first Sukkot in Maale Adumim, when the heavens opened halfway through our first night meal, and the storage compartment under the sofa bed became a swimming pool in a matter of minutes.

Experiences like these remind us that we are not the masters of Nature, and that Nature possesses the force to nurture us or destroy us. Such reflections serve to curb any hubris we might otherwise feel, and make us appreciate all the more sweetly the bounty of Nature when we are privileged to enjoy it.

P.S.: It’s now 7:45 here (here being in a very warm bed in a very cold house in Penamacor) or, in other words, 45 minutes past posting time. Since my body, despite its long day yesterday, thinks it’s 9:45, I can no longer attempt to get back to sleep. So I thought I would send the blog out.

We landed on time and were swiftly through the airport rigmarole and driving across Portugal on a very dark but still and dry, though cloudy, Portuguese night. We arrived around 10:15 local time, and, after the warmest of welcomes from the kids’ dog Lua, who clearly remembers us, and a brief catch-up with Micha’el, we collapsed into bed.

However, since Tao has not yet crept into our bedroom this morning, and we haven’t yet had a chance to see him since we arrived, you’re going to have to wait to see him as well. No pictures this week, I’m afraid.

P.P.S.: Just as I was about to post, someone wandered into the bedroom, so you, and we, have struck it lucky.