We are now almost two weeks into the Omer – the 49 plus one days that are counted between Passover and Shavuoth. In a region that has basically two seasons – winter and summer, the Omer, which bridges between them, has always been a period of tremendous climatic uncertainty, with drastic implications for agriculture. So … Read More »
shavuoth
Tipping the Seasonal Scale
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 … Read More »
What to Expect from the Heavens
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 … Read More »
Celebrating First Fruits
The holiday of Shavuoth is fast approaching – a festival which was celebrated in the Old Testament days to mark the wheat harvest. Specifically, the tribes of Israel were mandated to take the first sheaves of the harvest and bring them as a sacrificial offering to the Temple in Jerusalem. The term for this offering … Read More »
The Wheat Harvest
Bucking tradition, I chose Spring to go into hibernation, focusing just about all my energies on my current project, which is researching and writing about wheat as one of the Galilee’s local foods. And while I was buried in books and traipsing around from one fascinating encounter to another, the culinary landscape made its own … Read More »