Do these look like Jews who control the weather?
The historic storm put the sanctuary of Texas’ oldest synagogue under three feet of water.
The stormy weather continued on Monday across Israel, with snow falling in Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and Mount Hermon.
Temperatures in Israel topped 110 degrees as the country experienced its hottest August in five years.
Kon Trubkovich explores the connection between real snow and the static on your TV screen. The Moscow-born artist says he’s exploring the interplay of individual and collective memory.
Most of us will soon forget the recent polar vortex, like other cold snaps and heat waves. But we do so at our peril — especially on Tu B’Shvat, when our tradition tells us to respect nature.
In the Far Rockaways, there is no Red Cross relief, no FEMA, no National Guard shuttling in supplies for the elderly Polish and Russian Jews living in high rises without power or heat. There is no relief for the poor black and Latino families living in low-income housing. The lights haven’t come on, and for many the water hasn’t started to flow. There is no heat, and basic necessities like water and food are scarce. Life may be starting to look a bit like normal in parts of Manhattan, but here in the marginal communities of the Far Rockaways, there are only volunteers, mainly coordinated by Occupy Hurricane Sandy Relief. On Monday morning, when many people headed back to work, I decided to go back to Far Rockaway. We rented a van, donated by a wonderful rabbi’s grassroots fundraising, and picked up volunteers, both strangers and friends. Our motley crew drove to the Occupy Hub in Sunset Park to collect more supplies and make our way to Far Rockaway.
My mom has been a global warming true believer since I can remember. As an avid lover of winter and a careful listener of Al Gore, she thought the evidence was obvious: Our grandparents had snow from Thanksgiving to Passover while we have less and less.
Anyone braving the wintery weather to take a walk on Adelaide Beach in Australia over the weekend would have been in for quite a sight, as protesters posed for an unusual demonstration photo shoot about the lack of public toilets in the area. The protesters are demanding local authorities install in new public facilities and invest more in the upkeep of those already available, which they say are too far from the beach and sometimes in an unsanitary condition. Local shops and cafes have complained that beach-goers are often forced to use their toilets, which disturbs paying customers. Kym Hewitt, local café owner “The public toilets are not up to scratch at all and quiet often we have a lot of people coming through to the cafe sort of not really dressed for the cafe.” But the protest took a turn for the artistic, when local painter and photographer, Andrew Baines, found an aesthetic way to further the cause. Andrew Baines, artistic “I think this is the job of an artist to take these issues to the wider community and let people talk about it.” Baines added that photos of the protest will serve as models for a larger painting which will be exhibited early next year. It has been reported that the local council has heard the call of the protesters and is currently holding consultations to decide where the new facilities should be built.
As shvitzing New Yorkers are glued to the weather forecast, tracking the minute movements (and long-awaited departure) of the heat wave, Israeli poet Ronny Someck divines a different sort of a forecast for us in his poem “Sun Sonnet.”