I’m an avid reader of the Australian Jewish News – it’s a wealth of news about Israel.
There’s a couple of regular columnists that contribute and I love to read their stuff, it’s so interesting!
Take Yossi Aron for example, he writes a column called Sichat Yosef which, roughly translated means Laws of Work and Rest. Â Yossi is the AJN’s religious editor, and in this week’s print edition he talks about the drought. Â Oh, that’s the drought in Israel. Â Looks like it’s dry there. Â Really dry.
He says:
Nevertheless, even in this modern era, many agree that when all else fails, it is time to turn to prayer.
Well, I agree with that, when nothing else works, then why not try prayer, it rightly belongs on the bottom of the list, just below ‘wishful thinking’
He tells us that some rabbi’s got together and jumped into a hot air balloon to go up and pray for rain. Â I thought that sounded just like madness and a joke, so I went and checked, and yep. sure enough, that’s just what they did. Â I’m not sure why they thought this was a useful thing to do, perhaps they took some water to tip over the edge.
Yossi goes on to tell us that the jewish response to drought is to fast. Â I guess that makes sense, best to not eat much in case you can’t grow more food. Â However, in this day and age it’s probably better to simply import your food from somewhere where there is plenty of food.
And, at what point, when it finally does rain, are you able to claim that it was your prayer that god finally heard and allowed the rain to fall? Â An hour after the prayer? Â A day? Â A week? Â A few months? Â Sometime next year?
And why do you need to prayer for rain?  Is god so inattentive that he just misses the fact that his chosen people are having a bad year, is he busy helping the christians fight gay marriage in California and he’ll get back to you when he’s free?  Or is god just a bastard that would sooner see people starve than allow the water to fall from his sky.
So, next time you flush, just think, could that water be put to better use.