And the bartender says“is this some kind of joke?”

Ok! So now I have your attention ( hopefully) this story is not actually set in a bar.

( I mean, what WOULD the Imam drink?). Actually the real story involves several of the aforementioned esteemed leaders of their respective flocks. But gathered together on the shores of Lake Kinneret at Kibbutz Ein Gev and the Muslim village of Wallaja.

Almost exactly I year ago, at the end of a particularly dry summer, the winter rains had not arrived. What to do? Of course . it was obvious! Gather together a group of religious leaders ( the more religions, the better) and inform God that he needs to stop whatever it is he (or she) is doing and concentrate on filling up Lake Kinneret ASAP.

I guess the thinking was, that if God could be approached from a few different directions

at the same time , the effect would be greater and he would HAVE to pay attention. And having a sprinkling of different languages wouldn’t hurt. And if that wasn’t enough, then a few burst from the shofars ( ram’s horns) would be sure to wake him up. The efforts were not confined to the Lake shore and the village.

Chief rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar have decreed special days of fasting and prayer in response to the drought. The first of the fasts was yesterday, and the second will be on Monday.The rabbis also wrote a special prayer for rain and urged worshipers to insert it into the daily prayer service on every day when the Torah is read (Monday, Thursday and Saturday)

Of course, the lack of rain was our collective fault for being bad and sinful during the previous year:

“The summer is over, but we still haven’t been saved by a blessed rainfall,” the rabbis began the letter they sent this week to municipal and neighborhood rabbis both in Israel and abroad. “The water situation in the Land of Israel is one of great need and distress, especially because this is not the first year in which there has been a drought and the land has dried up, due to our multitude of sins. This requires us to seek out the reason. Our obligation in this situation is to examine and scrutinize our actions, to draw nearer to God with all our hearts and to pour out our supplication to him with a broken and downcast heart.”

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/never-ending-summer-sends-rabbis-imams-priests-to-pray-fo, the r-rain-1.326893

So now you know – be good and it will rain like hell!

I’m not sure that there is any evidence about the success or otherwise of all this beseeching and supplication.

And did anybody consider the possibility of TOO MUCH rain? It has been known to happen in this region. I recall a story (fable, legend, fairy tale) about a certain Mr Noah who got advance notice of the last flood. Luckily, he paid attention- or where would we be today?

And as for the power of prayer – who knows? If it rained, then the claim would have been that prayer worked and God acted. And if it didn’t, that meant that, either God had other plans , and who are we to question? Or we simply had not atoned sufficiently for our sins.

So we have to live with the punishments.

No watering the garden.

No washing the car with a hosepipe.

And a good excuse to raise the price of water

On the positive side, we could always conserve water by showering with a friend.

Andyboy – Telling it as it is!

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