After the snowstorm in Baltimore, my brother Shmuel Yaakov asked me if we have snow, too. “Not here!” I thought. “It hardly snows in Yerushalayim.” Little did I know what was in store for us only a few days later. When we awoke on Thursday morning to a blanket of white covering everything, I assumed it would be like a regular Baltimore snowstorm: no school for the day but cleared streets by noon. But in Yerushalayim, the dramatic effects of this storm lingered for almost a week! On Thursday there was no school, and the buses no longer ran on schedule. B”H, the grocery stores were open, so we could get some Shabbos essentials, but many other stores were closed, and most of the adults were off from work.

The children were overjoyed to play in the snow, build snowmen, and throw snowballs. Some cute little boys near our building had a great time constructing an igloo, though they had never heard the term before! Teenagers also amused themselves by throwing snowballs at passing cars, most of whose drivers took it in good humor.