I’ve never understood why it says in the Zohar there’ll have to be a big snowstorm in Jerusalem before Mashiach comes — until this past week. 

Erev Shabbos as the snow starts to fall I get a little piece of understanding why and how snow could add to the advent of the process.

Slowly the family starts waking up.

“Is there school or not?”

There is but somehow we all decide to be weather forecasters and declare a snow day.

Ten minutes later the snow slowly begins.

Where there would usually be a few “squabbles” instead there’s excitement. Snow creates an entirely new reality a palatable peace that covers rusty pipes and gas balloons. Even my older sons talk nonstop about snow for the entire morning looking out windows calculating how much three feet would cover. So many try to grow up so fast passing over childhood until the snow comes and the child inside reemerges.

Everyone wants to go outside together to play in the snow. To see it. To take pictures of it. To touch it. As I’m gathering the winter parts — gloves hats scarves and one pair of remaining ski pants — the snow turns into rain.

One son who said he wants to go to the top of the hill to look at all of Jerusalem covered in snow makes excuses for the rain so it wouldn’t be as if G-d had let him down. He says “This is snow in Jerusalem.”

His disappointment is so deep I say “It’ll snow just for you.”

He goes to sit and read. Suddenly a few flurries start to fall.

Then more and more.

He jumps to the window calling all his brothers and his one sister. Everyone rushes to the back sliding glass doors. The flakes become huge. “We never saw snowflakes like these in all our lives” my husband and I keep shouting with childlike joy.

The newly married regularly shy couple that lives downstairs comes over to borrow batteries for their camera. They ask if we can take their picture while they pose together in the snow. Their first-year snow picture.

My youngest son poses on the patio without a coat and hat standing perfectly still for minutes while huge flurries fall all over him.

Another son calls from Beit Shemesh trying to figure out a way wanting desperately to get home to share in the snow with everyone.

But the roads are already closed.

It’s a little bit of a scary feeling hearing that kind of yearning to come home and being blocked from it. It probably sets off an ancient implanted historical wandering post-pogrom feeling.

Neighbors come out and play together. These kinds and those a blanket of snow covering all differences.

A true peace falls over Jerusalem.

I cook Shabbos in the kitchen.

I open the window a bit to let out the steam. I can actually see it because of the snow how the gefilte fish vapors make a sharp left turn out the window and head straight for the not-yet religious neighbor’s house.

Actually the neighbor did start to put on tefillin every day. And his 16-year-old son who’s in the army training prep came over to ask if he can borrow two pairs of tzitzis for Purim “the wool ones preferably” he says.

I want to say “You know what they say that what a person dresses up for on Purim is what he really wants to be in his heart” but I restrain myself and just happily hand him the tzitzis.

By the time I get to matzoh balls it’s already raining.

And the snow is gone.

An hour or two later I start to check flour for kishke and challah and watch as sifted flour snows into the kneading bowl. I laugh to myself thinking Mashiach can come now here it is — snow in Jerusalem.