B"H

How To Make Hail

This is a story I have wanted to share for a good number of years,
but it is not the kind of story that one shares with everyone. Thank
you for being people who I can share it with, because the story takes
a large place in my heart and needs to be shared.

Years ago when I was in the most intense stages of learning the
secrets of the Torah I used to sit at my table for many hours each
day and night and learn. The table faced my living room window, which
overlooked the pedestrian street upon which my building was located.
We lived in the Negev desert then. (Parenthetically I must say that I
found the intense heat of the summer in the desert hard to bear
physically, but I love the desert and my Soul is attached to the
desert. My Soul is attached to the southern part of the Land of
Israel and I miss the desert, its sounds, sights, smells and most of
all amazing people terribly.)

Getting back to our story: There was an Arab street cleaner who
worked in the town where I lived. He was a man of almost 60 at the
time, I think. Every day he came to work faithfully, collecting the
trash on the pedestrian street with the utmost
attention to every detail. He worked loyally and serenely day after
day, month after month, year after year. Sometimes the month of
Ramadan falls out during the summer months. During the month of
Ramadan Moslems do not eat or drink anything at all from sun-up to
sun-down. Even during the heat of the month of Ramadan when it fell
out in July the Arab street cleaner would work faithfully, neither
pausing to eat nor drink even water.

He was a kind and gentle man. He and my husband were very fond of one
another. They would stop, shake hands and talk whenever meeting one
another. The children loved him too, and he them.

So it went on for about five years. I would sit and learn and often
watch him from my window when I picked my head up from my studies to
consider a point. Each time I saw him I was astonished and awe-struck
anew by how he could work so faithfully at such menial work, never
evincing the slightest resentment or boredom and do it for a People
not his, on land his People considered us to be intruders upon.

One day it hailed. A wonderful hail storm burst suddenly out of the
clouds. The children were home that day. After the hail stopped
falling the grass in front of our building was covered with hail
stones. The children and I ran downstairs and began scooping the
hailstones up by the handful and eating them.

Suddenly the Arab street cleaner appeared in front of me as though
from out of nowhere. She was smiling as usual. Without any
introduction into the subject matter at all he began to explain to me
how God commissions the archangel Gabriel to create the various,
myriad natural phenomena. I stood stunned as he spoke with his usual
kindness and good humor, but with an authority I had never seen
before.

In my foolishness, not understanding the goodly portion of what he
was explaining to me, I asked him: "How do you know so much about the
angels?" He smiled and his kefiyeh (the scarf-like head covering the
Moslems wear) billowed in a zephyr which came along. Surrounding his
head was a light like none I had ever seen. It was a huge glow, so
huge as to be indescribable. The glow was not transparent I could
see nothing behind it. It was both turquoise and gold at once. I
gasped in astonishment. Then he was gone, as suddenly as he appeared.

The children were agape. "You saw that too?" I asked them. "Yeah",
one of the kids said. "He has a halo!" "You saw the halo too?" I
asked for verification, not sure if I had lost my senses. "Yes" they
nodded. "We saw it too", one of them, my son I think, said. As we
walked into the house my daughter said to me: "Ema (Mommy), I didn't
know you speak Arabic." "I wasn't speaking to him in Arabic, honey,
I was speaking to him in Hebrew", I answered her. My daughter looked
at me squarely and said: "Ema, Hebrew is my language. If you were
speaking in Hebrew I would have understood you. You were speaking to
him in Arabic." The children and I looked at one another in utter
astonishment. Our lives had been touched by an angel. We didn't know
what to make of the experience, but we knew that we had been blessed
and we would never be the same.

I saw the Arab man one more time after that. He told me that he had
been "dismissed" of his work. He told me how sorry he was that he
wouldn't be working there anymore and he began to cry. That was the
last time I saw him. I will never forget him or that day or the way
he waited so patiently for years to pass until I was ready for his
revelation and teaching.

God bless him.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat