Confused Flowers

Photo: Pretty red flower

Despite feeling the oppressive stress of my upcoming finals, I embarked on a hike outside of Jerusalem with a pluralistic group of rabbinical students. The hike was part of my pluralistic rabbinical student group, Rav Siach, put on by Ta Shma. Anyway, the weather is beyond gorgeous: clear, blue sky, sunny and breezy. It was a nice hike with some challenging parts including some steep inclines, slippery descents and prickly branches. But most of it was beautiful as we looked at the greenery around us. We had some great views of the areas where the David and Goliath story supposedly took place and some caves where Bar Kokhba's anti Roman rebels hid out. Walking around looking at the flowers and trees, we saw cyclomen, rakefet in Hebrew, that have small delicate flowers that are specially built to survive the winter. There are few left now and the red poppies are popping up in their place. It seems they are confused by the nice weather into thinking that it is already springtime....

I am excited to spend Shabbat with my father!