Leaky wicks

It’s one of life’s less rewarding jobs: removing the wax that accumulates on the menorah through the eight days of Chanukah. I’ve bought so-called dripless candles like I do every year, but it’s dollars to doughnuts that the wick still won’t be thick enough to prevent the leaks.

As Chanukah approaches, there’s still no sign of winter and, more importantly, no rain, so tonight we’ll definitely be able to light our menorah outside our front door. Lovely though this will be, I’d much rather have a major dose of inclement weather but the Israel Meteorological Service has predicted that this will be a warm, dry winter. We can only hope that a seasonal miracle will bring a wet Chanukah.

People are meanwhile trying all sorts of measures to bring on the rain. Fast days and extra prayers have been called for. This has led to an unexpected positive by-product of the drought: increased local religious coexistence and gestures of solidarity. There have been several inter-faith prayer services such as the one recently held in Al-Walajah, a Palestinian village between Bethlehem and Jerusalem in the West Bank, where Jews, Muslims and Christians gathered together to pray for rain.

Now that’s something to cable home about.