Why were we given this gift of the lovely snow, so briefly here, so quickly gone?
Unlike rainstorms that come crashing down accompanied by thunder and lightning, the snow falls stealthily, like a whisper in the night. When you go to sleep, there is nothing remarkable about the streets outside, the usual black asphalt on the roadway, the gray sidewalks. But when you wake up in the morning, the world has been transformed. White, white, only white everywhere. The renowned verse from Yeshayahu 1:18 springs to mind: “Im chataeichem kashanim, kasheleg yalbinu — If your sins are red as scarlet, they shall become white as snow.” There is nothing more pure or more lustrous than a mantle of freshly fallen snow.
What a pity to despoil it with our soiled shoes, to violate it with our muddied tires. If only we could let it be, let it remain there untouched and unsullied. But life must go on, milk has to be bought, errands have to be run, davening and Torah study must continue.
As the day moves on, the snow stops falling, the air is less cold, children frolic, people and autos and buses begin moving about. The snow is no longer pure white, and begins to turn yellowish and murky. Toward evening it is transformed into a dreary concoction of gray and black eddies of water.
But if you do not despair and gradually scrape away a thin layer of slush, you discover that the unsightliness is only a surface layer and that beneath all the soot and grime there begins to emerge once again the fresh, pristine, original snow.
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