Maxwell Institute Podcast

In the land of Israel, rain falls during a single, crucial, season of the year beginning in October or November and continuing through the spring. Lives depended on successful harvests which depended on healthy rainfall. According to the Hebrew scriptures, weather proved God’s blessing or cursing the people of Israel: From the rain of the heavens, you will drink water— a land that the Lord your God seeks out perpetually; the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it from the year’s beginning to the year’s end.  If you heed My commands with which I charge you today to love the Lord your God and to worship Him with all your heart and with all your being I will give the rain of your land in its season, early rains and late, and you shall gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will give grass in the field to your herds, and you shall eat and be satisfied. (Deuteronomy 11.11–15, trans. Robert Alter) In this episode, Julia Watts Belser talks about how rain permeates some of the earliest rabbinic texts.