Spring began in Nisan and on Pesach we stopped saying
morid hagoshem or requesting Hashem vesein tal
umottor livrochoh in Shemoneh Esrei. It is natural
that at such a time we review what last winter brought in its
wake: very heavy rainfall and damage caused by howling winds,
cold, and stormy weather in Europe.
It is difficult to remember the harsh winter months now that
we are warm. Weather forecasters are sometimes dumbfounded
when faced with the "weather's elusiveness." The almost
unpredictable weather reminds them that a force higher than
man exists. A Divine power changes the weather and seasons,
controls the storms, rains, and snows.
Last winter's damages were not felt so keenly in Eretz
Yisroel but it caused heavy damage abroad. France, for
example, was one of the countries that suffered the most.
Apart from human casualties and damaged possessions, the
storm that hit France impaired the pride of France, part of
its national heritage and one of the most visited historic
sites in Europe.
The Gardens of Versailles, built in the seventeenth century,
were the masterpiece of the noted landscape architect Andre
de Notre. These classical gardens, whose design was
influenced by the Italian Renaissance, were created for Louis
XIV of France. The Gardens of Versailles are "beautiful but
immaculate, formal, hard, elaborate, and logical, with
straight lines, circles, trees, and hedges tamed into
geometric shapes and with compartmentalized beds for flowers"
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999). This exquisite
garden, designed to be a place of entertainment and pleasure
for kings and nobility, was totally destroyed last winter.
After the tempestuous winds, an Israeli reporter stationed in
Paris made an appointment to meet Allen Bartan, head gardener
of the Palace of Versailles. To reach his rendezvous it was
necessary to cross the park of Louis the XIV. " `What could
be more poetic than a winter walk in the fascinating Gardens
of Versailles,' mumble some readers lucky enough to have
visited this enchanting royal palace. You are greatly
mistaken! After the December storm that struck France, my
morning walk was similar to taking a trip through a
battlefield. This is really what it was like. Everywhere were
uprooted trees, broken branches and gaping pits. In the
background was the sound of chain saws and occasionally the
disturbing roar of trees that had been left hanging between
heaven and earth tumbling to the ground. The morning fog was
diluted like white smoke being blown away by the wind and a
pungent smell of burnt wood hung in the air. The ghastly and
frightening picture is very far from the splendor that the
name Versailles brings to mind."
When the reporter reached the meeting, the head gardener
immediately sensed that his guest was thoroughly shaken by
his morning trip. "You didn't see anything yet, really
nothing," he quickly added and invited him to tour "the parts
of the garden that were truly damaged. Please wait and we
will enter the closed-off area."
The reporter wrote: "I jumped into Bartan's jeep and in a few
minutes we were deep in an area temporarily closed to the
public. I understood right away what my host meant. Two
hundred year old -- or more -- pine trees were cast on the
ground like scattered matches. Next to them were open pits as
much as three meters deep. Bartan stopped the jeep and we got
off to look at the mighty trees that had been humbled by the
winds. Almost a month has past but this sight shook me too.
The head gardener gazed at what was left of his kingdom and
said softly: `This was simply Hiroshima! It resembled how
Hiroshima was like after the atom bomb.'
"All of France shares this feeling of shock with Bartan. It
is truly so. A foreigner might have difficulty understanding,
but the first place to which the prime minister of France
hurried after the storm that cost dozens of lives was the
gardens of Versailles. No one was wounded in Versailles, but
many Frenchmen felt that one of their most precious treasures
had been destroyed. When millions of people throughout France
were without electricity and many were homeless, Prime
Minister Lionel Jospin grieved over the gardens of
Versailles. He landed his official plane in Versailles and
solemnly reviewed the damages."
The main gardener himself suffered from the frightening
storm. The yard of Bartan's house looked like a lumberyard.
Dozens of gigantic trees that had fallen, lay there "ever
since that bitter and fatal morning of December 26."
Standing near his house, Bartan reconstructed the fearful
moments of that fateful morning: "About six o'clock in the
morning we were woken by a noise, a terrifying sound. The
howling wind blew with such strength that it was impossible
to hear the trees falling. They were quietly uprooted and
fell silently."
The next morning he realized that the removal of 10,000
dislodged trees and tens of thousands of broken branches that
fell in every corner of the garden would take several months.
Replanting would last years and would cost 132 million francs
(about 25 million dollars).
"It will take more than a century to return the park to its
old glory, if this is at all possible," clarified Bartan.
"But we cannot reconstruct what was really here."
He painfully described the "historical and botanical
significance" of what happened in concepts unfamiliar to
those who are not professionals. He added that the "trees
brought from America and planted by Marie Antoinette (the
wife of Louis XVI -- she and her husband were guillotined
during the French Revolution) in 1783 were uprooted. A
special tree from Corsica (off the west coast of Italy)
planted here for Napoleon's enjoyment, when he lived in the
Le Grand Trianon chateau 200 years ago, was also uprooted. It
is true that we will plant replacements but they will not be
the same trees that saw the king riding on his horse, that
remember the queen walking with her entourage. It will not be
the same thing."
The reporter asked Bartan, the head gardener, how his
predecessor, the original architect of the Gardens of
Versailles, would react if he saw this destruction.
"Doubtless he would be deeply shaken to see the palace
gardens in their present condition," he answered.
This reminder prompted the head gardener to summarize the
historical message, the moral lesson, we can learn from the
violent storm that destroyed these gardens: "Louis the XIV
tried to show that he dominated everything, that even nature
and what grows obeys the `Sun King.' The gardens were
designed to show the king's superiority, his absolute control
over everything. Now, 300 years later, the storm arrives and
destroys everything in its wake and proves to the `Sun King'
who is really stronger, who really rules."
An Israeli newspaper published in France called Here is
France expressed the same feelings in an editorial. The
article explains that the storm demonstrates to us that
although a united Europe can become an economic and
technological superpower competing with the U.S.A., man is
still the same as in the distant past, utterly helpless.
"Sixty million Frenchmen and tens of millions of other
Europeans were left exposed to the frenzy of the Atlantic
winds and the intensity of the rain. The storm destroyed
three hundred million trees, which are five thousand square
kilometers of forest, about a quarter the size of the State
of Israel. Modern technology was unable to help. What does it
matter to the wind that satellites can easily monitor a
gigantic forest whose area is ten thousand square kilometers?
Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen living near the ruined
forests still do not have electricity or telephones. They are
growing accustomed to a nineteenth century way of life:
family evenings around a kerosene lamp ending with an early
night."
I have quoted the reactions to the enormous damages caused by
the winter storms to show that after such climatic damage
every person reaches the correct conclusion: that he is
merely a helpless creature in Hashem's creation. All of man's
wisdom and technological prowess will not prevent the Creator
of the World from carrying out His Divine plans.
The winter has passed and spring has arrived. Man feels free
of the threat of cold weather and the fury of storms. He
feels the pleasant and balmy air, a period when everything is
blooming. A feeling of superiority, that nothing will happen
to him, is liable to strike him. During this month the Torah
commands us: "Observe the month of springtime . . . for in
the month of springtime Hashem your Elokim took you
out of Egypt by night" (Devorim 16:1).
Nisan was chosen to head the year for the Jewish Nation. As
the head of our year it is in counterbalance to the other
nations who also see in the beginning of spring a new start.
But for them it is only physical.
Man's delight at spring's beginning is liable to cause him to
focus on the blossoming "nature." This is but a short step to
a heretic erosion of values making a Jew forget his
obligation in his world. The Torah therefore commands us
during this month: "Pull your hands away from avoda
zorah, take sheep and slaughter the idols of Egypt and
make the Pesach" (Shemos Rabbah 17:2). Precisely at
this time, at springtime, we must remember that Hashem rules
over the creation, and all changes happening at this season
are not "natural processes."
This is how the Chasam Sofer zy'a explains the
posuk, "This month shall be for you the beginning of
months; it shall be the first month of the year for you"
(Shemos 12:2). "We can differentiate between
"beginning" and "first." "Beginning" is only something the
nation has agreed upon to start with. "First" is something
having its own importance that makes it first. Actually in
the cycle of the mazolos nothing starts or ends. When
the sun reaches the mazal of Tleh (lamb--Aries)
in Nisan and vegetation starts growing from the earth, people
agreed to call Nisan the "beginning." Indeed Hashem made
miracles for Yisroel during this month and in it Hashem chose
Yisroel to be the nation close to Him. Nisan is holy and is
in essence "first." The month that was until now the
beginning of the months will be `for you' the "first" of the
months of the year.
"Tleh is the bechor of the mazolos only
because of general consensus and not because of its essence,
since a cycle does not have a beginning or an end. Those who
have delved into this matter agree that the point between the
Tleh and the Moznaim (scales) are in the center
since they are the boundaries between day and night. Later
they chose the Tleh to be the head since from that
month vegetation starts growing and the animals regain health
and life, but the opposite is true in Moznaim (it is
the beginning of winter). They therefore agreed that the
Tleh would be the bechor and beginning for most
of the world. The difference between `beginning' and `first'
is that beginning is dependent upon a consensus, and is so
even when it is not first in essence. It only receives its
title because we have agreed to appoint it as the beginning.
Something that is the `first' is in essence first even though
no one appointed it to be the head. The Torah therefore says
`This month shall be to you the beginning of months,' meaning
a beginning by consensus and not in essence. However, because
of the miracles performed in Nisan it has become `the first
month of the year to you.'"
Our mussar mentors have taught us that every
reflection about the creation must be guided by a basic
viewpoint: the creation's objective is strengthening
emunah. Maran HaRav Chaim Shmuelevitz zt'l, the
rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Mir, cites Rashi in
parshas Bereishis who emphasizes this message. "Elokim
said: Let there be luminaries in the firmament of heaven . .
. and let them serve for signs" (Bereishis 1:14).
Rashi explains, "eclipses of the luminaries are omens of
ill." But on the next posuk, "And let them be
luminaries in the firmament of the heaven to illuminate the
earth and it was so," Rashi explains that "in addition
they will serve to illuminate the earth."
Rashi is teaching us that although the sun's light and warmth
is what allows the world to exist and without it nothing
would grow in the world, this is only a minor duty. The
luminaries' main duty is to cause man to reflect about the
creation and to learn reward and punishment from it so that
they strengthen themselves in emunah and search for
the truth.
This is the Jewish viewpoint about the change of seasons,
weather, and the whole creation. The harsh windstorms are a
realization of "Stormy winds fulfill His word"
(Tehillim 148:8). When the weather becomes warm and
flowers blossom in the spring we must remember that spring's
real advantage is because it is then that the miracles that
arouse us to emunah took place and only because of
them has Nisan become "the first month of the year to
you."
