117 millimeters fell in 75 minutes after two years of historic drought. The Sages taught that the key to rain stays in God’s hand alone.
The heavens opened over Israel on Saturday with a force rarely seen in the Land. In Kadima-Tzoran, in the Sharon region, 117 millimeters of rain fell in one hour and 15 minutes, about 100 of them in a single hour. According to the Israel Meteorological Service, that hourly total was the highest ever recorded outside Israel’s coastal plain and the second-highest nationwide, behind 110 millimeters at Ma’agan Michael in November 2024. Streets flooded in Kadima-Tzoran and Even Yehuda. Flash floods raced through the streambeds of the south. Residents were told to stay home. In Moshav Bitzaron and parts of Gan Yavne, a regional power failure left families in the dark for more than 18 hours.
The storm struck after two of the driest years in Israel’s modern history. It came on the 28th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, three weeks after Jews in the Land of Israel began adding the prayer for rain to their daily devotions. And it fell on the Shabbat when synagogues around the world read the story of Abraham’s servant standing beside a well, praying for a sign.
The Numbers
According to Israel National News, Ashdod received 87 millimeters by 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, Kvutzat Yavne 68, and Shavei Zion 48. Tel Aviv recorded 42 millimeters, Zichron Yaakov 37, Haifa and Ashkelon 33 each, and Jerusalem 30. At the Hermon Stream (Banias) Nature Reserve in the north, rangers spotted fire salamanders, the bright orange amphibians that emerge only with the winter rains.
Firefighters and rescue teams responded to dozens of flooding incidents across the country, according to The Jerusalem Post. In Netanya, an elderly couple was pulled from a flooded house. In Kadima-Tzoran, Even Yehuda, and Ashdod, rescuers freed residents trapped in their cars. In Jerusalem’s German Colony, a woman and her dog were rescued from their home. No injuries were reported. The Israel Meteorological Service forecast more rain and isolated thunderstorms for Sunday.
Ynet called it the most exceptional November rainfall event in Israel since 2020. In Tel Aviv, two southbound lanes of the Ayalon Highway near the La Guardia interchange were closed after water seeped through a failed drainage line, cracking the road. In Gan Yavne, the Israel Electric Corporation reported power lines severed by the storm.
The storm broke an extended spell of unusually warm, dry weather, dropping temperatures by 5 to 7 degrees Celsius in a single day, according to Yeshiva World News. The Sharon Drainage and Rivers Authority called it the most intense rainfall event in the region since the winter of 2020, and the Health Ministry warned against swimming at Mediterranean beaches because of contaminated runoff.
The downpour arrives against a backdrop of crisis. The 2024-2025 winter was among the driest since measurements began more than a century ago, with most of the country receiving about half its average rainfall. Yehezkel Lifshitz, director of Israel’s Water Authority, declared it the worst drought in a century. Last winter brought rainfall close to the national average, but the north remained parched. According to Israel’s Hydrological Service, the volume of water flowing into the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, over the two seasons combined was the lowest in 100 years of measurement.
A year ago, as the Kinneret sank 28 centimeters below its lower red line, Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu led students and residents in a mass prayer for rain on its receding shore. “We’re praying not only for the Land of Israel, but for the whole world, that it will be blessed with rain,” he said. He chose the lakeshore deliberately, he explained, “so that the children could see with their own eyes the result of the lack of rain, the shoreline receding meters into the lake, and understand just how vital their prayers are.”
Blessing or Warning
After two years of praying for rain, Israel received a torrent that flooded homes and cut power for a day. That raises a question as old as the Land itself: when rain falls on Israel in a flood, is it a blessing or a warning?
The Bible treats the rain of the Land of Israel as no other book treats the weather of any other land. Egypt drinks from the Nile. Babylon drinks from the Tigris and Euphrates. Israel drinks from the sky, and the Bible makes that dependence the sign of a covenant. The second paragraph of the Shema, recited by Jews twice daily, binds the rain directly to the nation’s faithfulness:
“That I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.” (Deuteronomy 11:14)
The Sages took this dependence literally. In the opening page of Tractate Taanit, Rabbi Yochanan taught that God holds three keys that He never hands to any messenger: the key of childbirth, the key of the revival of the dead, and the key of rain. Rain belongs in that company. Each one brings life where there was none, and each one remains in God’s hand alone. The Sages went further. Rabbi Avahu taught that the day of rain is greater than the day of the resurrection of the dead.
Yet the Bible draws a sharp line between rain and blessing. The prophet Joel promised the people of Zion a specific kind of rain:
“Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for He hath given you the former rain in just measure, and He causeth to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, in the first month.” (Joel 2:23)
The Hebrew phrase is hamoreh litzdakah, the early rain “for righteousness.” The classical Jewish commentators read tzedakah here as proper measure: rain that falls in the right amount, at the right time, soaking into the soil instead of tearing across it. Readers of the Dead Sea Scrolls will recognize the words. The Qumran sect drew the title of its founding leader, the Moreh Tzedek or Teacher of Righteousness, from this very language. In Joel’s prophecy, the righteous rain is the measured rain.
On Saturday, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority filmed floodwater rushing through Nahal Qumran, the streambed below the very caves where the Teacher of Righteousness’s followers hid their scrolls two thousand years ago.
Ezekiel used a matching phrase when he described the redemption of Israel:
“And I will make them and the places round about My hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in its season; there shall be showers of blessing.” (Ezekiel 34:26)
The prophet’s words are gishmei veracha, rains of blessing. The phrase carries a story every Jewish child learns.
The Circle-Maker
In the first century BCE, during a drought in the Land of Israel, the people turned to a sage named Choni. The Mishnah in Tractate Taanit records that Choni drew a circle on the ground, stood inside it, and swore before God that he would not step out until rain fell. From that day he was known as Choni HaMe’agel, the Circle-Maker.
A light drizzle began. Choni declared that he had asked for more. Then the rain came down in fury. The Talmud relates that each drop was large enough to fill the mouth of a barrel. Choni prayed again: “Not for this did I ask, but for rains of goodwill, blessing, and generosity.” Only then did the rain settle into a steady, nourishing fall.
Choni’s prayer teaches what the Bible means by blessing. The people of Israel had asked for rain, and God answered. The answer arrived in two forms, the flood and the blessing, and the difference between them lay in measure. Choni understood that the same God who withholds rain can also send it in a quantity that destroys. He asked for the rain that builds.
Choni’s tomb stands in Hatzor HaGlilit in the Galilee. During past droughts, Israel’s chief rabbis have gone there to pray for rain.
The Water Rose to Meet Her
The deluge fell on Shabbat Chayei Sarah, when the weekly Torah portion tells of Abraham’s servant Eliezer arriving at a well outside the city of Nahor to find a wife for Isaac. Eliezer prayed for a sign, and before he finished speaking, Rebecca came out with her jar. Eliezer then “ran to meet her” (Genesis 24:17).
Rashi, citing the Midrash, explains why he ran. Eliezer saw the water of the well rise up to meet her. Rebecca’s kindness was so great that the earth itself answered it. The water came to her without her drawing it.
The Midrash teaches a principle the Bible repeats from Deuteronomy to Joel to Ezekiel: the waters of the Land respond to the people who live on it. A generation that draws near to God finds the water rising to meet it.
The Sound of Abundance
Israel has prayed for rain for two years. Rabbi Eliyahu brought children to the shrinking Kinneret so they would understand what was at stake. The rain has now come in a single hour of historic force, on the Shabbat of the well that rose to meet Rebecca.
The prophet Elijah knew this moment. After three years of drought, he climbed Mount Carmel, bowed his face between his knees, and prayed seven times until his servant saw a cloud “as small as a man’s hand” rising from the sea. Before a single drop fell, Elijah told King Ahab that he already heard kol hamon hagashem, “the sound of abundance of rain” (1 Kings 18:41).
The abundance is here. The Bible’s lesson, from Joel’s measured rain to Choni’s circle, is that abundance alone is incomplete. The Land of Israel needs rains of blessing, falling in their season and in their measure, and the Bible ties that measure to the covenant. The flood in Kadima-Tzoran is a reminder that the key to the heavens has never left God’s hand, and that the prayer for rain is answered best by a people who also pray for blessing.