Cold Enough for Ya?

I immigrated -- or "made Aliyah" (literally, "to ascend"), as they say -- to Israel at the end of the year 2000, on the very day of my 37th birthday. Prior to that, I had lived virtually my entire life in North America, primarily in the city of Toronto, but spending also a decade in the U.S., in the cities of New York, Boston and Baltimore.

One of the things I truly appreciate about Israel is its warm climate.

Most of the ten years I've spent here have been in Beer Sheva, a mid-size (for Israel), modest, but nice, town in the Negev region. It is the quasi-official capital of the southern region of Israel, but actually, the distance from Beer Sheva to Eilat, located at the southern tip of Israel, is roughly equal to that of Beer Sheva to Metula, at Israel's northern border -- even though probably 90% of the population -- or more -- lives in the northern half.

(One is reminded of the fact that roughly 75% of Canada's population live within 100 miles of its southern border, meaning that the vast majority of the area of world's second-largest country is virtually unpopulated.)

Walking outside in Beer Sheva on a February day in shirt and pants -- without the need for any of the traditional winter accoutrements -- was something that I never ceased to derive pleasure from. What a delicious feeling of freedom!

That is not to say that Beer Sheva has no cold days. Far from it. And even on warm days, the temperature can drop quite precipitously in the late afternoon, so that the evenings and nights can be quite chilly indeed. And many people, myself included, get colds and so forth during the periods when the weather changes.

One of my years in the Negev region was spent in a lovely suburb of Beer Sheva called Meitar. And though it is but a 15-20 minute drive from Beer Sheva, the climate is very different. Meitar, you see, is (a) at a higher altitude, being geographically part of the Hebron hill region and (b) an extremely open place, so there is nothing to cut the winds down. Meitar is therefore noticeably colder than Beer Sheva. Every time I would visit Beer Sheva, I would immediately feel upon my arrival as if I had landed on a Caribbean island. In fact, I moved back to Beer Sheva from Meitar for precisely this reason.

After 9 years in the Beer Sheva environs, I decided to see what life would be like in a larger city, and so I moved to Jerusalem. The city is a jewel! I've heard it said that there are world travelers who consider Jerusalem among the most beautiful cities of the world, and I can see why. The city is encased in rich history. As I simply walk down the street, I often feel like I am in the middle of a large, fascinating, city-wide museum, each building an exhibit unto itself. Charming neighborhoods, places of historical and religious interest, juxtaposed with delightful modern areas with shops and cafés. All coated in the famous "Jerusalem stone".

One not insignificant drawback which Jerusalem has, at least for me, is its relatively (for Israel) cold climate. In the coldest months, I have the heat on practically 24/7. So, although Israel is much warmer than my native Toronto, cold weather has by no means been absent from my experience here.

In all of the 10 years I've lived in Israel, my only excursion thus far outside of its borders has been in the fall of 2008, for a wonderful occasion: my sister's wedding. I will never forget the moment I walked out of Toronto's Pearson International Airport that bright mid-September morning.

Are you familiar with former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson? He exploded onto the boxing scene in the mid-1980s, and fought his way to, within two years of his professional debut, become the youngest world heavyweight champion. He would split his opponents as mercilessly as I split the infinitive "to become" in the previous sentence.

How dominant was he in those early years? Here is a partial list of the lengths of some of his earliest bouts, from 1985 alone:

1:47 [03/06/85] 0:52 [04/10/85] 0:39 [06/20/85] 1:05 [08/15/85] 0:39 [09/05/85] 1:28 [10/09/85]

0:37 [10/25/85] 0:54 [11/01/85] 1:17 [11/13/85] 1:19 [12/06/85] 0:50 [12/27/85]

Do you really need to know anything more than that to realize how utterly dominant he was in that era? 52 seconds? 39 seconds? How would you like to train for hours, day after day, for weeks on end, for a sporting event, only to be laid out flat in 39 seconds flat? Why, the entire fight can be summarized in three words: Ding! Wham! Splat! Watch some of those fights; they're all, of course, on youtube. It is quite amusing to watch some of Tyson's opponents bouncing around the ring before the match, all cock-of-the-walk, knowing that in about 65 seconds, they'd be horizontal.

I will never forget the moment I walked out of Toronto's Pearson International Airport that bright mid-September morning. As the electric doors slid aside, and I stepped into the Canadian outdoors for the first time in 8 years, wham! I was socked in the face by a Mike Tyson wallop. The coldest moment of the coldest night of the coldest year in the coldest region in Israel did not come anywhere close to this. A brutal gust of wind that, like an electric shock, suffuses through your entire body with its bitterness. Israeli cold weather is to this as the Little League is to the NFL. Compared to Canadian cold, Israeli cold is downright cute, like a little girl putting on her mommy's lipstick. And, mind you, this was a September morning! For the love of Pete, what would a January evening be like?

I probably won't find out anytime soon. In fact, one of these days, you just might find me on some place on the globe situated within 100 miles of the equator.