Reflections on the spiritual message, and blessing, of snow

“Who gives snow like flakes of wool, Who scatters frost like ashes. … Who casts forth His ice like lumps — who can stand before His cold?” (Psalms 147:16-17)

Yes, there is a spiritual message to the snow we have been experiencing in such excess. My interest in this matter was peaked recently by Rabbi Dr. Martin Cohen of Shelter Rock in an essay he wrote concerning snow referencing his favorite Kapital Tehillim, Psalm 147. Subsequently, I researched numerous commentaries on this psalm and its focus on snow, and was surprised — both by what was stated, and by the omission of any substantive comment by many others.

Rabbi Cohen, in his own commentary on the psalms, “Our Haven and Our Strength,” has this to say on Psalm 147: “G-d makes the borders of Israel peaceful and provides the people with the choicest wheat, only to develop the concept of G-d’s role in winter storms a few lines later. Indeed, one gets the sense that the poet has finally gotten to his point when he describes how G-d covers the land with snow so deep that the world looks as though it was covered with a woolen blanket, then sends a covering of hoarfrost so extensive that it appears to the casual onlooker as though somebody has sprinkled the landscape with white ash or, perhaps breadcrumbs.”

Rabbi Cohen wonders, “Is the kind of ice storm that can immobilize an entire city a curse or a blessing? Do winter storms have negative value because they make it difficult to come to worship services? Or is that inconvenience mostly — or even perhaps wholly — negated by the fear of G-d a severe winter storm can strike in the hearts of people who, even if they are generally insensitive to G-d’s role in their lives, may be stirred to piety through the contemplation of terrifyingly treacherous weather?”