The Blessed Need for Physicality and Snow in Jerusalem

Today I was due to celebrate together with the Israeli wine industry -- it was going to be the first formal wine event I would attend as a partner in Jezreel Valley Winery. The event was scheduled to take place at the Crown Plaza hotel in Jerusalem. As half the Zula team lives in the Jerusalem area, I thought beautiful combination of Zula product meetings by day, wine event by night. (also was due to pick up cable to charge my electric car, but that's for another post).

And then in started snowing in Jerusalem. Every few years, same drill -- few snowflakes and the city stops. Close the highways! cancel school! Remain calm!

Truth be told, there is some sense in the hysteria, as Israeli drivers are, well, Israeli drivers to begin with, and putting slippery white stuff turning quickly to black grimy slush is not a good formula for safe roads in the nation's capital.

Zula staff stayed home. That's fine, we are a distributed work force to begin with, and we are developing solutions for teams to communicate when not sitting together -- so not such a big deal.

But a wine event with no people? The organizers took the decision to postpone to next week.

I did not travel to Jerusalem.

All of this is a reminder of how much the physical, the "real," plays a part in our seemingly almost completely virtual lives.

Could we have a virtual wine event where we all drink our wines at home and discuss? Perhaps, but with today's tech still can't pass a glass of wine over Facebook Messenger. Or WhatsApp. Or even Zula (but we are working on it!).

For some things we need to physically come together. To smell together, to taste together. To simply be together.

As someone who grew up in NY with plenty of snow, no need to rush to experience it. But for many Israelis snow is exotic, radically different reality. They will go in droves, wait hours in traffic -- just to throw a snowball. And God bless them. After all the Playstations, X-boxes, immersive games, virtual communities, we know that humans still desire the physical touch of a snowball. Make a snowman -- a real one, not on Miniclip.

Living my life on the balance between the virtual and the real, always nice when Nature comes along and reminds us that all fall at the feet of a few cm (inches) of snow in Jerusalem, the capital of the world.

May we be blessed to continue to treasure our humanity, even as maximize the use of tools like Zula, that help us keep the connection going when we are not sitting together. And we can chat about how the good the wine was that we drank together, and look forward to the next time we drink together.