Ask any Detroiter about their impression of weather in the Carolinas and you’ll get the same answer every time: “The Carolinas—so beautiful!”

When my husband and I announced our move from Metro Detroit to Greensboro, North Carolina, our friends and family had largely the same reaction, “We’ll miss you, but at least you’ll have better weather!” True, true — with one memorable exception.

Our eldest son became a bar mitzvah in this medium-sized southern city with its small, vibrant, historic Jewish community in December 2018. A December Bar Mitzvah might be a winter weather risk in Michigan but not in the south, I thought. 

The festivities kicked off as we lit the sixth Hanukkah candle and welcomed Shabbat with 60 friends and family — mostly from Detroit and Chicago, and others from around the country. Each guest arrived and greeted us with big hugs and a weather report:

“It’s supposed to snow … a lot. Is Greensboro equipped for snow?” 

“No, it most definitely is not,” we replied. 

The next morning, under thick gray clouds, our son became a bar mitzvah. He did a beautiful job chanting Torah and made his family and the congregation proud. Outside the sanctuary windows, the clouds swelled. We were going to need some Hanukkah miracles to make it through an evening celebration and get our guests back home.

Enter Miracle #1: We had schlepped our snow gear when we moved from Michigan. We tossed our trusty snow scraper, puffy coats and boots in our car and headed to the temple for the evening. 

As an homage to our ancestral homeland, we served Coneys, Greek salad, Faygo, and Sanders Hot Fudge sundaes. Maybe our menu manifested the Michigan meteorology. 

Earlier in the evening, out of caution and Monday morning obligations, some out-of-towners said, Shalom, Y’all, abandoned their return flights and rented cars to begin driving home that night. The rest of us danced and partied the night away. Fittingly for the journey, the first snowflakes fell right as the dance floor was erupting with “Born and raised in SOUTH DETROIT!”

Sunday morning, we awoke to a foot of snow and no power in our house. Miracle #2: Some of our guests on the very early morning flights took off. Then the airport shut down and those with later flights were snowed-in and stuck in Greensboro indefinitely. 

Miracle #3: We had plenty of food leftover from the kiddush lunch, along with sweets, candy, pop and wine from the party. If there’s one thing I learned from my summers working at Tamarack, it’s that you must always be prepared for the inevitable green bus to break down and a long wait for repair or rescue. In addition to the food and drink, I grabbed some games and crafts since it was unclear just how long we'd be entertaining.

Miracle #4: All Wheel Drive! We cautiously made our way — slip, skid, slide — up to the hotel for what would have been the farewell brunch. 

Miracle #5: The hotel provided us with a banquet room to spend the whole day and then evening hours with our guests.  

We spent all of Sunday at the hotel with the stranded out-of-towners; about thirty people from different parts of our lives. Miracle #6: Nobody went anywhere, and everyone had fun!

We saw first-hand how people make the best of a snowy situation, like my best girlfriends from Detroit and my cousins from New York. They played Mah Jong, while sipping wine and noshing bagels like longtime friends. Our young nieces and nephews splashed in the hotel pool and played games with their big cousins. 

My parents’ friends chatted about the old days with my in-laws’ friends, drinking coffee and nibbling cake. Our cousins from Florida and California faced off in their first-ever left coast vs. right coast rivalry snowball fight. Grandma knitted a cozy blanket while kvelling about her grandson to just about any hotel guest she encountered. 

Across town, the power was still out at our house. Miracle #7: The hotel had a room available so we could stay the night with power and heat.

On Monday the airport reopened, and our guests’ flights took off throughout the day. The goodbyes were bittersweet — for all the merriment and memory-making, everyone was ready to go home, and frankly, we were exhausted from hosting and hoteling.

After the last guest checked in at the airport, we finally headed back to our house. Miracle #8: The power was restored, and a kind neighbor had shoveled our driveway. 

Looking back on that crazy, fun, proud, exhausting, miraculous weekend, we added a story of Jewish survival to our family lore — survival of a once-in-90-year snowstorm, the second-highest snowfall on record, in “The Carolinas — so beautiful!” 

There is nothing more Jewish than a story of survival and the miracles that enabled it. A few years later brought the miracle of how we managed to celebrate my younger son’s Bar Mitzvah during COVID, but that’s a whole megillah for another time.