Community Magazine April 2013

M y two-year-old, Jack, shouts whenever there is a thunderstorm. I guess lots of kids shout scared, as they run into their parents’ arms or beds. But what Jack shouts always gives me and my wife a laugh. “It’s a wunda!” No one taught him to say the word ‘wonder’ when hearing thunder. But, somehow, through a divine twist of fate, when Jack hears the word ‘thunder,’ he repeats it as ‘wonder’. Though he doesn’t quite mean it this way, he’s right; thunder is indeed a wonder. Jack’s thunder/wonder comment got me thinking: what is this loud crash of thunder and why did Gd create such a disturbing sound to appear smack in the middle of a heavy rainstorm? Let’s first explain what thunder is. (My apology to the more knowledgeable reader, but this writer was pretty ignorant about thunder until recently.) Thunder occurs when a flash of lightning heats up the air around it making the air expand very rapidly, or explosively. In fact, it is thought that the air around a lightning bolt heats up to five times hotter than the air on the sun’s surface. Heat causes things to expand, thus, the air expands when the lightning heats it. Because the rate of expansion is so fast, the air actually vibrates, causing waves. These sound waves comprise the crash of thunder that we hear. “Since we tend to forget that it is He who is in charge, He devised a mechanism to make us remember: thunder.” RABBI BORUCH LEFF The Wonder of Thunder 82 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE