WATER IS LIFE
Most of us no longer live on farms but in cities and urban areas. It is difficult for us to appreciate the vital importance of rainfall. For most of us, rain is an inconvenience rather than a blessing. What is it that makes our planet “unique” in the universe? One could say the existence of life. Since, as far as we know, there is no other planet that hosts life in the solar system, in the Milky Way and beyond. But there is another fundamental element, a prerequisite for life, created by HaShem before He created life. It is what scientists look for when they investigate other places in the universe, such as Mars, to find any indications of life. You will probably think of “water,” and you will be partially correct. Water is life, and life, as we know it on our planet, is impossible without water.
LIQUID WATER
But to be more precise, for a planet to be able to host life as Earth, it should have “liquid” water. Frozen water, or some type of ice, was found on other planets. Since the temperatures on a planet like Jupiter or its moons, for example, are very low, watery elements cannot exist there in a liquid state. Our planet is privileged because it is the only celestial body that possesses “liquid water”, thanks to the Intelligent and Divine Design of the mass of the Earth, the mass of the sun, and in particular, the perfectly fine-tuned distance between our planet and the sun. All this allows the earth’s temperature to be neither too hot —like Venus, where water would evaporate— nor too cold—where water would freeze, as it would on Mars or Saturn.
THE SECOND DAY OF CREATION
But the presence of liquid water is not the only element that supports life on our planet. “Standard earthly water”, that is, seawater, is salted water, which is not suitable for most types of life in our planet. Most plants, insects, amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals need water without salt to survive. That precious liquid is called “freshwater”. Freshwater is what allows our life to exist on our planet. And what is the origin of fresh water, of that elixir that makes life possible? The only source of fresh water on our planet is precipitation (=rain, snow, and hail). According to Maimonides (More Nebukhim 2:30), the cycle’s mechanism enabling rain production —evaporation of salted water, precipitation of freshwater— was established by the Creator on the second day of Creation. The Tora calls this mechanism “the division of the upper waters (clouds) from the lower waters (oceans) . This is how the creative activity of the Second day was explained among others by Rabbi Moshe Hefets in his book Melekhet Mahashebet pgs. 10-11, Vienna edition, and Rabbi Menashe ben Israel in his book “The Conciliator” (see my book Awesome Creation). John Lynch, the author of the BBC book “The Climate” (p.84, 1996) describes the clouds with words that are very similar to the words used by the Tora : “We live on a water planet. The seas dominate the world … there is an ocean around us [the water of the sea] and an ocean above us [the clouds] “. The Creator dedicated a whole day, the Second Day of Creation, to establish the miraculous mechanism that transforms ocean water into the most precious liquid in the universe: rain.
THE IMPROBABILITY OF WATER
Rainwater is water with low salt concentrations. Of all the water found on Earth, only 2.75% is freshwater. Of that total, 2.05% is freshwater frozen in the glaciers. 0.69% is fresh groundwater, which, like glaciers, was also originally produced by rain. Only 0.0101% of all freshwater on planet Earth is found on the planet’s surface and distributed in all lakes and rivers. This incredibly small percentage, 0.0101% of all the water in our world, is what we human beings and all living beings need for survival.
In our prayers, we praise HaShem for establishing, and we ask Him to maintain the process of the conversion of ocean water into the scarcest, most exotic, and most precious liquid in the entire universe: the elixir of life.
The only source of fresh water in the entire universe is rain produced in Earth’s atmosphere.
“Imagine an entire planet where the universe’s finest liqueur is boiled out of fermenting seas by a brilliant yellow star, distilled in the skies, and rained back down on the land, forming lakes and rivers of the inebriating brew. The planet, of course, is Earth, and the liqueur is freshwater.” (From “Discovery.com)”
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