A winter storm in Israel blanketed Jerusalem in more than 8 inches of snow recently, turning the City of Gold into a city of white. While scanning reports of this biggest snowstorm since 1992, I read that in the Jerusalem's Sacher Park, one family built a snowman over six feet high. Even Israel President Shimon Peres was photographed building a man of snow.
Here in Los Angeles, having just endured another holiday season where I heard the "Frosty the Snowman" song sloshing through the malls dozens of times, I wondered: Other than holding an Israeli flag and being topped by a hat or kippah, would a Jewish snowman look any different than the carrot nosed, three balls of compacted snow guy that was the norm here in the U.S.?
A quick check found that there is an inflatable Jewish snowman available, the only difference from the norm being that he is holding a menorah. A photo of another Jewish Frosty I found showed a snowman outfitted with a Chassidic looking hat, which only made me wonder more what a totally decked out Jewish ice guy might look like.
On cruise ships, I have seen what they can do with ice to decorate the midnight buffet, but in a time when Jews come in all colors and features, I wondered how a representative yiddisheh iceman might now be expressed.
Some would simply hold that a Jewish snowman should not look any different than the others. Their argument being that gone are the days when a caricaturish hawky nose would identify a character as being Jewish. Long gone too are the times of being forced to wear yellow stars or some other unwanted identifying article of clothing. We now can fit in unobtrusively, they might say, so let's keep our icemen generic.
Others would respond that the melting pot is no place for a snowman. That in a time of consumer culturalism-- pop Jewishness expressed with "Super Jew" t-shirts, and even Jewish shoes-- what is called for now is some bona fide Jewish cultural distinction. Those folks would want their Jewish snowman to project some element of mosaic slushiness. For example:
Going for a New York style snowman--Zabar's bagels for eyes, a little lox to form the lips, topped by a hipster hat, and a book by Jonathan Safran Foer tucked under the arm.
But as I considering a more chiseled torso for my L.A. snow guy--outfitted with an embroidered bucharian kippah and Stars of David-shaped sunglasses, of course--I wondered, as in all things Klal Yisrael, if one approach would work for everyone. If there were denominational differences--say on the size of the snowballs--how would that be settled. Does the Talmud cover snowmen?
There would be other problems.
The AIPAC people would probably want their snowman compact and climate controlled; the J Street contingent would want theirs to be more flexible and adjustable.
For sephardim, large legumes might work for buttons on the snowman's jacket, but for ashkenazim, this would be a definite no-no.
Then, of course, there would be the issue of snowwomen standing at the wall; especially when the authorities find that their usual "freeze out" tactics are ineffective.
Like many imponderables in Jewish life, what a Jewish snowman should look like will probably just go unresolved. That is, unless Jewish folklorists, fans of the Golem story, imprint a holy word or two on the snowman's forehead to see what happens.
If the snowman comes alive and speaks, like any Jew, he will surely have an opinion on the matter--maybe two.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
A winter storm in Israel blanketed Jerusalem in more than 8 inches of snow recently, turning the City of Gold into a city of white. While scanning reports of this biggest snowstorm since 1992, I 
