Text 2 (Questions 1-5)

With technology coming up short, Israel’s agriculture minister sought an unconventional solution to end the country’s water shortage, rallying a few thousand worshippers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall to pray for rain. Four years of heavy drought have overtaxed Israel’s unmatched array of desalination and wastewater treatment plants, choking its most fertile regions and catching the government off-guard, with farmers bearing the brunt.

Israel’s meteorological service forecasts that the region will see another dry winter, estimating a 65-percent chance that there will be insufficient rainfall in December, January and February— usually the wettest months. In March, Israel’s water authority said the Sea of Galilee, which is actually a lake and the country’s main freshwater reserve, had reached its lowest level in a century.

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, an Orthodox Jew, has a hand in determining water policy and how the resource is allocated, but to balance the science with the spiritual, he teamed up with leading rabbis to organize a public prayer session. “We significantly lowered the cost of water, we are carrying out many studies on how to save water in different crops, but prayer can certainly help,” Ariel said.

Some pundits were skeptical. Many newspapers published commentaries that said Ariel should instead focus on promoting policies to fight climate change, such as limiting greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. “Prayer is not a bad thing, but the minister has the ability to influence matters in slightly more earthly ways,” it said.

Israel has however escaped water cuts through the use of five desalination plants built along the Mediterranean coast. Three-fourths of potable water consumed by Israeli households comes from the desalination plants.

Source: Ynet