Remember the
Rainbow
Years
ago when I was a rabbinical student, I had a student-pulpit in Niagara Falls,
New York. Niagara, situated at the far
north-western corner of New York State on the Canadian border, is an
interesting part of the world. The falls
themselves are, of course a big and world-famous attraction. They are not among the highest falls in the
world, having a height of a mere 51 metres.
But they are the falls with the world’s highest flow rate; the
year-round average is 110,000 cubic metres of water per minute, and that can
almost double in times of highest flow.
In the two years during which I made semi-monthly visits to Niagara, I
never tired walking out of my hotel to the falls to stand and contemplate the
power of Nature.
Because of the incredible flow of the
falls, they generate huge amounts of mist.
The mist cloud hanging over the falls can be seen from some
distance. And it in turn generates
incredibly beautiful rainbows.
I’ll never forget my first Niagara
rainbow. I was walking towards the falls
and saw it there, arcing through the sky low over the Canadian side. There is no heavy industry in proximity of
Niagara, and it is far enough from the nearest urban centres that there is little
automobile-related smog in the air. Therefore,
a Niagara rainbow is a far more awesome presentation than the rainbow you’ll
probably see wherever you live. The
colours show up as vivid and strong as is possible. A Niagara rainbow is indeed a treat.
So I was walking towards this awesome
rainbow and realised there was a beracha to say specifically upon seeing
a rainbow. I didn’t remember what it
was, but when I walked back to my hotel I looked it up in my traditional siddur. It goes:
Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-olam, Zocheir haberit,
vene-eman biv-rito vekayam bema-amaro.
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the universe, Who remembers the
covenant, is trustworthy in His covenant, and fulfils His word.
Note that the beracha does not
mention the rainbow specifically as a phenomenon. Rather, it alludes to a covenant and praises
God for being trustworthy in fulfilling His covenant. And the covenant in this case is, of course,
the covenant He made with Noah, as we read in this week’s Torah portion
(Genesis 9:8-17):
God said to Noah and to his sons
with him: “I now establish my covenant
with you and your offspring to come, and with every living thing that is with
you-birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well-all that have come out of the
ark, every living thing on earth. I will
maintain My covenant with you; never again shall all flesh be cut off by the
waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the
earth.” God further said: “This is the
sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature
with you, for all ages to come. I have
set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between
me and the earth. When I bring clouds
over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant
between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the
waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it
and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all
flesh that is on earth. That,” God said
to Noah, “shall be the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me
and all flesh that is on earth.”
So the rainbow
is a sign of peace, a reminder to God Himself that He had promised never to
bring waters like the flood of Noah to cover the earth and thus obliterate life
on the planet.
Now my daughter the physics whiz would
have a different explanation for the phenomenon of the rainbow. She would point out that the droplets of
water in the air refract the sunlight that is behind the viewer’s back into the
separate colours ROYGBIV: Red, Orange,
Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
These are the seven component colours of which pure ‘white’ light is
comprised, each having its own wavelength.
And there you go…no promises, no floods, and no covenants. Just pure physics of light.
But wait a minute. If you’ve heard me speak on the Torah before,
you know my general view. Having a
scientific view of the cause of some phenomenon, does not negate the possibility
of a sacred view…or vice versa. Unless
you’re a fundamentalist: of science or
of religion. An example of the former is
Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a British
biologist and vice-president of the British Humanist Association. He’s probably a brilliant scientist, but an
incredibly unhappy man. Why is he so
unhappy? Because he believes that
humanity’s only option is to make the stark choice between science and
religion. And since so many people thus
choose religion, it pains him. You can
see it on his face when he’s speaking.
It’s sad.
So the choice between religion and
science is, by and large, a false choice.
A choice that one is not compelled to make. It doesn’t have to be either-or. It can be both-and. And this phenomenon – the rainbow – is one
proof of the validity of this viewpoint.
The scientific explanation of the
rainbow is the reason for its use as
a symbol of inclusion. It isn’t
accidental that various movements in history have used the rainbow as a symbol
of inclusion. Of course, we’re all
familiar with its use in our time for the ‘Gay Pride’ flag. The flag’s message is that when we don’t
exclude individuals of different sexual orientations from the mix, we are
richer for it. But the rainbow as a
symbol of inclusion and completeness long pre-dates the LGBT Pride
movement. The co-opting of the symbol of
the rainbow to rally people for this purpose has been done again and
again. And why not? The rainbow, by dividing pure light into its
component parts, is a symbol of completeness.
When we include everybody, we are ‘complete.’ The rainbow is thus a powerful metaphor for
the value of finding everybody a place at the table.
If we accept this premise, then we are
halfway toward seeing the rainbow as a most perfect symbol of God’s promise not
to destroy the world.
As you’ve heard me say before, the
word which we translate ‘peace,’ the Hebrew ‘shalom,’ comes from a root meaning
‘completeness.’ So shalom – peace, is a
product of shalom – completeness. The
rainbow, symbolising the completeness of the spectrum, is the perfect symbol
for peace. It’s the perfect sign of God’s
promise not to destroy the world again.
But additionally, the shape of the
rainbow alludes to peace. We can see the
bow-shape as representing a bow of war, the kind an archer would wield. On the ancient field of battle, when an army
was suing for peace, the archers would conspicuously unstring thei bows and
point them at the sky. The rainbow thus
represents a war-bow, unstring, and pointed high to make the combatant’s
peaceful intentions clear.
It is thus no surprise that the
rainbow has, over time, come to be a sign of hope. Many peace movements throughout history have
used the rainbow as a symbol of the hope of
peace. Seeing the rainbow, we are
assured that any troubles will pass.
Peace will come. The deluge will
stop, and the world will still be here.
When our son, Eyal was born, he spent
three months in the newborn ICU. He
arrived prematurely, and he manifested just about every common complication of
a seriously premature child. It was no
surprise that the NICU at Goode Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, was decorated
with rainbows. Surely the liberal use of
the rainbow was calculated to help anxious parents to look beyond their infants’
present ills, to remind them that they would likely recover and grow to be
strong, healthy children. The rainbow
held out the promise of realistic hope, hope that would likely not be in vain.
We have lots of things to make us feel
guilty. Lots of things which we should
regret. Some days, if we’re honest with
ourselves, we can admit that God would be completely justified for wanting to
wipe the slate clean and start anew. But
every year when we read this week’s sidrah,
we are reminded that God has promised not to. And every time we see a rainbow, we can be
reassured that, whatever we collectively deserve, it isn’t going to happen. This assurance is ours when we recognise the
rainbow for what it is. This assurance
is ours when we know that God, too, remembers the rainbow. Shabbat shalom.
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