Drawing by Hana Lustigová (1931-1944) while interned in Terezín and taught by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Jewish Museum in Prague
Red and yellow, pink, and green
Purple and orange and blue,
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too.
Listen with your ears,
Listen with your eyes,
And sing everything you see!
What do the lyrics of the well-known children’s song and P’kudey have in common? The first obvious answer is that they both contain a list of colours:
Tekhelet, v’argaman, v’tolaat shani, v’shesh
Is tekhelet repeated eleven times in P’kudey for any reason other than having the colours of the sacred colours of this Parashah stick in our minds like the colours of the rainbow?
Like the rainbow song which includes pink and purple which are not actually spectral colours found in the rainbow, even though the word tekhelet appears eleven times in the Parashah and forty-nine times in the Tanakh we are not absolutely certain what the colour looks like. One argument found In the Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 1:2 is that tekhelet is a type of green:
He teaches in the name of R. Meir: “you shall see her” [in the feminine, for tzizit] is not written here. but rather “you shall see him”; that is to say that anyone who performs the commandment of tzizit, it is as if they received the face of Shekhina [God’s countenance]. That is to say that the tekhelet [color] is similar to the sea and the sea is similar to the grass and the grass is similar to the sky and the sky is similar to the throne of glory and the throne of glory is similar to the sapphire as it is written (Ezekiel 10:1)
Rashi writing on Berakhot 57b:8:6 echoes the ‘green-ness’ of tekhelet
Tekhelet – It is green. And someone whose face is green is sick.
The cultural connection between green and sick is not present in the Babylonian Talmud in the description of tekhelet in Menakhot 43b:13
Rabbi Meir would say: What is different about tekhelet from all types of colours because tekhelet is similar to the sea, and the sea is similar to the sky, and the sky is similar to the Throne of Glory, as it is stated: “And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness” (Exodus 24:10)
The Babylonian Talmud connects sea to the sky but leaves out the grass which brings us to a common understanding today that tekhelet is a shade of blue.
But what would tekhelet look like to us today- is it the colour of a leek? The grass? Sky blue? The sea or the sky? It is not certain and we can be quite uncomfortable with uncertainty and accepting that there is not a right answer or wrong answer.
This lack of right and wrong is sometimes framed as a postmodern death of truth. This death of truth can be seen as something dangerous is explored by Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism,
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Postmodernist philosophers hold that truth is always conditional on historic and social context rather than being absolute and universal. Like the rainbow, what we see is influenced and impacted by our perspective, and our perspective is uniquely informed by our life and experiences. Sunsets are unique to where we are standing, the weather and our eyesight at the very least.
While many would argue that right and wrong are absolute, the Talmud teaches through a classic story of Hillel that there is only one central truth in the Torah. In bShabbat 31a a gentile comes to Hillel and challenges him to teach him the Torah while he is standing on one foot and he will convert to Judaism and Hillel taught him:
That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is interpretation. Go study.
Hillel’s teaching that the vastness of the wisdom of the Torah is an elaboration of only one simple truth enables a shift in the debate about whether tekhelet is the colour of grass or the colour of the sky from angst over the lack of truth to an exploration of what can be gained from uncertainty.
Rabba Sara Hurwitz believes that the Mishkan is the physical embodiment of the people’s emotional and psychological state of uncertainty and argues that uncertainty is essential to religious faith. This can be seen in the story about Moses himself feeling inadequate and uncertain when he encounters Rabbi Akiva as told in The Babylonian Talmud Menachot 29b:
When Moses went up to heaven, he found the Holy One engaged in adding little decorative crowns to the letters of the Torah.’ What need is there for these?’ he asked, and God replied: ‘Many generations hence a man will arise, Akiva ben Joseph by name, who will deduce heaps of interpretations from every detail of these crowns.’ ‘Let me see him,’ asked Moses. ‘Turn round,’ said God, and Moses went and sat at the back of Rabbi Akiva’s class. Unable to understand what was being said, his heart sank. But when the students asked about a certain law. What was its source and Akiva replied, ‘It is a tradition that goes back to Moses at Mount Sinai,’ Moses’ mind was set at rest. (as translated in Siddur Lev Chadash)
While God helps Moses resolve his personal uncertainty, Rabbi Herzl Hefter explains the theological uncertainty principle that emerges from the teachings of Hasidic Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica
If one were to claim perfect clarity and understanding they would essentially be transgressing the second commandment of constructing a graven image. “Certainty and perfect understanding exist only in the idolatrous world view where the gods are of distinct and finite dimensions.” (“The Theological Uncertainty Principle – Torah and Science”)
In other words, being absolutely certain that we are right or wrong is analogous to idolatry. Meditating on the uncertainty of the colours of the Jewish rainbow offers a kavannah, an intention to our prayer – that we grow in the not knowing, in the uncertainty.
bYoma 9b teaches that the sin that brought about the destruction of the Second Temple was baseless hatred. In a week filled with difficult news, fear, and anger in the Jewish world, tekhelet can teach us about understanding that there is not always perfect certainty. The blessing of uncertainty is not only in preventing our faith from becoming idolatry, but also in making sure that our fear, sadness, anger, and grief does not evolve into baseless hatred for others who see things differently from ourselves.
Jennifer Verson, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.