counting the omer to climb over the rainbow from slavery to royalty at Sinai

Posted on 2021/04/02 by davka

Counting the Omer

Imagine a 7×7 grid.

roygbiv

Each row, from right to left, is a dif­fer­ent col­or of the rain­bow at 25% con­cen­tra­tion: red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, indi­go and violet.

Each col­umn, from bot­tom to top, is also a dif­fer­ent col­or of the rain­bow at 75% con­cen­tra­tion: red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, indi­go and violet.

That makes the bot­tom right square 100% red and the top left square 100% vio­let. A diag­o­nal line of squares of 100% red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, and indi­go con­nects them.

Each square rep­re­sents anoth­er in the col­ors of the spec­trum divid­ed into 49 equal parts.

If you begin count­ing in the low­er right cor­ner on the first day of Sefi­rah, you begin with the “bright red of rebel­lion” and climb, up each col­umn and to the left each week, end­ing forty-nine days lat­er at the “bril­liant vio­let of roy­al­ty” ready to receive Torah. Each day of Sefi­rah we focus on that col­or (and its qual­i­ties) as it appears in our world.

I would like to see such an Omer Cal­en­dar, but I don’t have the tools. I would also like to see a Web site peo­ple could vis­it each day. Each day of the omer the page would change to dis­play the day’s num­ber and its relat­ed col­or. No more.

If you know some­one who has such skills, please let me know.

I shared this idea with a num­ber of friends. Rab­bi Amy Schein­er­man and her fam­i­ly accept­ed the challenge.

The more that peo­ple worked on the idea, the more pos­si­bil­i­ties emerged. Rab­bi Schein­er­man’s father (Andrew Ross z“l, a graph­ic artist) arranged the squares in a spi­ral. If you look at it in three-dimen­sion­al space we begin at the foot of Sinai and climb up to the sum­mit in time for Shavuot!

Danyel Fish­er was a sec­ond-year grad­u­ate stu­dent in the Com­put­er Sci­ences Depart­ment at UC Berke­ley at the time this page was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished back in 2001. He saw my Omer Cal­en­dar and accept­ed the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing the Javascript ver­sion that presents a page of the appro­pri­ate col­or each day. Thank you! How­ev­er, this has not been avail­able for a num­ber of years. In 2020 I was able to find Danyel and asked if we could restore his Javascript. He respond­ed pos­i­tive­ly, though indi­cat­ed that he’d moved on. Nonethe­less, he gath­ered, and shared with me, a few oth­er attempts to count the Omer using color:

Since 2001, oth­ers have devel­oped new Omer Cal­en­dars using the medi­um of the WWW. Bri­an Ros­man invites us to “Count the omer with Homer!” at the “Homer” Cal­en­dar. And, there is now a Face­book page for Omer Coun­ters.

Enjoy the count.

© Mark Hurvitz; Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished 22 March, 2001
Pre­vi­ous­ly updat­ed Jan­u­ary 28, 2009 (3 Sh’­vat 5769).
After 20 years I have rotat­ed the grid 90º clock­wise so that the pro­gres­sion ris­es from slav­ery to royalty.

blessing for the rainbow

The Jew­ish asso­ci­a­tion with the rain­bow goes back to the sto­ry of Noah. The ancient rab­bis even com­posed a bless­ing for the event of see­ing a rain­bow that refers to Noah’s encounter:

.בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָּם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

Blessed are You, Adon­ai sov­er­eign of all space and time, who remem­bers the Covenant and is faith­ful to the covenant and keeps the divine promise [to Noah].

Rab­bi David Zaslow writes at his site of the rab­binic ten­sions regard­ing the pos­si­ble metaphors embraced by rainbows.

look to the rainbow

I first encoun­tered Fini­an’s Rain­bow in a Los Ange­les city-wide high school pro­duc­tion of the musi­cal. Some­how, though my offi­cial instru­ment was the oboe, I was giv­en the part of per­form­ing the open­ing phrase played on a chromon­i­ca. I’d nev­er played a chromon­i­ca before. Because up to that time it had always been easy for me to cre­ate a melody with any oth­er wind instru­ment I’d picked up, my par­ents thought the chromon­i­ca must be bro­ken. We found some­one who could teach me and once I learned the basic tech­nique I was able to ful­fill my oblig­a­tion in the orches­tra. I loved the show. The sto­ry’s pol­i­tics are good though some of the lines in the songs are no longer appro­pri­ate. Nonethe­less, I often sang its songs and quot­ed some of its lines. This ver­sion, from the 1968 Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion is a love­ly rendition.

Fred Astaire and Petu­la Clark sing “Look to the Rainbow”

reach over the rainbow

gaz­ing down on a rain­bow at Nia­gra Falls

Yip Har­burg who co-wrote the book and all the lyrics for Fini­an’s Rain­bow also wrote the lyrics for the 1939 movie The Wiz­ard of Oz. It’s not often that you can see a rain­bow from above. In late Octo­ber of 2016, when Deb­bie and I vis­it­ed Nia­gra Falls we were able to cap­ture this image.

Some­where…, we look to the rain­bow to work for our release from cap­tiv­i­ty as we strug­gle to achieve freedom.

Judy Gar­land sings “Some­where Over the Rainbow”

making connections with rainbows

Some­day we’ll find it, though we’ll prob­a­bly need to make it… make those con­nec­tions, make them our­selves: under­stand how every­thing, all of us are connected.

Ker­mit sings “Rain­bow Connection”

rainbow coalitions

The rain­bow has tak­en on mul­ti­ple mean­ings since then. Per­haps the most com­mon addi­tion­al mean­ing is that as used in the Rain­bow Flag as a sym­bol of LGBTQI pride. Odd­ly enough, the orig­i­nal Pride flag, cre­at­ed in 1978 by Gilbert Bak­er in San Fran­cis­co had eight bands, not sev­en. Each col­or rep­re­sent­ed a spe­cial aspect of life:

  • hot pink (sex)
  • red (life)
  • orange (heal­ing)
  • yel­low (sun­light)
  • green (nature)
  • turquoise (art)
  • indi­go (har­mo­ny)
  • vio­let (spir­it)

The cur­rent flag has only six stripes, elim­i­nat­ing the pink and indi­go while chang­ing the turquoise to blue.

When he ran for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for the pres­i­den­cy in 1984, Jesse Jack­son called for a “Rain­bow Coali­tion”:

Amer­i­ca is not like a blan­ket — one piece of unbro­ken cloth, the same col­or, the same tex­ture, the same size. Amer­i­ca is more like a quilt: many patch­es, many pieces, many col­ors, many sizes, all woven and held togeth­er by a com­mon thread. The white, the His­pan­ic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native Amer­i­can, the small farmer, the busi­nessper­son, the envi­ron­men­tal­ist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the les­bian, the gay, and the dis­abled make up the Amer­i­can quilt.

Need­less to say (aside from not men­tion­ing the AAPI com­mu­ni­ty), his hope for this quilt is still in the patch-col­lect­ing and stitch­ing stage.

My royg­biv Omer counter uses the col­ors of the rain­bow and is not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Pride Flag.

Cur­rent­ly 23 but­tons in the col­lec­tion depict or refer to rainbows.

Jew­ish Pride
Date:2000s
Size:5.72
Pin Form:clasp
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
Text[pride flag & magen david]

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

The image at the top is of a dou­ble rain­bow cap­tured on March 21, 2006, some­where in south­ern France (between Lyon & Avignon).

Posted in from the archives, holidays, how, judaica, lapel buttons, music, politics, ritual | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

learning the cheers

Posted on 2021/02/06 by davka

When was the last time you… 

  • attend­ed a concert?
  • went to a sports event?
  • played a musi­cal instru­ment with a group of people?
  • played a group sport?
  • par­tic­i­pat­ed in a barn raising?
  • helped build a house with Habi­tat For Humanity?
  • par­tic­i­pat­ed in any col­lec­tive endeavor?

Same with me.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this was first shared with my con­gre­ga­tion Etz Chaim of Ramona (Cal­i­for­nia), long before COVID-19 and our phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, for Erev Yom Kip­pur of 5760 (Sep­tem­ber 20, 1999). Repost­ed now in recog­ni­tion of a phys­i­cal­ly dis­tanced Super Bowl.

But that’s our task together.

We’re not used to doing this. Putting out effort for some­thing we have to share in com­mon is very unusu­al for us.

Those of you who were with us on the morn­ing of Rosh haShan­nah may recall that I led us through what we call the P’sukei d’Z­im­ra. I even got us all singing “Hal­lelu­jah!” I think we who were here togeth­er even enjoyed it. We felt good about rais­ing our voic­es in song.

When we end­ed those vers­es of song I men­tioned that we had done our warm-up exer­cis­es and we were, I hoped, ready to get up for the seri­ous effort ahead. I had hoped that we could main­tain the par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­el. How­ev­er, for some unclear rea­son, that did not hap­pen. I know, it does­n’t have to be that way. But so many of us are “out of prac­tice”. How did we fall out of prac­tice, and how can we change it?

jews invented the sports bar!

How many of us will watch the Super Bowl? How many hoped to get tick­ets to the World Series? Those of us who did­n’t… have you ever gone to sports bar to watch an impor­tant game?

Did you know that we Jews invent­ed the “sports bar”? When­ev­er you’re sit­ting in a syn­a­gogue, you’re in a precursor.

Over two thou­sand years ago, the Jews liv­ing all around the land of Israel lived a busy life. The main cultural/religious event hap­pened in Jerusalem up in the moun­tains. The roads were less than two lane and most peo­ple usu­al­ly had respon­si­bil­i­ties at home so they did not go up to the Tem­ple in Jerusalem as often as they might. In fact, the activ­i­ties in the tem­ple were divid­ed up so that dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties would have a reserved place (on the 50 yard line, or near the third base line, so to speak) at des­ig­nat­ed times of the year. Even then not every­one in town was able to go. When it was their turn, the town’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive would go up to Jerusalem to the Tem­ple and the locals would gath­er at their local club­house. In fact they called it a meet­ing house “Beit Knes­set”. There, in the town club­house the locals would wear the appro­pri­ate clothes, drink the appro­pri­ate drinks, eat the appro­pri­ate foods, and call out the appro­pri­ate cheers… as though they were there in Jerusalem with their bud­dies, the representatives.

I learned this les­son from my teacher Dr. Ellis Rivkin at HUC-JIR in Cincin­nati, OH, espe­cial­ly his book A hid­den rev­o­lu­tion — The Phar­isees’ Search for the King­dom with­in. How­ev­er, apply­ing the metaphor of the sports bar is my own extension.

After a while a local Howard Cosell would devel­op. He’d offer a com­men­tary on what every­thing was all about. We call this in Hebrew a “drash” and so, the club­house also came to be known as the “Beit haMidrash”.

So, here we are, two thou­sand years lat­er. We sit (pre- and (hope­ful­ly) post-pan­dem­ic) in our club­house. How­ev­er, many of us haven’t been prac­tic­ing, or we haven’t used our sea­son tick­ets. We don’t know how to rec­og­nize what a “first down” is and don’t under­stand what “off­sides”, nor a “pop-up foul” or “grounder” means, and so when the can­tor and rab­bi lead the foot­ball cheer: “Push ’em back, push ’em back, way back!”, we’re not all able to par­tic­i­pate with the right kind of intensity.

So, what are these cheers?

They’re designed to help us remember:

  • who we are
  • the rules of our existence
  • why we’re here and
  • what’s expect­ed of us.

You know that after the warm-up exer­cis­es the can­tor calls us all togeth­er to praise the Source of the cos­mos. As soon as we’ve done that we focus on the cos­mos itself, the flow of light and dark­ness. We then look inward a bit and call out the cheer that speaks of the con­nec­tion between the cos­mos, its cre­ator and human beings. And all of this leads us to a renewed aware­ness of the uni­ty of all cre­ation so we say the Shema.

Maybe the logos on the pen­nants are a bit out­dat­ed. Maybe the rhythms of the cheers need a renewed beat. But hey, think if it:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

Can you imag­ine cheers more awe­some? It feels good, reas­sur­ing, even, to repeat them:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

 

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

the cheers scored
the cheers scored

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

But it does­n’t stop there. We Jews believe that the Source of the cos­mos plays a role in human his­to­ry. I’ve ref­ered to this before. We cel­e­brate this in our hol­i­days (not Rosh haShan­nah and Yom Kip­pur, but) Pesach espe­cial­ly. And so we have spe­cial songs we sing that cheer about how this Source of the cos­mos inter­rupt­ed the cycle of events and set a tra­jec­to­ry into his­to­ry by enabling a group of slaves to go free. That’s what we’re doing when we sing:

Who is like you among all the team man­agers who peo­ple cheer for?

You enable redemption

Now this is get­ting per­son­al. Not only do we cheer that redemp­tion hap­pens, but that was our redemp­tion! The ten­sion and excite­ment builds:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

You enable redemption

It’s at this point that our cheers get up close and per­son­al. But, you get the point.

Join us at the club­house. To mix a vari­ety of metaphors, togeth­er we can cre­ate a cho­rus that will raise the roof.

ready for the kickoff?

Very few Juda­ic but­tons deal with sports. Of these, the vast major­i­ty are from var­i­ous Mac­cabi­ah events. A few com­mer­cial but­tons have images of Jew­ish sports fig­ures. Oth­ers, more nov­el­ty items, were cre­at­ed by Sal Kluger of Sim­cha Sales who pro­duced a great num­ber of Juda­ic but­tons and sold them (and oth­er chatch­kas) at “nycechatch­kas”.

This Kick Off but­ton was pro­duced by the Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Divi­sion of UJA-Fed­er­a­tion Joint Cam­paign (NYC) for the begin­ning of its annu­al fund-rais­ing dri­ve. While at the time I was on the staff (my first job after rab­binic school)…

mark's business card
mark’s busi­ness card

…I had noth­ing to do with its production.

kickoff
KICK OFF
Date:1979
Size:5.5
Pin Form:clasp
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
TextKICK OFF

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

The image at the top is of The Fair­fax Five per­form­ing at the inter­sec­tion of Fair­fax Ave. and Rose­wood Ave. in Los Ange­les on Octo­ber 2, 1972. The group con­sist­ed of (from left to right: Mark Hurvitz, Eilene Water­stone, Jay (Jacob) Ben­der, Steven Puzarne, & Bill Lyfield [Eytan Ben She­viya] (on drums, hid­den)); pho­tog­ra­ph­er, unknown.

Posted in from the archives, holidays, judaica, lapel buttons, ritual | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment