When I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah, my dad asked me to consider who I might like to speak at the service—as you prepare for an entry into adulthood, he asked, are there role models for you beyond your family, folks who you look up to, or want to learn from? I thought of two close family friends, Reverend Daniel Buford of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, and Marc Rappaport, a graphic designer and artist, and member of our havurah with whom we had monthly Shabbat dinners. Both, I think, were surprised to be invited, and both offered wise words of encouragement to me at the event. 

I was thinking of Marc in particular this morning, as I sat down to write this piece for Hashavua. This week’s Torah portion contains one of the most famous of all Bible stories, Noah’s Ark. As the story goes, Noah was alone in his generation in being a righteous person, and so God decides to hit the reset button on humanity, and sends a flood to wipe out all living things, with the exception of those creatures who made it two-by-two to the floating zoo. At the end, God promises to never again wipe out humanity and the living things of the earth—or never again by flood, at least—and points to a rainbow in the clouds as evidence of that covenant, an agreement scribed in light. 

About a decade after my Bar Mitzvah, Marc died of cancer, leaving his wife Michelle and daughters Shana and Yona—and his extended community—far too early. In the long process of his sickness, my dad was among those who supported him and his family: bringing meals, driving to and from appointments, and the like. At one moment, driving to one of Marc’s treatments, my dad saw a double rainbow (long before double rainbows entered the internet vernacular), and he and Marc shared a sense of joy and optimism at the apparition of those colors in the sky. It was a sign, and their spirits were fuller on the journey for it. 

My own spiritual identity has been shaped—bowed, even, bent, in the same sense as the Hebrew word keshet which means rainbow—by the elements of this story: how we show up for our loved ones; how the natural world can open our hearts; how loss brings us closer to the truth of this world, painful though it can be. And these kinds of experiences have informed my own thinking as part of our strategic planning process, as we articulated an aspiration together for our students, that they would develop “an authentic spiritual identity that is unique to each of them.” Because I know, we know, they have their own Marcs and their own rainbows to learn from.

In the hustle and chaos of 21st century life, of notifications bleeping and masks to wear and lunches to pack for kids, I try not to lose sight of our rainbows. I try to step out on the porch and watch the sky these months, as it turns to dusk, as the horizon itself becomes awash in color. These months following the Jewish new year are especially good for that—just the other night Sonia and I stood in our driveway, amazed to see bats flying around and between the streetlights. As Mary Oliver reminds us, the world stills “offers itself to your imagination,” if you can listen, and look. 

Or, as the Black Pumas sing so beautifully on their song “Colors”: 

It's a good day to be

A good day for me

A good day to see my favorite colors

Here’s to recognizing the rainbow signs, in all their beautiful and mysterious colors.