Likelihood of Success

The color chain

Dec 30, 2007 Faith and Works, Heart and spirit

Rabbi Meir used to say: How is Techeles [blue color used in Tzitzis] different from all other colors? The Techeles looks like the sea, and the sea looks like the sky and the sky looks like a sapphire stone and the sapphire stone looks like the Throne of Honor (of the Almighty).

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Chullin 89a. One of the leading orthodox lecturers on Jewish thought, Rabbi Yissocher Frand, explains why we are given this relatively long chain of association: Because we all must take one step at a time. Brilliant color and light can stimulate us, inspire us, and like all things that compel the soul make us want to absorb them and transcend. We are swept up by beauty and want to meld with it. This after all is a kind of love. That is how I have often felt about music. Listening to Beethoven or another master, I have said to myself, how can I become one with this? How can I acquire this moment of bliss forever? For other people it is light and color that makes them want to snap their heads heavenward and lose themselves to the beckoning of their senses.

But mostly that gets us a stiff neck.

No, first the sea — at our feet. Our footing secure, we can look upward. Only once we have taken in the reality of our basic, natural environment can we start envisioning anything as ornamental, esoteric and exquisite as a blue sapphire (not even an aquamarine!).

And if any of us actually could make the connection from mere color to some conceptualization of the Throne of Glory, we would probably never have to rely on physical cues in this world again.

First, though, the sea. The air. The real world. Then the icing (or the ice). Only then, the seat of the Divine.