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

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:

• Reclaim­ing Judaism
• Recon­struct­ing Judaism
• Aleph
• Open Sid­dur
• Rab­bi Jef­frey Gold­wasser’s Omer counting

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.

reach over the rainbow

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.

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.

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.

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).