John Lennon vs. the Rainbow

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, October 28, 2006

For a while my son Jeremy was very interested in Esperanto. Esperanto is a language used by several million people today, that was created in the late 19th century to be a universal means of communication, With its straightforward, commonsensical grammar, it was meant to be easy to learn and accessible to everyone. Its name means hope and it was part of a dream of a world without conflict.

Esperanto was the creation of Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Lithuanian Jewish ophthalmologist who was fluent in Yiddish, Russian, Polish and German and who also learned Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian. Having seen the fighting in its own hometown of Bialystock between different ethnic groups that spoke different languages, he attributed many of the misunderstandings to the lack of a common language.

Many times as we look at the newspaper and see the record of war and destruction all over the world, we wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler if we removed some of the differences that exist in our world. If everyone spoke the same language, if there was only one country and only one religion, wouldn’t our globe be more peaceful.

This view is expressed in John Lennon’s very popular song, Imagine. In the second verse, he expresses this dream of a world without differences:

“Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”

But we have seen the dark side of this dream of worldwide unity. More often in history, the dream is a nightmare and unity comes from the imposition of power. In our historical experience, it is totalitarian regimes that emerge from the destruction of individual difference, national identity and religion.

Our Torah portion this morning deals with this issue of unity versus diversity. In Jewish tradition it is believed that the remedy is always created before the illness and that is how Jewish commentators have understood God’s promise of the rainbow covenant preceding the story of the Tower of Babel.

For the Rabbis, the story of Babel is not a cute children’s tale but a political commentary. The tower was the work of Nimrod, a Biblical figure about whom the Midrash has much to say. Nimrod is the son of Cush, the grandson of Ham. In the Torah, he is described as a mighty hunter. He is the first empire builder, and in addition to his physical prowess, was considered a gifted demagogue who was able to snare people with his words. The Midrash describes him much like the Roman Emperors of Rabbinic times, ruthless and devious. In one of the commentaries, it is explained that the tower had several purposes, among them, allowing the regime to spy of its citizens. Nimrod’s lack of concern for individuality, expressed in the Midrashim that Roxanne has already quoted to us about the disregard for the workers on the Tower, is understood as a sign of his rebellion against God, who created individual difference and value. In later Midrashim, Nimrod will try to kill Abraham by throwing him into a furnace, and will eventually be killed by Esau, another mighty hunter.

The tower of Babel represents a world focused on one goal, with no room for individuality. The rainbow expresses its opposite. Though in school we learned the rainbow, Roy G Biv, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, in reality the rainbow is a spectrum of infinite colors. It represents inclusion of the full array of human possibilities, inclusiveness and acceptance.

We find a sense of this in the Orthodox commentary Otzer Chayim: “A rainbow is made up of various colors and shades of colors and although they are very different from each other, they come together to make one entire whole. Similarly, people are very different from each other. They come from different national backgrounds and they have different personalities. But if they will look at themselves in the right way there can be peace and harmony despite the differences between them. This is basic for the existence of the world and for the welfare of individuals. For this reason the rainbow is the symbol of the covenant between the Almighty and the earth.”

When we look at the rainbow, we remember God’s covenant not to destroy the earth, but our tradition tells us there is more that we should remember. Whenever we see a rainbow or a picture of a rainbow it is a reminder to work towards harmony with other people even if there are major differences between us. The rainbow is a reminder that peace comes not from the elimination of difference, but from the acceptance of difference as part of God’s intention, as part of the shalom, the shleimut, the peace and the wholeness of our world.