Making sense of the sedra: Noach
We pray and hope for a rainbow
For over a year, hundreds of people have gathered every Friday morning, in all weathers, to call for the release of the hostages held in Gaza. Organised by a small but dedicated group of volunteers, the vigils are held at The Boulevard in Borehamwood.
Banners and photos of the hostages are prominently displayed, British and Israeli flags are waved as each week the crowd hears from different guest speakers about the plight of those being held captive. When Sir Oliver Dowden MP attended the vigil, he said: “Let us never forget the 1,200 people murdered in the horrific attack of October 7, including one from our own constituency of Hertsmere (Jake Marlowe), and 101 people being cruelly being held hostage.”
He added: “Their captors call themselves Hamas; we should always call them exactly what they are: terrorists. For the hostages and their families these have been long, dark days, and it is our duty, together, as friends of Israel, as supporters of freedom, to sustain the flame of hope, keeping those hostages’ names and stories alive, pressing constantly for their swift release and praying for their safe return.”
In this week’s parsha, Noach, following the flood God says: “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
Why did God choose a rainbow to be a symbol of his promise not to destroy the world again with a flood? Chizkuni explains that just as the rainbow does not change its consistency, although it reflects both water and fire and provides a greater variety of light than any other phenomenon, water and fire do not act as mutually destructive as they normally do in nature. Therefore, its very appearance is a reassurance that rain will never again be a precursor to the destruction of humanity.
The Midrash views this passage dealing with the rainbow homiletically. The Hebrew word kashti (my bow) is related to hekesh (a likeness or comparison). It is as if God said: “My rainbow is a reminder of my image when it appears in the cloud.”
We can also read the word kashti as ‘my straw’, which indicates that just as straw – the pedicel of a fruit – is necessary but subordinate to the fruit itself, it is necessary at times for such secondary matters to become visible.
Human beings possess both an invisible essence – the soul – and a visible peripheral shell, the body. The words “it will be when I place my straw in the clouds” are like God saying: “when I fuse the physical with the spiritual, then this rainbow will become visible on earth”.
The message to mankind is that the invisible spiritual forces we call the soul must become manifest in the body. This is the meaning of the words “the rainbow will become visible in the cloud”. The cloud is the curtain which divides between our body and soul and the rainbow is the call to us for our soul to become manifest.
God set the rainbow as an eternal reminder to humanity that we can harmonise both the physical and the spiritual – we do not need to compromise our individualism while drawing strength from the power of unity and demanding freedom and peace for everyone.
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