The purpose of this email is to refract some color at the Shabbat table... Please share...
Mazal tov to our daughter Goldy and family on the birth of our first grandson!
This little guy came into the world on Sunday afternoon (Israel time). The Seinfeld rainbow just gained another color.
This miracle, and last week's splash of colors, got me thinking about spectra, sunsets, rainbows, and the deep blue sky.
Not many people know this, but sunsets, rainbows and the blue sky are all related phenomena.
Their common denominator is the strange fact that white light is actually a mixture of all colors.
It's a fact and can be easily demonstrated with a prism. But personally it's very hard for me to wrap my mind around it. How is it possible that mixing red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet makes white?
But this great phenomenon suggests a question for your table: what can we learn from this?
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan suggests the following interpretation:
White light symbolizes the Infinite or Divine light that permeates the world. We don't perceive this light because by the time we open our eyes it has already been refracted into millions of colors - that's the stuff of this world, including you and me.
When you look around you and see colors, know that you are really seeing "parts" of white light that has been refracted.
When you look around you and see stuff, or people, or anything, know that you are really seeing "parts" of the Divine light that has been refracted.
Final question for your table:
Per the analogy, if white light is refracted via a prism, what's the "prism" that refracts the Infinite light?
Shabbat Shalom
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