Two Minute Torah Podcast

Sh'lach Lecha 5768 by Joanne Palmer

Although much of the Torah plays in our imaginations in Technicolor, in fact colors are rarely mentioned. Fairly early in the year we heard that when Tamar gave birth to Judah’s twins the one meant to be born first clutched a crimson cord in his hand, and even earlier we learned that Esau gave up his birthright for some red, red stew. In a few weeks we’ll learn about the red heifer whose ashes are magic. But it’s not until we got to the instructions for the building of the mishkan that we heard repeatedly about colors – the blue, purple, and crimson yarns with which it is to be decorated.

So although blood is shed frequently throughout the Torah, and the Temple would have run with rivers of red, most of the narrative is dun-colored, with perhaps some flashes of olive-silver. Parshat Sh’lah L’cha has one of the Torah’s most well-known visual images, the spies returning laden with grapes, two of them carrying one huge bunch on two poles, but it is only in our imaginations, not in the text, that those grapes are a ripe, luscious purple-red.

That’s why it’s striking that in Sh’lah L’cha and then again in the haftarah we hear about a cord, first blue, then crimson; the two readings are tied together not only by the obvious theme of spies but by these cords too. In the parsha, the Israelites are given the most crushing news imaginable, that their wanderings will end with their deaths in the desert. Like many of our own first-generation American ancestors, they will have left what they inaccurately but understandably romanticize as comfort and suffer loss, fear, and pain on the journey to what will end up being a far better life – but for their descendents, not for themselves.

At the very end of the parsha, after this news has been given, the Israelites are told to tie a cord of blue among the fringes at the corners of their clothing, to help them remember. This corded fringe, demanded of all generations, binds them – binds us – together.

In the haftarah, we encounter another group of spies; these spies are the vanguard of what will be the Israelites’ successful invasion of Jericho. Rahav hides them, and in return they promise her that if she marks her house with a crimson cord she and her family will be spared.

So two vivid colors – the blue of the clear desert sky and the bright red of life – shine through this week’s reading, although its most prominent features are fear and disappointment. Those bright colors, cloudless fearless beckoning blue and life-hot red, are part of the palette of our lives, although often they are hidden. It is our job to find them, to entwine them, and to bind ourselves to each other with them.