The Rainbow Connection - Rabbi Marci Jacobs

Like pretty much any kid born in the late 70s whose parents had even the tiniest sense of humor, I grew up with the Muppets as de facto members of the family. We watched reruns of the TV show together, my mom loving Animal, particularly the overhand bowling bit. We went to see the movies in the theater and watched them at home on VHS (Yes, VHS!) over and over. 

And like any kid of my vintage, some of the scenes and songs are imprinted on my brain. Chief among them is The Rainbow Connection, the opening number to the original Muppet Movie. The rest of the movie is more your typical madcap Muppet craziness, but the opening scene is tender and vulnerable. Kermit the Frog, sitting in his swamp on a log, playing his banjo, sings his song and shares with us his deepest yearnings. 

Still, I don’t think I ever gave any deep thought to the lyrics. Oh, I know them by heart, but in my head, when I think of the Rainbow Connection, I see my old friend, Amichai Margolis, a song leader and musician, picking up his guitar and putting on his very impressive Jim Henson Kermit voice to deliver a faithful rendition. The song reminds me of camp, of friends, of the nostalgia that bubbles up when you re-encounter something special from your childhood. 

This past summer, I came across a performance of the song by Sara Bareilles. It immediately captivated me with its raw emotion, a blend of loss and hope. The video had been posted as part of a Substack essay by Meg Falley, the widow of the poet Andrea Gibson, who died of ovarian cancer a year earlier in 2025. I learned that the song had been part of a performance at Red Rocks in Colorado, a showing of Andrea’s last public poetry set, interspersed with music and storytelling, all staged in their memory. 

But there was so much more. Meg wrote about how she hosted a party the night before the show, bringing family and friends together to celebrate and offer support for what would surely be a meaningful, but difficult event the next night. As the karaoke portion of the evening got underway, the son of a close friend got up to sing, amusing everyone with his take on The Rainbow Connection, of course done in his best Kermit voice. Meg didn’t think much of it, although it seemed unusual to her that a 17-year-old would know and appreciate the song. 

She hadn’t been shown Sara Bareilles’s set list, so when she heard the familiar notes the next afternoon during a sound check, it made her sit up and pay attention. It wasn’t like some ubiquitous popular earworm had shown up twice in 24 hours. This felt like more than a coincidence. Cognizant of all the ways she still felt connections with her late spouse, she took it as a sign that Andrea approved of the plans for the tribute. 

And then, a few days later, Meg was at a yoga class, not part of her usual routine, relaxing into pigeon pose, when the music changed, and again she heard, “Why are there so many / songs about rainbows…” coming through the speakers. 

Meg reflected on her inconsistency in picking up the signs of a connection with Andrea.  “I don’t pretend to understand exactly how to connect to the spiritual Wi-Fi. Sometimes paying attention improves the reception. Other times, Andrea comes through loud and clear while I’m looking the other way.” This was one of those times. 

She began to examine the lyrics, noting that Kermit starts by acknowledging that rainbows aren’t tangible things, illusions, he calls them. And he admits that he doesn’t know what’s on the other side. But instead of believing that they’re not real and there is no other side, he states his certainty that we’ll find it someday. 

He chooses faith in something he can’t touch, but that he feels is deeply true. 

Meg was making that choice too. She writes, “What were the chances that a song Andrea and I had never shared could hold so much of what I’d been pondering this year, then keep arriving in all these different forms?

Maybe every appearance of “The Rainbow Connection” was Andrea saying: Listen, I am going to be completely unsubtle about this. Any time you slip into doubt, I will hit you over the head with a frog.”

Meg’s grief – the yearning, the seeking, the serendipitous moments of connection – is something those of us who have lost someone know well. Part of the process of grieving is learning to listen for a voice that is no longer here in the room, but also somehow still here. We only need to tune our receivers, connect to the spiritual Wi-Fi to pick up what it's saying. 

~~~~~~~

Yizkor – remember.

We often relate to memory as though it is a comprehensive record of the life and identity of someone we miss. In this view, memory is like a photograph. It is an unmoving image that tells the whole story of a person, conveying all we need to know about who they were. 

At other times, we relate to memory like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, spread in disarray on a table in front of us. Our sense of someone we remember is fragmented, a series of smaller images and moments that flicker through our minds unbidden, with nothing connecting them to each other or to us.

Both of these metaphors for memory are passive; they exist without our conscious involvement. The Jewish tradition relates to memory differently. For us, memory is a living, breathing thing, something that exists in the world and inside each of us. 

In her groundbreaking study of elderly Jews in Venice, California, Number Our Days, the late anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff opened a window into the lives of people who engage in the work of memory on a daily basis. By telling and retelling their stories, by creating rituals and ceremonies to mark important occasions, they weren’t simply remembering, they were re-membering. Re-membering, she wrote, is different from passive remembering. It is a process 

“calling attention to the reaggregation of members, the figures who belong to one’s life story, one’s own prior selves, as well as significant others who are part of the story.”

Re-membering is repopulating our identity over and over again, unifying who we are now with who we once were. Re-membering brings the people who have receded into the background due to their absence, despite being main characters in our stories, right back up front. We reintegrate them as part of who we are, keeping them alive within us, seeing ourselves reflected through who they were.  

This is another dimension of understanding the Rainbow Connection. When we say Yizkor, we re-member, reconfiguring and strengthening our ties to those we’ve loved and lost. “Let me be a seal upon your heart, like the seal upon your hand,” we read in Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs), כִּי־עַזָּה כַמָּוֶת אַהֲבָה, for love is as strong as death.” (Song of Songs 8:6) By re-membering our loved ones, we seal them in our hearts as pieces of our identity. They may no longer be alive, but our love for them weaves them inextricably into who we are. 

In Rashi’s comment to this verse, he says, somewhat cryptically: “...Seal me upon Your heart, so that You do not forget me, and you will see.” (Rashi on Song of Songs 8:6) While I can’t be entirely sure what he means by “and you will see,” what I think he means is this: There are times when those we remember are invisible to us, when we remember them, but do not feel their presence in our hearts, when we’re not quite tuned to their frequency. And there are times when the signal comes through and we can’t not see them, when our awareness of them smacks us in the face, or hits us over the head with a frog – when the Rainbow Connection opens up before our eyes.

There is a tension here. The unexpected moments of connection can be a gift of closeness to our loved one. They can also be a painful reminder of loss. Sometimes we desperately want that connection but cannot conjure it up. Sometimes we’d rather keep our focus on the here and now, rather than looking across the divide at those we’ve lost. Sometimes we feel like the spiritual Wi-Fi has gone down, and our connection is broken, or silent. 

The final stanza of the song reads:

Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices?

I've heard them calling my name…

I've heard it too many times to ignore it

It's something that I'm supposed to be

Whether we seek out that connection, try to avoid the signal, or just simply allow it to reach us of its own accord, our ties to those we have loved are still there. They will be there for us when we’re ready, when we need them, even if that moment is not now. 

Someday we’ll find it 

The rainbow connection

The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

This is what we’re doing today as we prepare for our Yizkor prayers. We turn to Yizkor not to say goodbye, but to quiet our minds enough to pick up the signal. We are the lovers and dreamers Kermit speaks of, the ones finding the rainbow connection, that eternal link that ties us to our ancestors, parents, partners, friends, and loved ones, the seal on our heart that is stronger than death.

As we prepare to turn now to the words of Yizkor and tune our hearts to the signals being broadcast our way, I want to leave us with the words of Andrea Gibson, who set the antenna, if you will, for their signal, with the poem Love Letter from the Afterlife, written shortly before their passing.

My love, I was so wrong. 

Dying is the opposite of leaving. 

When I left my body, I did not go away. 

That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. 

I am more here than I ever was before. 

I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. 

So close you look past me when wondering where I am. 

It’s Ok. 

I know that to be human is to be farsighted. 

But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. 

Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? 

Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” 

In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. 

At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. 

All day I listen to the radio of your memories… 

When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials.

Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you.

One day you will understand. 

There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning…

I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. 

My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. 

I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before.  

Do you understand? 

It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. 

It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. 

I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. 

I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

We turn to our Yizkor prayers, beginning on page 290 in our maḥzorim.