By Amy Klein

People usually associate religious/Chassidic men and women with simple black and white dress.

While the modest lifestyle tends to more formal and classic attire, the observant community is certainly not stark or devoid of color.

Deborah Gordon in Encino, California, in her ankle-length skirt to long-sleeved blouse pink and purple ensemble topped by a fuchsia hat, believes in “Color therapy.”

Today, therapy has expanded beyond Freud's original "talking therapy." Aside from "traditional" therapy (psychotherapy, behavioral, cognitive, gestalt, etc.), human healing has been pursued through other senses and arts: music therapy, art therapy, dance therapy, movement therapy.

Last but not least, there’s chromotherapy, or color therapy, that uses color to balance a person's physical, emotional, spiritual or mental energies. On one end of the spectrum, it is used by alternative-health practitioners, and on the other by fashion consultants who help people find the colors that best suit them.

Gordon - as wife of Chabad of the Valley's Rabbi Josh Gordon, and as a color analyst - does both.

"I don’t live a dichotomy. I'm not just a rebbetzin, and not just a color designer. I incorporate my Chabad spiritual feelings into my color work."

Gordon has designed synagogues and Chabad centers around the world, using Web cams and photographs to case the joints. As president of Tarzana’s ritual mikvah bath, brides consult with her about their trousseau and colors.

"We discuss colors as well as Shabbos, kosher and family purity," Gordon replies. Talking about colors is a complex process, for which her private clients – including famous actors and writers – pay $450 for a one-and-a-half hour consultation through her “Flying Colors” consulting business.

The name for her business came long before Gordon even knew it would be a business. She and her new husband went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a blessing in the early 1970s. "We wanted to go serve the Jewish community as Chabad emissaries, to bring people closer to Judaism, but we had concerns, wondering if we could overcome the challenges to be successful.” The Rebbe assured Gordon by saying “you will pass with flying colors."

For a follower and believer in the Rebbe, that unique sentence was a vision and a forecast, but it wouldn't come to fruition for many years.

Gordon has been interested in color and design as a young girl. Her father was a foreman in a paint company that specialized in mixing and matching paint colors.

"It wasn't like Home Depot, where they do it for you," she said. She'd sit on his knee and tell him, " add more pink" or "you have to add more brown."

Gordon studied design and color with Suzanne Caygill, the originator of color design theory. Back in 1942, Caygill, a milliner and fashion designer, had an epiphany: that a person carries information about their personality and style in their skin, hair and eyes. Caygill developed a theory of personality and style based on the four seasons, creating 64 personality types.

In 1980 Caygill wrote Color: The Essence of You, but the book stops at the physical. Before Caygill died in 1994, she confided to Gordon that she had missed out on the spirituality of color.

"It was like a charge," Gordon said. "I had to step into big shoes."

Gordon was licensed by Color Design International in 1993, and the next year she started “Flying Colors” that incorporates design, analysis, healing, therapy and spirituality. Gordon has also studied what she calls "color kabbalah," correlating the supernal kabbalistic spheres to color.

"When G-d created the world," she says, “He put different energies into different seasons. When G-d's energy was coming into the world, it would have been too much, so there are diffusions of this energy – different emotional and intellectual capabilities," a concept that can be understood through Chasidic philosophy.

As a cardiologist checks a person's blood pressure and heartbeat, color analysts look at the eyes, skin tone and hair color.

Gordon shows a client dozens of swatch books, checking her client's reaction to various colors. She starts building a palate for different occasions: work situations, personal situations, first dates, job interviews, etc.

"If I see a person with a green eye with brown around it, I see that, as a child, they need answers," Gordon said. “They wouldn't be happy in a religious setting with pat explanations.”

"It touches a deep core – it's a soulful connection. I am a chasid of the Rebbe, so it's all spiritual and universal," she said. "Through your color, you know your purpose, who you are, and what you should aspire to."

For more information, Deborah Gordon can be reached at (818) 784-2939.