By Andrés Spokoiny
Few Hebrew idioms are so well known in the American Jewish community as “Tikkun Olam,” “repair of the world.” The term is understood in modern America as the idea that Jews are called upon to make the world more just, peaceful, tolerant, and equal, through acts of charity, kindness, and political action. Tikkun Olam connects with a basic, timeless idea in Jewish theology: that human beings are responsible for completing God’s creation and improving the world. It also draws abundantly from Torah and prophetic visions of justice and peace that stress the human capacity of bringing them to fruition.
American Jews have widely adopted Tikkun Olam as a central tenet of their identities. Around 70% of Jews in America believe that “working for justice and equality” is a key part of what being Jewish is all about. They often equate it with “holding liberal values” broadly understood, and consider these values a key component of the American Jewish experience. They note, rightly, that there’s a big overlap between those liberal values and traditional Jewish ones.
However, lately there seems to be a concerted attack on the idea of Tikkun Olam. It’s not yet an all-out frontal assault, but it seems that right-wing pundits – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – are picking a fight with the idea. The most strident critics – and the most politically motivated – say that Tikkun Olam is not a Jewish idea at all, but merely liberal politics masquerading as Jewish values. In a slightly conspiratorial tone, they surmise that lefties hijack the communal agenda and make it subservient to progressive goals. For them, the “Tikkun Olam movement” makes a marginal idea of Judaism into its core value. Jews, they imply, have responsibility for themselves, not for the world. “True” Judaism is deeply conservative instead of liberal, and Jews should abandon their cosmopolitanism to go back to our tribalist roots. These critics accuse the left of taking an obscure mystical term, changing its meaning, and crowning it as the ruling principle of Jewish experience.
One can say a lot about our infatuation with Tikkun Olam, and I will. But let’s start with what the critics get wrong, which is most of it.
First, the phrase “Tikkun Olam” is at least as old as Rabbinic Judaism itself. It appears already in the Mishnah, where it refers to social policy legislation providing extra protection to those potentially at a disadvantage. The “Aleinu,” one of the oldest Jewish prayers, contains the phrase “repair the world” (letaken olam). Critics love to grouse that liberal Jews “forget” the context – Aleinu envisions that God (not us) will “repair the world in the Kingship of God” – but the more important point is that “Tikkun Olam” wasn’t some phrase invented in the 1970s by Rabbi Michael Lerner and other hippie Jews.
Nor are the concepts of Jewish social justice and universal morality, to which Tikkun Olam has come to refer. Virtually all the prophets talk tirelessly about the need to create a just and ethical society, many of their words sound pretty much like a 21st century Tikkun Olam manifesto. Needless to say, they draw from the Torah, which speaks endlessly about loving the stranger and the poor. The idea that Jews have a universal mission also appears insistently from the Torah onwards. When God blesses our patriarch Abraham, God states that “through you, all the Nations of the Earth will be blessed.” The prophets often focus on Israel, their purview also extends to all Peoples. This includes the prophet Jonah, whose story we read on Yom Kippur and whose mission was exclusively directed at the gentile city (an enemy city, in fact) of Nineveh.
It would take gallons of ink to list all the traditional sources that encourage us to embark on what we call today Tikkun Olam. Considering how many of these sources are traditionally understood to be directly and authoritatively quoting God, whoever has an issue with Tikkun Olam needs to take it up with the Boss Himself. So no, it’s not a marginal idea that evil liberals brought to the forefront of the Jewish agenda; it’s been central to Judaism for millennia. And it’s not a perversion of a Kabbalistic term; if anything, the way in which we understand Tikkun Olam today is more faithful to the original mishnaic meaning of the term (pragmatic legislation to protect the vulnerable and preserve the integrity of society) than to the mystical interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah, in which the world has lost its original harmony after the “breaking of the vessels,” and fulfilling mitzvot (whether ethical or purely ritual) can “repair the world” from its spiritual wounds.
Second: it is true that Tikkun Olam is not all that Judaism is. Critics have a point there (more about that later). It is true that in emphasizing this idea, we may risk forgetting other, equally important ones. But we need to remember that Judaism has a history of emphasizing timely aspects of our tradition, even to the detriment of others. The Pharisees emphasized the Oral Tradition over literal interpretations of the Torah; the Mussar movement emphasized moral virtue; the rationalists emphasized the philosophical elements in Judaism; kabbalists, the mystical; Chasidim the emotional over the intellectual and misnagdim, learning and sternness over fervor. By stressing one particular aspect of Judaism (probably to the detriment of others), Tikkun Olam advocates are keeping in line with millennia of precedent. Critics will say that the emphasis is not really genuine but driven by external values. Nothing new there either; the Kabbalists were responding not only to internal Jewish dynamics but to the growth of mysticism in their time; the rationalists were influenced by the revival of Greek philosophy in the 12th century, and the Chasidim were responding partially to ecstatic movements in the Russian Orthodox Church. Nothing of this makes these movements illegitimate or “un-Jewish”; rather, the opposite. Jews have always combined the zeitgeist with the volkgeist (the spirit of the times with the spirit of the people).
There is however, a much more nuanced – and accurate – critique that can be leveled at the Tikkun Olam movement.
There is, indeed, a difference between emphasizing certain aspects of Judaism over others and outright reductionism. Tikkun Olam is an important aspect of Judaism, but it’s not Judaism. And any attempt to reduce Judaism to one of its components is problematic, and ultimately self-defeating. Here, too, historical precedent can provide wisdom: Kabbalah highlighted the mystical elements of Judaism, but it didn’t abolish mitzvot. Chasidism put fervor ahead of learning, but it didn’t advocate ignorance. Today, those of us who believe in the importance of Tikkun Olam need to present it within the richness and complexity of Jewish tradition.
This also necessitates the courage to confront aspects of Judaism that are, to modern eyes, problematic. It’s easy to just cherry-pick those sources that sound good to 21st century ears, but it’s not fully honest. The Bible wasn’t very kind to, say, LGBT people. It didn’t particularly relate humanely to the Amalekites, and examples of misogyny abound. As liberals can point to biblical sources to beef up their case, so can conservatives. After all, aren’t “family values” Jewish values? Isn’t respect for tradition a Jewish obsession? Don’t biblical prophets rage against tolerance of some other religions (idolatry) just as they rage against oppressing the poor?
To be fair, there’s reductionism all around us. There are groups today that try to equate Jewish values with conservative values, and, needless to say, the tribal nationalists among us point to Jewish sources to justify their disdain for others or even domination of them. This is as reductionist (maybe more so) as Tikkun Olam, but this shouldn’t be an excuse.
So Tikkun Olam – as we use the term today – is a genuine Jewish idea and not some modern liberal graft. But it’s important to reflect on what makes Tikkun Olam Jewish, in the sense of being different from secular social justice activism. Charity is probably a universal value, but Tzedakah adds uniquely Jewish notions to it, like the Maimonidean hierarchy of how to give; rest from work is a universal thing, but Sunday doesn’t have Shabbat’s unique restrictions and rituals that keep observant communities physically close together and undistracted. There’s a difference between giving charity and doing Tzedakah; there’s a difference between not working and celebrating Shabbat. What is the difference between social activitism and Tikkun Olam? This is an important question for Tikkun Olam advocates to answer – not to appease critics, but to make sure that they are making a uniquely Jewish contribution.
Both conservatives and liberals need to look at Jewish sources with intellectual honesty. Jewish values are not conservative or liberal; they are, well, Jewish. They have evolved over millennia and are saddled with contradictions and intrinsic tensions. In fact, much of Judaism is the search for a balance between conflicting, equally important values. We all need to resist the temptation of reducing Judaism to our favorite political or social ideas. Precisely the richness of Judaism is that it offers “a house of many rooms” where people of different persuasions can find inspiration and wisdom. It’s true that over centuries, there’s been such a thing as a mainstream, and certain values have been consistently more prominent than others. But confronting the parts of Judaism that don’t sit well with our political and social ideas is part of having an adult relationship with our tradition. We are Israel, “the one who wrestles with God” and part of our amazing creativity as a people comes from our permanent wrestling with our sources, not ignoring but struggling with the bits that challenge us.
None of us can, let alone should, stop bringing our ideologies to bear in our Judaism. No human tradition exists in any “pure,” platonic form outside its community’s lives. Neither, on the other hand, can we just read whatever values and conclusions we want into our sources, which do have meaningful content. In between those extremes lives the vibrant community in which most of us already live, a community in which our sources both comfort and challenge Jews of many different beliefs. No matter what the Tikkun Olam haters or the Tikkun Olam reductionists may say, that complex tension is the best of the Jewish tradition.
Andrés Spokoiny is President & CEO, Jewish Funders Network.
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I agree with your assessment that Tikkun Olam has been denigrated by the partisan battles of the day. One can argue the most effective way to reduce the power of a non-partisan religious theology is to accuse its adherents of partisanship – which is happening across the American landscape today. Nonetheless, Tikkun Olam resonates across age cohorts, easily recognized by religious and secular Jews. Tikkun Olam is not on the liberal-conservative spectrum; rather, it is a forward thinking-problem solving process for building a better world.
What is described in this blog is the retarding process, pulling staff and volunteers away from the work of Tikkun Olam to the backward action of having to defend it. Unfortunately, it works.
Bravo. As usual, Andres has the ability to cut to the chase, articulating eloquently and succinctly what informed Jews need to understand about the current state of Jews and Judaism. Making social responsibility central to the Jewish conversation has been at the heart of my rabbinate. The organization that I founded and led for 21 years, PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, touched the lives of over 20,000 young people. For many, seeing how Judaism could make a difference in the world, made them proud and committed Jews in ways that otherwise, might not have happened. Many of PANIM’s alumni are now leaders, both lay and professional, in the Jewish community.
For those who want to better inform themselves on this issue you might want to read my book, Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World which provides a theology and a history of Jewish engagement with social justice. And so that one doesn’t come to believe that this concern is restricted to the liberal wings on the Jewish denominational spectrum, you should also read Rabbi Jill Jacob’s book, There Shall be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition and Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s book, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility.
From Noach to Vayikrah to Amos the Jewish concept of social justice is rooted in a covenantal relationship that binds a people to their community, their god, their foundational texts and universal values of fairness, equity and compassion. Whatever catch phrase you adopt, you can disagree on tactics and political arrangements (in a broad range of opinions that excludes an Ayn Rand and a Stalin) but one cannot argue with the ultimate goals and purposes.
Whether or not the term “Tikkun Olam” is ancient or modern is irrelevant. Bottom line is that we as Jews have a special Mitzvah (obligation and privilege) of helping other Jews. Helping a fellow Jew takes priority. Helping repair the world comes after we have looked after those that can’t afford to go to a Jewish school, etc.. Giving social justice a Hebrew term confuses people into thinking that they are doing the right thing Jewishly when really their priorities are messed up. Ask any Jewish prophet and he will tell you the same thing.
The author does well to argue that the search for Jewish meaning and righteous social action should be grounded in Jews’ exploration and ownership of Jewish civilization in toto, rather than in slogans. However, his critique of “pundits” (whom does he mean?), tends to trivialize as a sort of conservative conspiracy theory the criticism–worthy of being treated seriously, in my view–that Jews, including many who are insufficiently anchored in Jewish culture (and who in some cases may not even identify primarily as Jews), yet still seek some sort of “Jewish” validation, are just clothing what are actually universal, liberal values and universalist social identities (good or bad, right or left)–and, at worst, are accepting the position of supplicants toward present or potential non-Jewish peer-groups (“let us in/don’t kick us out; we’re good people!”)–in a reductionist “Jewish” slogan whose origins and meanings these Jews do not fully (care to) understand.
I’ve often been told by American Jews that the whole point of being Jewish is “tikun olam.” My interlocutors seem to understand the concept almost entirely in terms of American public policy “issues” and political causes, while evincing an absolutely minimal knowledge of the concept itself. I rather suspect the same applies to their knowledge of Jewish history, of the Hebrew language, etc., etc.
As a child in the Ahskenazic community of Mexico City, I heard the term “Tikun Olam” only sparingly. At the same time my Jewish elders had the foresight (or the “ethnocentric,” “conservative,” “ghetto-minded,” “reactionary,” “Zionazi” will) to teach me and over 90% of my fellow Jewish students Yiddish, Hebrew, Tanakh, modern secular Jewish literature, the geography of Israel, and so on. The outcome of over seven decades of the predominant Mexican-Jewish approach to Jewish education are plain: A 5-15% intermarriage among Mexican Jews; high levels of Jewish, Hebrew, and (for those over 30) even Yiddish literacy among them; high levels of Mexican aliyah; a steady phenomenon of Jewish philanthropy; and (gasp!) a secular-to-masorti Jewish majority. The outcome in the US, by contrast, of over 3 decades of Jewish “progress” and Americanization offers a sharp contrast: A 60-80% intermarriage rate among the non-Orthodox; low levels of Jewish (let alone Hebrew) literacy; proportionately small Leah numbers among the non-Orthodox; overall demographic loss and an aging population; a nearly total loss of Yiddish (except among Haredim) and Ladino; a growing concern that wealthy, beneficent Jews are not passing their values on to their children, and that hence many Jewish communal institutions, which still depend largely on “big” Jewish donors, may contract into relative insignificance in the coming decades; majorities or pluralities of Jews who (according to the 2013 Pew study) think community is irrelevant to being Jewish (!) and yet point to remembering the Holocaust, to having a sense of humor, and to fighting for social justice as the essence of Jewishness. (It goes without saying that to remember the Holocaust, to have a sense of humor, and to fight for social justice, one does not have to be a Jew.) And worst of all, American Jewish life has engendered the widely-held notion, belied by centuries of historical experience, that to “be Jewish” is fundamentally a matter of religious piety–be it in a liberal-progressive, conservative, or Orthodox key–and thus of belonging (often at heavy financial cost) to a corresponding “religious denomination.”
Bottom line: Critiques of Tikun Olam as an AMERICAN-Jewish slogan increasingly devoid of a solid Jewish cultural and sociological base that will sustain a resilient and growing Jewish community need not be read as a retrograde conservative tic. Depending on the quality of the argument, one may read such critiques more profitably and soberly as serious attempts to re-ground Jewish survival and thriving in the project of nurturing Jewish civilization itself, especially in a country in which the structural bases of that civilization–a tradition of communalism, demographic density and compactness, a robust Jewish educational system, etc., have tended to dissolve under the impact of the vortex of assimilation and of the early “Protestantization” (so to speak) of Jewish culture, if these bases have ever existed at all. Jews’ socio-political righteousness *as Jews* is, I hazard, sturdiest and most profound when it truly follows from the depths of their Jewishness.
David and all, thanks for the comments. it’s a blessing to be able to have intelligent dialogues with folks that care deeply about the same issues i care.
David, I think that there are many valid points in what you say. If you read my piece about Jewish Identity (www.ejewishphilanthropy.com/speaking-about-jewish-identity) I decry the fact that some content-free formulae are replacing a cultural and sociological thickness that is necessary to both sustain identity and provide meaning.
My problem with the critics of Tikkun Olam is that they treat the concept as an illegitimate interpretation of Judaism, which is not. i call them pundits, because i think there’s a clear political agenda behind some of the attacks of T.O. it’s true that many of the advocates of Tikkun olam want, as you say, to be accepted by liberals, but with the same token, many conservatives critics of the concept want to show to their right-wing peers that Jews are “kosher” (or as conservative as they are). In a liberal zeitgeist, Jew wanted to show their liberal pedigree; in a conservative zeitgeist, they want to show their conservative credential. Nothing new there.
But in either case, I have no problems with Jews trying to justify their political opinions with Jewish sources. That should be celebrated, not condemned. Isn’t it great that Jews are looking at the sources for validation and inspiration? What both sides should do, to be intellectually honest, is acknowledge that an alternative reading is also possible.
My problems with Tikkun Olam is twofold: one is the reductionism that I describe in the article; the other is that – as you say – it fails to be sufficiently anchored in cultural thickness. (or is presented as a substitute for that thickness). Tikkun Olam can’t and shouldn’t be a replacement for things like speaking Hebrew or being Jewishly literate. If anything, it should be (and in many cases is) a gateway to a deeper engagement with Jewish sources and culture.
In the same token, tribal Jewish Nationalism of the type we are seeing in the right, can’t be a replacement to the depth, diversity and thickness of Jewish traditions. Every teductionism is problematic.
Thanks again for the comments.
I agree with Charles Lebow’s comment above that there is a Jewish obligation to help fellow Jews before the rest of world (no different than helping your brother or sister if for example they need money then helping a stranger who needs money- one’s brother or sister comes first).
“Tikun Olam Judaism” waters down the sense of kinsmanship (kol yisrael aravim ze le ze) that is part of the central components of Judaism- the concept of the Jewish People. (No it is not racist because although we are a family descended from a particalar people- but anyone can join us and be a full fledged Jew.)
There is a problem when Judaism is reduced to “JUST be a good person and make the world better/Tikun Olam/Social Justice” as such a definition leads to Jews meeting and marrying non-Jews as there is nothing about helping the world, that makes that activitly an exclusively Jewish one. All religions (in theory) want to make the world better. Tikun Olam yes, but we invite assimilation when we make that the end-all and be-all of Judaism.
Dave, I don’t think that helping your own is antithetical to tikkun olam.
The way I see it, intra-jewish solidarity teaches you solidarity writ large, the same way in which a loving family teaches you love – that then you apply to others.
Conversely, I saw many funders getting to jewish through the universal.
Neither I think that practitioners of tikkun olam disregard their intra jewish obligation. Take Schusterman Foundation. Big proponents of tikkun olam and yet one of the biggest funders of jewish life, or charles bronfman, or lipman kanfer or leichtag, among many others.
It’s legit to see concentric circles of solidarity
Don’t get me wrong. The risk you outline is real and exist, and not just for Jews. It’s inherent to a globalized work (see appiah’s Book about cosmopolitanism). When you assume that all people have the same intrinsic value, as we do today, the problem of who to help first will inevitably arise. but I haven’t seen it play out in the mainstream. Or rather, I haven’t seen that adopting a tikun olam ethos hurt intra jewish solidarity