The real meaning of Tikkun Olam - 0 views
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the idea of tikkun olam was utilized in very specific situations in order to avert particular unintended consequences.
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Traditional rules were adjusted so as to prevent certain undesirable outcomes. This has nothing to do with the popular notion of tikkun olam — “social justice” to “repair” the world.
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Rather, tikkun olam as discussed in the Talmud relates to individual actions in selected circumstances — and adjustments in the rules to avoid potentially perverse results for the community.
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In the 16th century, tikkun olam became part of Lurianic Kabbalah, but this was a very different idea, as well. As Halkin explains, while the Lurianic tikkun “calls for mending the entire cosmos … these efforts … are strictly spiritual, involving prayer, religious ritual, and meditation.”
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Jonathan Krasner, in his 2014 article “The Place of Tikkun Olam in American Jewish Life,” identifies three distinct groups that transformed tikkun olam over the past 75 years. The first were theologians who, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, looked for ways to re-imagine the covenantal relationship between humans and God.
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Under tikkun olam, as used by these Jewish leaders, “the Jews were not merely partners with God but ‘senior partners in action,’ entirely responsible for the execution of the covenant.”
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abbi Artz, in a 1967 address to Jewish educators, proclaimed, “The ultimate goal of man’s partnership with God is Tikkun olam.”
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Beginning in the 1970’s, a number of progressive rabbis and community leaders began appropriating tikkun olam for their publications and programs
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“The platform asserted that ‘many of us base our convictions on the Jewish religious concept of tikun olam (the just ordering of human society and the world) and the prophetic traditions of social justice.’”
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In the early ’90’s, says Krasner, “others took up the effort to shape a progressive Jewish politics around tikkun olam.” Among these was Michael Lerner, who founded Tikkun, a left-wing alternative to Commentary magazine. “Lerner hoped to energize alienated Jews with a model of Judaism that rejected the crass materialism and hypocrisy of middle class suburban Jewish life in favor of a Jewishly grounded ethic of social justice.”
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Today, tikkun olam is part of modern, liberal discourse, even though its popularized connotation has little to do with its traditional meaning.
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“It has become a watchword for any value, even if a particular value — worthwhile as it may be — is not rooted in Jewish tradition.”
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This brings us back to the tradition — the Talmud — in which tikkun olam served a very important, but specific, role when applying rules of morality and justice in certain circumstances.
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The Talmud, I’ve learned, is more than amazing — parsing in minute detail the many moral and judicial issues that inevitably come up in the normal course of life. The focus is primarily on what’s right and just for those directly involved.
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In several limited instances, the rabbis had a wider perspective to keep an eye on the effects on the community as a whole and to adjust specific rules as needed — mi’pnei tikkun ha-olam
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The idea of “social justice” may, for many, still be worthwhile, but, according to the Talmud, tikkun olam it is not.