The real meaning of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world) is like almost everything in liberal Judaism — a flexible instrument capable of almost infinite twisting. <\/p>\n
Curt Biren writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n The current connotation can be traced back to the beginning of the post-War period. Brandeis University professor Jonathan Krasner, in his 2014 article \u201cThe Place of Tikkun Olam in American Jewish Life,\u201d 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. They included Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, and various Reform and Conservative rabbis, including Rabbi Leo Baeck and Rabbi Harold Schulweis. Under tikkun olam, as used by these Jewish leaders, \u201cthe Jews were not merely partners with God but \u2018senior partners in action,\u2019 entirely responsible for the execution of the covenant.\u201d The real meaning of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world) is like almost everything in liberal Judaism — a flexible instrument capable of almost infinite twisting. Curt Biren writes: The current connotation can be traced back to the beginning of … Continue reading
\nThe second group were educators \u2014 including Shlomo Bardin, founder of the Brandeis Camp, and Rabbi Raphael Artz, director of Camp Ramah in New England \u2014 many of whom sought to reinvigorate Jewish education, including social action and tzedakah, under the rubric of tikkun olam. For example, as Krasner notes, in speaking to a group of campers in 1960, \u201cBardin insisted that it was their \u2018task\u2019 as Jews to \u2018fix the world.\u2019\u201d Similarly, Rabbi Artz, in a 1967 address to Jewish educators, proclaimed, \u201cThe ultimate goal of man\u2019s partnership with God is Tikkun olam.\u201d
\nThe third group was political. Beginning in the 1970\u2019s, a number of progressive rabbis and community leaders began appropriating tikkun olam for their publications and programs. As Krasner notes, at the New Jewish Agenda\u2019s founding conference in 1982, \u201cThe platform asserted that \u2018many 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.\u2019\u201d In the early \u201990\u2019s, says Krasner, \u201cothers took up the effort to shape a progressive Jewish politics around tikkun olam.\u201d Among these was Michael Lerner, who founded Tikkun, a left-wing alternative to Commentary magazine. \u201cLerner 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.\u201d
\nToday, tikkun olam is part of modern, liberal discourse, even though its popularized connotation has little to do with its traditional meaning. In discussing the term in his 2014 article \u201cThe Assimilation of Tikkun Olam,\u201d Levi Cooper, a faculty member at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, notes that \u201cIt has become a watchword for any value, even if a particular value \u2014 worthwhile as it may be \u2014 is not rooted in Jewish tradition.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"