By Holly Lebowitz Rossi
The Dallas Morning News
February 10, 2006
The world was perfect once.
It is a simple but radical suggestion, with a corollary that is even more startling--the world could be made perfect, whole, again.
The term for this idea in Judaism is tikkun olam, or "repair of the world." The recent movie "Bee Season," which tells the story of one family's struggle to repair itself within the framework of Jewish mysticism, is the latest emergence of this ancient idea into mainstream culture.
Jewish mystical theology holds that soon after God created the world, it experienced a cosmic "shattering" that sent sparks of goodness and godliness flying all over the Earth. Tikkun olam calls upon Jews to gather those sparks back together, re-forming them into a unified whole and, ultimately, bringing about the coming of the messiah.
"This extraordinary idea that we can restore what has been shattered--in fact, it's our responsibility to try, each of us, to make our world whole again," says Saul Naumann, the Jewish cantor played by Richard Gere in "Bee Season," which is based on a Myla Goldberg novel of the same name.
But as with many points of Jewish theology, there are multiple ways of interpreting--and living by--the idea of tikkun olam. From the mystical, or kabbalistic, to the political, the idea is as complex as the religion it comes from.
Lawrence Fine, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., said tikkun olam's status as a "mantra or slogan," a widely used rallying cry for everything from personal moral behavior to social justice advocacy, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
"For most of Jewish history," he said, "Jews were concerned about their own well-being, their own welfare."
It wasn't until the late 18th Century that a more "universalistic or humanistic" view of repairing the entire world--rather than just protecting and perfecting the Jewish people--came into Jewish thought.
Fine is the author of "Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos," a 2003 intellectual biography of Isaac Luria, a 16th Century kabbalistic scholar. Fine traces the term tikkun olam to two major sources. One is the ancient prayer Amidah, in which Jews pray "to repair the world under the kingdom of the Almighty." The other is Luria's theology.
Luria, who lived and wrote in the Israeli town of Safed, advanced the term as a way of creating "a world of repair, which is a spiritual world, other than this world, pristine and perfect," Fine said.
Tikkun olam (pronounced tee-KOON oh-LOMM) is a defining concept for many contemporary Jews who are intrigued by the call to action that the term implies. "We must dedicate at least part of our time, energy, resources to improving the lot of others," writes Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, an expert in Jewish law, in his new book, "The Way Into Tikkun Olam."
Rabbi Michael Lerner--editor of Tikkun magazine, head of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco and leader of the Tikkun Community, an organization that claims 50,000 members nationally--has built his career around his passion for the idea of tikkun olam.
It's not purely a spiritual idea, he says. It also has political and social justice implications, including inspiring people to give to charity, volunteer to help the poor or participate in government by voting or writing members of Congress, he said.
"The world can be fundamentally transformed and healed," Lerner said. "Our whole religion is based on that insight."
At a time when kabbalah has been popularized by celebrities such as Madonna and Britney Spears, some scholars are wary of any attempt--especially in fictional works like "Bee Season"--to mine the concepts of Jewish mysticism too deeply for new, modern applications.
Other scholars say tikkun olam fundamentally describes every aspect of what it means to be Jewish.
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, director of Chabad.org, the Web site of the mystically oriented Lubavitch Hasidic movement, said tikkun olam represents a perpetual opportunity to "transform the physical into the holy, and infuse the holy into the mundane."
"Every moment of our lives, we are involved in tikkun olam," Shmotkin said.
"Every situation we come across is an opportunity to bring God into the world."
The Dallas Morning News
February 10, 2006
The world was perfect once.
It is a simple but radical suggestion, with a corollary that is even more startling--the world could be made perfect, whole, again.
The term for this idea in Judaism is tikkun olam, or "repair of the world." The recent movie "Bee Season," which tells the story of one family's struggle to repair itself within the framework of Jewish mysticism, is the latest emergence of this ancient idea into mainstream culture.
Jewish mystical theology holds that soon after God created the world, it experienced a cosmic "shattering" that sent sparks of goodness and godliness flying all over the Earth. Tikkun olam calls upon Jews to gather those sparks back together, re-forming them into a unified whole and, ultimately, bringing about the coming of the messiah.
"This extraordinary idea that we can restore what has been shattered--in fact, it's our responsibility to try, each of us, to make our world whole again," says Saul Naumann, the Jewish cantor played by Richard Gere in "Bee Season," which is based on a Myla Goldberg novel of the same name.
But as with many points of Jewish theology, there are multiple ways of interpreting--and living by--the idea of tikkun olam. From the mystical, or kabbalistic, to the political, the idea is as complex as the religion it comes from.
Lawrence Fine, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., said tikkun olam's status as a "mantra or slogan," a widely used rallying cry for everything from personal moral behavior to social justice advocacy, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
"For most of Jewish history," he said, "Jews were concerned about their own well-being, their own welfare."
It wasn't until the late 18th Century that a more "universalistic or humanistic" view of repairing the entire world--rather than just protecting and perfecting the Jewish people--came into Jewish thought.
Fine is the author of "Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos," a 2003 intellectual biography of Isaac Luria, a 16th Century kabbalistic scholar. Fine traces the term tikkun olam to two major sources. One is the ancient prayer Amidah, in which Jews pray "to repair the world under the kingdom of the Almighty." The other is Luria's theology.
Luria, who lived and wrote in the Israeli town of Safed, advanced the term as a way of creating "a world of repair, which is a spiritual world, other than this world, pristine and perfect," Fine said.
Tikkun olam (pronounced tee-KOON oh-LOMM) is a defining concept for many contemporary Jews who are intrigued by the call to action that the term implies. "We must dedicate at least part of our time, energy, resources to improving the lot of others," writes Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, an expert in Jewish law, in his new book, "The Way Into Tikkun Olam."
Rabbi Michael Lerner--editor of Tikkun magazine, head of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco and leader of the Tikkun Community, an organization that claims 50,000 members nationally--has built his career around his passion for the idea of tikkun olam.
It's not purely a spiritual idea, he says. It also has political and social justice implications, including inspiring people to give to charity, volunteer to help the poor or participate in government by voting or writing members of Congress, he said.
"The world can be fundamentally transformed and healed," Lerner said. "Our whole religion is based on that insight."
At a time when kabbalah has been popularized by celebrities such as Madonna and Britney Spears, some scholars are wary of any attempt--especially in fictional works like "Bee Season"--to mine the concepts of Jewish mysticism too deeply for new, modern applications.
Other scholars say tikkun olam fundamentally describes every aspect of what it means to be Jewish.
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, director of Chabad.org, the Web site of the mystically oriented Lubavitch Hasidic movement, said tikkun olam represents a perpetual opportunity to "transform the physical into the holy, and infuse the holy into the mundane."
"Every moment of our lives, we are involved in tikkun olam," Shmotkin said.
"Every situation we come across is an opportunity to bring God into the world."
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