Why is Tikkun our theme for this new year?

In 5786, we rise again, guided by our people’s age-old resilience, ready to restart the annual journey of reflection and return to our best selves, to show up and to repair. Much more than a familiar quote or cliche – Tikkun or Tikkun Olam does not just mean that it’s on us to fix the world – it’s a more complex and nuanced concept that has evolved along with us over millennia, challenging us to course correct with courage and compassion, towards the transformations that will nurture trust and hope, bring peace and justice – for generations.

These poems, reflections and quotes helped guide us in preparation for this season and we hope that you will find them inspirational as well.

“How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but we can start right now to gradually change the world!’
-Anne Frank

Mr. Rogers

“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be Tikkun Olam—repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy, and light, and hope, and faith, and pardon and love to your neighborhood and to yourself.”

Tikkun by Aharon Shabtai, written on October 10, 2023

Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

The horror
the calamity
the disgrace,
the rubble of folly
and religion’s stupidities,
the dimness of vision
and violence of despair
won’t be repaired by an officer,
a bomb or a plane,
and not by still more blood.
Only wisdom of the heart could mend it
only the surgeon, the doctor,
the good teacher, the teachers
the medic—an Arab, a Jew—
only the quiet traveler
riding a bicycle,
someone carrying a sandwich
and walking along a street,
someone opening their eyes,
someone who speaks with compassion,
someone listening
someone learning and wise
someone waiting and thinking
someone guiding someone
down a path of kindness, affection,
the painter, the poet,
disciples of peace—
only the gardeners of peace.

Reflection by Peter Cole on the translation of ‘Tikkun’

The Hebrew word tikkun means, simply, “repair,” but it is best known beyond spoken Hebrew as a kabbalistic term that has seeped into the popular imagination. In that context it alludes to course corrections of consciousness that lead to tikkun olam—repair, mending, or even healing of a broken world. Rooted in the tradition of the biblical prophets, and critical to classic rabbinic considerations of social viability and harmony, tikkun has, arguably, become a core Jewish concept that calls for working toward a more compassionate social fabric, in part by identifying and combatting injustice.

Shabtai’s poem was written on October 10, three days after the slaughter of some 1,200 people (the vast majority of them civilians) and as the decimation of Gaza by the IDF was just beginning.

Soon after “Tikkun” was published in one of Israel’s leading daily papers, it went viral among the dwindling minority of Israelis who were open to hearing such things. The poem, it’s worth pointing out, performs a double translation even before its precipitation into the original: it translates the broadly prophetic and messianic kabbalistic concept into a register accessible to anyone who still holds within themselves the image of a shared humanity and common decency; and in doing so, it renders articulate a muffled, inchoate sense of despair out of which hope and, somehow, repair might come.

Poem by Rabbi Dahlia Shaham

אַחַיי וְאַחְיוֹתַיי אַתֶּם,
אַחַיי וְאַחְיוֹתַיי
אֵין זֶה מְשַׁנֶּה מִי הוּא אָבִינוּ
יִצְחַק אוֹ יִשְׁמַעְאֵל,
מֻחַמָד אוֹ מֹשֶׁה
לְכוּלָנוּ אוֹתָהּ אִמָּא
אִמָּא אֲדָמָה הִיא
הָאָרֶץ הַמֻּבְטַחַת
אִם נֵדַע לִהְיוֹת טוֹבִים אֵלֶיהָ
בְּרַחֲמֶיהָ
יֵשׁ מָקוֹם לְכוּלָם.

خواني وأخواتي انتم
اخواني وأخواتي
لا يهمني من هو أبانا
إسحاق أو إسماعيل,
محمد, عيسى, موسى
أم وحيدة لكلنا
امنة هي ارضنا بلادنا الموعودة
إذا نعرف أن نحترمها
برحمتها
يوجد مكان للكل

My brothers and my sisters,
You’re my brothers and my sisters
Doesn’t matter who we call our father
Isaac, Ishma’el,
Mohammad, Moses, Jesus,
We are all united by one mother
Mother Earth she is
The Promised Land
Should we all be wise and treat her kindly
In her compassion there’s a place for all.
In her womb, there’s mercy for us all.

Rabbi Lia Bass

I live in a broken, unredeemed world, and I wish to do my part to bring peace, love, and understanding to me, to my family, to my community, and to the universe. Every human being carries broken shards in their hearts, bodies, and souls. Our souls yearn for some form of tikkun. Building on the Hassidut teaching that there is nothing more whole than a broken heart, the great Jewish poet and composer, Leonard Cohen, taught us: “there is a crack, a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in.”

As we embark on the work of correcting, repairing, reforming, improving, and regulating our souls, we celebrate the cracks in our hearts that allow the light to get in. Let that light guide us as we journey forward into the new year with love and compassion for ourselves and others, into a future where we are stronger, kinder, more joyful and, especially, more whole. I invite you to join me in rolling up our sleeves and committing to the work ahead.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The idea of tikkun olam, ‘mending the world,’ is the imperative to ameliorate the human situation by constructive engagement with the world. It is not a concept given to precise definition, still less is it spelled out in the crisp imperatives of Jewish law. But it bestows religious dignity on those who work to eliminate the evils of the world, an act at a time, a life at a time. Each generation, said the sages, has its own seekers and search, its own leaders and challenges. So each of us has our own task, our unique gifts, our singular contribution to make. For each of us there is something no one else could do, and it is not least for this that we were created.

As long as there is hunger, poverty and treatable disease in the world there is work for us to do. As long as nations fight and men hate, and corruption stalks the corridors of power; as long as there is unemployment and homelessness, depression and despair, our task is not yet done, and we hear, if we listen carefully enough, the voice of God asking us, as God asked the first humans, ‘Where are you?’

Hasidim tell the story of the second Lubavitcher Rebbe who was once so intent on his studies that he failed to hear the cry of his baby son. His father heard, and went down and took the baby in his arms until he went to sleep again. Then he went in to his son, still intent on his books, and said, ‘My son, I do not know what you are studying, but it is not the study of Torah if it makes you deaf to the cry of a child.’ To live the life of faith is to hear the silent cry of the afflicted, the lonely and marginal, the poor, the sick and the disempowered, and to respond.

Howard Schwartz, “How the Ari Created a Myth and Transformed Judaism”

For many modern Jews, the term tikkun olam (repairing the world) has become a code-phrase synonymous with social and environmental action. It is linked to a call for healing the ills of the world. Indeed, tikkun olam has become the defining purpose of much of modern Jewish life. What many of those who use this term do not know is that this idea is rooted in the last great myth infused into Jewish tradition, a cosmological myth created in the sixteenth century by the great Jewish mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, known as the Ari (1534-1572). Here the term “myth” refers to a people’s sacred stories about origins, deities, ancestors and heroes.

The Myth of the Shattering of the Vessels

How is it that a concept rooted in medieval Jewish mysticism has so endeared itself to contemporary Jews? In order to understand this unlikely development, let us first consider the myth itself, known as “The Shattering of the Vessels” (shevirat ha-kelim).

“Ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light.”
At the beginning of time, God’s presence filled the universe. When God decided to bring this world into being, to make room for creation, He first drew in His breath, contracting Himself. From that contraction darkness was created. And when God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), the light that came into being filled the darkness, and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light.

In this way God sent forth those ten vessels, like a fleet of ships, each carrying its cargo of light. Had they all arrived intact, the world would have been perfect. But the vessels were too fragile to contain such a powerful, divine light. They broke open, split asunder, and all the holy sparks were scattered like sand, like seeds, like stars. Those sparks fell everywhere, but more fell on the Holy Land than anywhere else.
That is why we were created — to gather the sparks, no matter where they are hidden. God created the world so that the descendents of Jacob could raise up the holy sparks. That is why there have been so many exiles — to release the holy sparks from the servitude of captivity. In this way the Jewish people will sift all the holy sparks from the four corners of the earth.

And when enough holy sparks have been gathered, the broken vessels will be restored, and tikkun olam, the repair of the world, awaited so long, will finally be complete. Therefore it should be the aim of everyone to raise these sparks from wherever they are imprisoned and to elevate them to holiness by the power of their soul.

There is a famous Hasidic tale, “Lighting a Fire,” about a ritual the Baal Shem Tov performed out in a forest, lighting a fire and reciting a prayer he created for that occasion, which saved the people in a time of great danger. Subsequent generations lost the details of that ritual and the place it had been performed and the words of the prayer, but they still had the story, and that was enough. Most of us are only dimly aware of the arcane kabbalistic meaning of the Ari’s cosmology, of the theory that both heaven and earth are in need of repair, and that we must seek out and raise up the holy sparks that will make it possible for us restore the worlds above and below. But we have retained the knowledge that it is incumbent on us to take responsibility for the world we inhabit, and that we must do all that we can to repair it, for ourselves and our children and future generations. And, like the Hasidic tale of the lost ritual, what we have retained of the meaning of tikkun olam is enough.

Tikkun Olam by Talya Jankovits

Imagine if we bled water,
could quench parched mouths
and barren earth, seal the splintered dirt,
make flowers grow from our insides.
Imagine if we bled air,
could ease dyspnea
open passageways, expand lungs
and fill us with a tomorrow and a tomorrow.
Imagine if we bled diamonds,
could line the ripped seams of empty pockets
make us all crystalized elements of carbon,
endless reflections of each other’s shine.
Imagine if we bled music,
that our organs were an organ,
the bones, pipes, emanating tones
of baritone and pitch, filling our ears with reverence.
Imagine if we bled color,
a runny palette of amaranth, chartreuse
bright, glowing, and mixing, a great big
arch stretching from one end of the earth to the other.
Imagine if we bled words.
Peace. Harmony. Love.
Shalom. Salam. Pax.
Chaver. Sadiq. Amica.
Imagine if we would just stop
making each other bleed.

Come Healing by Leonard Cohen

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart

O troubledness concealing
An undivided love
The Heart* beneath is teaching
To the broken Heart above
O let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim:
Come healing of the Altar
Come healing of the Name

O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
O let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

READ MORE ABOUT TIKKUN:

• Mending the World by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
• “The History of Tikkun Olam” by Rabbi Jill Jacobs
• The Assimilation of Tikkun Olam by Levi Cooper
• “A Tikkun for Tikkun Olam? How ‘To Heal the World?’ Corrupts Debates and Endagers Judaism” by David Seidenberg
• “Is ‘Justice’ a Process or Result?” by Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman
• Tikkun Olam Resources
• “Tikkun Olam: Settling for Less” by Noam Zion
• “Tikkun Olam and Environmental Restoration: A Jewish Eco-Theology of Redemption” by Lawrence Troster
• Lab/Jr. Study Guide 5786

Japanese American author, speaker, and artist Makoto Fujimura has spoken extensively about kintsugi as a metaphor for human brokenness and mending. The scars remain, but like his, they shine. Source: Art and Theology

My Modern Met, “Kintsugi: The Centuries-Old Art of Repairing Broken Pottery with Gold”

Poetically translated to “golden joinery,” kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi, is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. Rather than rejoin ceramic pieces with a camouflaged adhesive, the kintsugi technique employs a special urushi lacquer, made from tree sap, dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Once completed, beautiful seams of gold glint in the conspicuous cracks of ceramic wares, giving a one-of-a-kind appearance to each “repaired” piece.

This unique method celebrates each artifact’s unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them.

NY Times, “Longing for an Internet Cleanse”

There’s a dimension of depth to them. You sense the original life they had, the rupture and then the way they were so beautifully healed. And of course they stand as a metaphor for the people, families and societies we all know who have endured their own ruptures and come back beautiful, vulnerable and whole in their broken places.

Healing, Mistakes, Growth, Some Project Ideas to Play With…

• https://www.couragecompasstherapy.com/blog/kintsugi
• https://teachertraks.wordpress.com/2022/01/15/kintsugi-why-be-broken-when-you-can-be-gold/
• “Connection, not perfection” travel with this doctor/ kintsugi artist as she talks us thru this process of highlighting rather than covering up.

• A parable about Repairing the World
• The Girl Who Makes a Million Mistakes

The Cracked Pot

A woman carried two clay pots to fetch water each day. One pot was perfect, the other had a crack, so by the time she got home, the cracked pot was only half full.

The cracked pot felt ashamed: “I’m broken. I waste water.”

The woman smiled and said: “Look at the path we walk. On your side, flowers bloom, because you watered them along the way.”