Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World

Rev. Amy Russell - 2009-04-05

In the sixteenth century, Issac Luria, a mystical Jewish Kabbahlist, imagined the world as a pottery vessel that God had made to hold his divine light and energy. As he poured this holy light into the vessel of the world, the vessel being too fragile broke and the myriad divine sparks of God’s incredible love poured out over the world. These holy sparks spilled across the universe until all things were bathed in light, but the world itself was broken and in need of repair. Luria used this metaphor to challenge Jews to see their mission in life to gather the holy sparks that are God’s love for us and use them to repair the broken and hurting world we live in.
We see evidence of the brokenness of this world everywhere we look. War in Afghanistan and Iraq, hunger worldwide, genocide in Darfur, and people here in our own country living desolate lives having lost their jobs and facing illnesses with no health insurance. We heard of the devastating news of the death of Esme Kenney, just a couple of weeks ago, a teenager who attended a UU church in Cincinnati who was brutally murdered. Every time we hear of an outrage such as this, we are undone. We cannot find within us an explanation, or even a possibility of hope within such an event.
The Jewish tradition expresses the pain of this hurt and oppression perhaps more deeply than many religious traditions having faced many centuries of persecution. The tradition of Passover lives out the gratitude that some Jews feel toward the biblical God who brought them out of slavery into freedom. Passover which was celebrated last Thursday, is a family religious tradition where families gather and tell the story of the exodus of Jews from Egypt led by Moses following God’s guidance.
The concept of the divine sparks being gathered by humans in order to attempt to “repair the world” is named in the Jewish Midrash or religious tradition as “tikkun olam”. In this tradition, our mission in the universe is to repair the brokenness of the world by beginning to renew the holy light within ourselves first and then through deeds of loving kindness to others.
The first step in this process is becoming aware of our own brokenness and the need for our own healing. In our spiritual journey toward our own healing, we find that when we reach out to others who are in need, we find our own healing. Seeking light for our own darkness, we find the light that can help guide others in their journey.
The modern concept of tikkun olam has been used to refer to social action work, charitable giving, and acts of individual kindness. Many consider their social action work part of their spiritual practice. But in recent years, Jews have expressed concern that the term has come to demark the “progressive” social agenda put forth by some. Many have suggested a return to the original meaning of the term meaning that humans have a responsibility to heal the world especially in order to heal themselves. In this interpretation, repairing the world is something we do every day in every interaction we have as individuals.
Karen Armstrong, the author who writes about ancient religion and modern day spirituality, says she has been inspired by the Jewish tradition's teaching ethical living. She says that "…religion isn’t about believing things. It's about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”
Interestingly, the concept that humans are responsible for their own healing through compassion is echoed in several other religious traditions. The development of the idea of humanism has long contained the idea that humankind is responsible for its own healing of the world through ethical living and social justice.
Buddhism’s teaching of compassion as a spiritual practice that leads one to one’s own enlightenment is an ancient view of the same tradition. And in Christianity, the idea of the “Golden Rule” reflected in almost all religions is based on helping others as you would like to be helped.
We heard today two stories where people reached out to others unselfishly. The stranger on the bus in Nazi Germany in Lawrence Kushner’s story shows that people sometimes have an instinct to help others, even when they are putting themselves into danger. The man pretending to be the husband of the Jewish woman had no reason to help her other than his instinctual need and perhaps his feeling that this was the least he could do in healing this broken world.
Rabbi Keder tells of her own half-hearted effort to help someone even when she really didn’t have the time or energy. She sees this effort a kind of practice that we can decide to attempt in our lives, that works toward healing the world, even when it seems fruitless.
But it is the times when the world seems so broken, so un-fixable that we sometimes despair that what we do can’t really make a difference. In hearing about acts that seem so evil that I can’t even find it in my heart to know how I can forgive such acts. How can we find it within ourselves to find the spiritual energy to react to an act such as murder or rape?
I was once sitting with a woman who had been raped recently. Her anguish was so deep that I physically felt pain in hearing her story. Her hatred for her abuser spilled over into a despair for the world and all people. How could she ever trust again? We sat and cried and sat. Finally, she told me she had to go because she was going to babysit for her granddaughter. I asked her about her granddaughter who was six years old. Her eyes lit up for the first time as she told me about the love she had for this child. I asked her how she felt about her granddaughter living in a world that was not safe. She stopped and thought and finally she said that the love for her children and granddaughter was what was keeping her going. She said that she felt that somehow she could find healing in the love she had for them and that somehow that love could create a safe place for her granddaughter. Not safe in that nothing could ever happen to her. But safe in the sense that she will always know she is loved.
One of the books that I turn to in trying to answer this question is the book Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?, by Rabbi Harold Kushner. Kushner lost his son to a debilitating disease at age 14. They had known that the disease would eventually kill their son, Aaron, from the time Aaron was three. This means the Kushner spent many years living with and trying to understand this tragedy as it was happening. Kushner shares his anger at God and at life as he grapples with his grief. He finally says this,
"Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? That depends on what we mean by 'answer'. If we mean 'Is there an explanation which will make sense of it all?'… then there probably is no satisfying answer. We can offer learned explanations, but in the end, when we have covered all the squares on the game board and are feeling very proud of our cleverness, the pain and the anguish and the sense of unfairness will still be there. But the word 'answer' can also mean 'response' as well as 'explanation,' and in that sense, there may well be a satisfying answer to the tragedies in our lives. The response would be Job's response in MacLeish's version of the biblical story—to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all." [page 147]
Acceptance of the way the world is and deciding that in its brokenness, it’s still better to try to repair the world in the small ways one can than to give up. What kind of “response” can we find to the tragedies we see? What can we do to feel that we can make a difference? Do we have to change the world or change some of the people in the world? Is that even possible?
I don’t know if it’s possible to change anyone else. But I do think it’s possible to offer human kindness to those around us who are hurting. In our gifts of kindness is a response to evil, to brokenness. In our reaching out to others lies hope for the world. And hope for our own healing.
There’s a true story that Jack Kornfield tells about a woman whose son was murdered by a teenager. The mother came to the trial and was there when the teenager was sentenced. When asked to speak she stood up and looked directly at the youth and said, “I’m going to kill you.”
Six months after the youth was imprisoned, the woman asked if she could visit the young man. She came to visit every month. She would bring him cigarettes or candy. She would make small talk. She never asked him why he did it. She just got to know him slowly. She came to learn that the young man did not come from a loving home. He had no home to return to when he was released many years later. The woman asked the young man if he would like to come stay at her home until he found another place. Since they had already established a relationship, the young man agreed. He came to live with her and she helped him find a job and begin a new life.
At one point the young man finally asked her why she was doing all this for him.
She said, “Remember when I told you that I would kill you?” He said yes.
She said, “Well, I did. I did not want they boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That’s why I started to visit you and bring you things. That’s why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. That’s how I set about changing you. And that old boy, he’s gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone and that killer is gone, if you’ll stay here. I’d like to adopt you if you let me.” And the woman became the mother of her killer’s son. She healed herself in her healing of this troubled young man.
This hurting and broken woman could have responded with anger, with feelings of revenge. Many of us would feel she was justified if she responded that way. Anger is a natural response to acts of violence and we need to feel our anger and hold others accountable. But when we act out of anger, we don’t heal ourselves or the world. When our anger leads us to further acts of rage or violence, we are not repairing the world, we are only adding to its brokenness. Many of the acts of war that we see in our world today are expressions of anger and rage expressed by ethnic groups and countries.
So, how do we repair the world? Repairing the world could begin with acts of kindness is our own life. And it could lead to larger acts, even movements toward non-violence in the world. As we end this “season of non-violence” that we have honored over the past 60 days, let us not forget the wisdom of the peacemakers that we have studied. Let us hold within us the words of Gandhi and Martin Luther King who exemplified with their lives, not just words of non-violence but acts that repaired the world in so many ways that we still see the effects today.
Repair the world, “tikkun olam” has to do with discovering what we have to give, what we need to give to feel more whole ourselves. Sometimes we find ourselves hurting and in pain. The pain seems to carve out a place inside us that makes more room for kindness to others. In our own pain, we recognize the need we have to help others in pain. In recognizing our own vulnerability, we see why kindness completes us.
I’d like to end by reading a portion of the letter that Esme’s parents wrote to the community in thanking them for their support:
“We are overwhelmed with the love and support we have received from family, friends and even total strangers. We are so touched and fortified and thank you all. I wish to share this outpouring of love with the other families who lost their daughters, sisters, friends to this man. Thinking of her murderer, I cannot wrap my mind around the kind of pain, hate and evil that must be in his heart to have committed such heinous acts on not just my baby but several other young girls as well. Though I cannot understand his hate and insanity, I do know that we must not meet this with our own hate. I appeal to all to instead embrace Esme’s way, which was love and kindness and positivity. In the words of St. Francis Assisi, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is sadness, joy.”



When I feared bad things happening to my Esme, this just seemed too extreme. It is something that happens in the newspaper. You know I worried about her getting hit by a car when she went out to get the mail or worried she would drown in the lake up in Canada but this ... this just seemed like such an extreme remote possibility in the spectrum of parental nightmares. I find my mind working within archetypal frames. My Esme was such a good and loving person and he so extremely sinister, it’s like a clash of magnetic forces. I can’t help but think that what happened Saturday was that such a bright light has collided with this extreme malevolent force, and I want to believe that what he actually did was not to snuff her light out but to cause an explosion of love and light that will embed a shard of goodness and kindness into all the hearts of those that remember Esme Kenney. He cannot win.”