The term “Tikun Olam” is chic today. A number of years ago Governor Mario Cuomo used it when speaking before the New York State Legislature. We find it occasionally in The New York Times' editorials. We even have a magazine out of California named "Tikun.” It might be wise to step back a bit and ask where this idea comes from. The fact that it is a Hebrew term does not necessarily indicate it is a Jewish idea. We should ask whether, indeed, Tikun Olam is an authentic Torah value. What status does it have in Jewish law (halakhah) ethics? Is Tikun Olam really a mitzvah? It may be that 'Tikun Olam' is just a formulation of American social liberalism dressed up as Torah, perhaps something that's a product of the political American “left” rather than from Jewish tradition.
One approach to determining the Torah status of Tikun Olam is to scour the classic codes of Jewish law, e.g. Maimonides' Mishneh Torah and Shulhan Arukh, and see if, in fact, any of our great rabbinic authorities codified Tikun Olam. If we did that, we would find that no authority claims that Tikun Olam is a mitzvah. Evidently there is no formal religious obligation to engage in Tikun Olam the way there is an obligation to eat matzah on Passover or to refrain from doing creative work on Shabbat. The truth is that Tikun Olam does not even appear in the codes. For some Jewish literalists or legal conservatives that would be the end of the matter. They would conclude that since Tikun Olam is not codified as law, it is not a Jewish obligation. Tikun Olam must therefore be a gentile idea that somehow crept into the Jewish lexicon and into Jewish circles.
There is a deep problem with this argument. The assumption behind its methodology is that all halakhic obligations—and by inference all Jewish values—are expressed in the form of a law or specific mitzvah that we have to fulfill. Yet if we make that assumption, we are forced to accept problematic conclusions. Consider, for example, the idea of holiness (kedushah). Without the concept of holiness, the Jewish people would just be another ethnic group striving to survive. Clearly, kedushah is an authentic Jewish value that is central to Torah. Yet according to the greatest rabbinic authority in the history of our people, Maimonides, there is no mitzvah to pursue a life of kedushah. In fact, Maimonides is explicit and writes at length about those rabbis who erred when they listed the imperative found in Leviticus 19:2, ("You should be holy”) as one of the 613 mitzvot. In his book enumerating mitzvot, Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, Sha'ar 4, Maimonides takes to task all of those rabbis who foolishly thought that this verse defined a formal mitzvah. Yet it is undeniable that kedushah was a central value for Maimonides, as it is for us as well. Therefore we must consider a broader approach to determining authentic Jewish values.
In fact, Maimonides believes that pursuit of kedushah is not less than a mitzvah—it is more! To use his terminology, kedushah is a value that encompasses all the Torah, "kolel ha-Torah kulah." It is a commandment that somehow is an overarching mandate implicit in all of Torah. Because of its pervasive value, it is not catalogued as a specific mitzvah, as is eating matzah on Passover. One might say that the quest for holiness is too important to be listed as one of the 613 mitzvot. Kedushah is what the late Professor Yitzhak Twersky called a “super-category of the halakhah.” It is a telos, an end toward which detailed mitzvot point. Thus, not all of our religious duties are defined technically as law or mitzvah in the formal sense.
There are other halakhic “super-categories”, similar to the pursuit of kedushah. According to Nahmanides, one is “You shall do what is right and good in the eyes of God,” (Deuteronomy 6:18). He explains in his commentary on this verse that this imperative is an underlying value to the specific Torah duties that we have toward others and is conceptually related to imitating God, ("Imitateo Dei" in Latin or “V'halakhtah b'drakhav” in Hebrew). Thus imitating God is also an overarching super-principle of Jewish law. The Talmudic sage, Rabbi Akiva, had yet another general principle: “Love your peer as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). None of these are specific mitzvot. They are generic values that underlie our whole system of Jewish ethics and Torah life. As I hope to show, Tikun Olam also belongs on this list.
By definition, Tikun Olam means taking responsibility for the material, moral and spiritual welfare of society-at-large, Jewish and non-Jewish. It is “Tikun Olam”—repair of the world—not “Tikun Yisrael,” repair of Jewish society. In today's world, it includes participation in issues like alleviation of poverty, disease and hunger, stopping genocide in Sudan, fighting for human rights, aiding disaster victims, as well as promoting world economic and political stability around the world. Unfortunately, these are not values that traditional Jews have attended to in our recent past. Many traditional rabbinic leaders who came to the United States from Europe did not spend time fighting world disease or hunger. They were studying Torah, teaching Torah and writing Torah. They were inward-focused, and they were representative of our religious models of European Jewry.
At least from the time of the early Middle Ages, Tikun Olam issues were not on the religious agenda for Jews. We were rightly concerned with the inward moral and spiritual development of the Jewish people through the study of Torah. I believe this inward focus is more of a result of history than of mandated Jewish ethics. The unfortunate fact is that from the destruction of the Second Temple through the Holocaust—close to 1,900 years—we as a people had little political or social influence on the larger world. Jews were not allowed to exercise political or economic influence on the gentile world. We were denied citizenship, barred from amassing wealth, and prohibited from entering wider society. Had Jews wanted to pursue the larger global agenda of Tikun Olam, we would have been unable to do so. Nevertheless, the fact that we have not done this historically does not negate the fact that we are what Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik called, “the bearers of a double covenantal responsibility.” That is, we have concurrent obligations to the Jewish people, and to humanity at large.
I stated earlier that Tikun Olam falls under the rubric of an overarching super-category within Jewish law, similar to the quest for holiness and “doing the right and the good." This requires justification, because it is a logically and religiously powerful claim. First, it is important to understand where the idea of Tikun Olam comes from. It is very old, even predating Abraham, the first Jew. The fact is that Tikun Olam starts with God's creation of the universe. It entered the cosmos on the sixth day of creation and has persisted to this day, and is hinted at in contemporary religious practice. Every Shabbat evening we proclaim at kiddush: "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it God ceased from all creative labor that He created to do (la'asot)." (Gen. 2:3) The final word "la'asot" appears both superfluous and irregular in this context. Creation is complete—or so it seems from the simple past tense of all other verbs in this verse. Yet 'la'asot' is the infinitive form, implying ongoing activity. 'La'asot' indicates that there is still some creating that is continuing or at least requires continuation. Based on this textual clue, kabbalah teaches that God did not finish creating the world at the end of six days. He left a little corner of the world unfinished. He left disease. He left poverty. He left drought and starvation. The cosmos is unfinished, and who will complete creation? We will. Perfecting God's universe is the task for humanity in general and for the Jewish people in specific.
A beautiful passage in Isaiah reads:
For I am the Lord your God who stirs up the sea so that the waves roar and the Lord of Hosts is His name. I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you in the shadow of My hand that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth. I say to Zion, “You are my people." (51:15-16)
God tells the Jewish people: “Amee atah,”—"You are my people." Comments the Zohar:
Don't read, “You are My people (amee)” but, “You are imee.”—You are with me. You are my partner, my collaborator. Just as God made heaven and the earth, you must complete heaven and the earth. (Volume 1:5a):
This idea is not confined to Jewish mystics. Rabbi Soloveitchik poetically affirms the same insight about the meaning of creation:
The peak of religious ethical perfection to which Judaism aspires is man as
creator. When God created the world, He provided an opportunity for the work
of His hand—man—to participate in His creation. The Creator, as it were,
impaired reality in order that mortal man repair its flaws and perfect it.
(Halakhic Man p. 101)
So Tikun Olam is actually a cosmic idea that started with the God's inspirational blueprint for the universe.
I suggest that Tikun Olam is also a super-category, an overarching meta-halakhic value for the Torah and the Jewish people. What are we supposed to be doing as a people? What is our mission? It is to build tzedek (righteousness) and mishpat (justice) on earth. The world filled with righteousness and justice is the world where the Presence of God dwells and the world in which God's name is recognized. I know this is Torah teaching and not the liberal social platform because the Torah tells us so. At the very beginning of the Jewish people, God says:
Abraham is destined to become a great and populous nation and through him all of the nations of the earth will be blessed. I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of God by doing justice and righteousness so that God may bring about for Abraham what He promised him. (Gen. 18:18-19)
These two verses have just told us why Abraham was selected to be the father of the Jewish people and what our mission as a people is: "To teach tzedek and mishpat.”
What is this passage's context? It occurs immediately prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah. God appears before Abraham and for some reason informs Abraham that He will destroy Sodom and Gomorah. God, the Creator of the world, in effect asks permission to destroy these cities. As a response, Abraham argues with God. Abraham advances a moral argument with great audacity: He shouts, “Heaven forbid, God, for You to destroy righteous persons with evil persons! Will the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” (Gen. 18:25) Abraham argues that God's plan is theologically unacceptable because it violates justice. God concedes that Abraham is correct and yields to his argument.
The passage is indeed strange and “cries out for explanation.” Why does God inform Abraham? I would argue that here also, God is testing Abraham: Before he can merit being the father of the Jewish people, God must know whether Abraham is truly committed to the values of justice and righteousness, and that he will teach his descendants these ideals. Will Abraham take a stand and defend these values when they are being neglected, even by God Himself? Had Abraham not demonstrated his unshakable commitment to justice, he might well have forfeited the privilege to become the father of the Jewish people.
The mission of the Jewish people is, as was just indicated, “to teach our children tzdekah and mishpat.” In the Torah's words, this is “the way of God.” Righteousness and justice toward whom? Once again, context is critical. Abraham lives in a world of pagans. It is undeniable that this context relates to gentiles. Abraham did not say, “God's plan does not affect the Jewish people, therefore it is of no concern to me.” Rabbinic tradition contrasts Noah and Abraham. God told both of His plans for imminent destruction. Noah did not protest, saying in effect, "I am content to build an ark and save my family. Outside society is irrelevant to my faith and morality." He cared not about saving others nor whether a righteous person was about to be unjustly killed. Had Abraham not argued with God, he would have been the spiritual and moral equivalent of Noah. Unlike Noah who was merely a righteous person in his generation, Abraham demonstrated his fidelity to justice and righteousness, and he thereby became a model of absolute righteousness for us, his children, to emulate.
We can conclude two things from this Torah passage. First, God's covenant with the Jewish people called us to impact the entire world. “Through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” We are not supposed to be a ghetto people. To fulfill the covenant, we must exercise influence on humanity. Second, Abraham's mission, the mission of the Jewish people, the super-mitzvah and raison d'etre of our people, is “keeping the way of God” through teaching righteousness and justice.
Tikun Olam occurs not only at the beginning of Jewish history, but also at the consummation of human history. The task of the Jewish people in history is to perfect the world by eliminating injustice, disease, poverty, starvation, human strife. I know this not from Tikun magazine, but from Maimonides. At the end of his great legal work, Mishneh Torah, he discusses the beautiful dream of the messianic era:
At that time (the Messianic Era) there will be no starvation; there will
be no hunger, no war; nor will there be any jealousy, nor any strife. Human
good will pervade [the earth]. (Laws of Kings 12:5)
Thus there will be a just society, where deprivation and violence have been conquered. That is the messianic dream. It is also the time when The Holy One, Blessed be He, will be most present. Maimonides ends his Mishneh Torah by telling us that this vision of the messianic era will also contain the knowledge of God: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, as waters cover the sea.” Yet what is this dream? It is the vision of the fully repaired world under the sovereignty of God.
Today we live suspended between the beginning and the end of Jewish history. Our lives are framed by memory of our roots, and our belief in the destiny of God's humanity. The urgent religious question during this “in between” state is what both our roots and belief in meshiah mean for us spiritually. Are memory and belief passive states, or are they catalysts that move us to act as God's partners in divine creation?
If we are obligated to believe in the coming of the messiah, then we cannot fulfill this mitzvah passively. “Believing” here constitutes an active challenge. It does not mean that we merely sit in a state of cognition. This mitzvah to believe can be understood similarly to the way Maimonides analyzes the imperative “To love The Lord, Your God.” He teaches that loving God is more than an internal emotion. It poses a continuous challenge that demands continual striving. One must always work to understand God and to create those conditions in which the love of God can emerge. Similarly, we must work to create the conditions for the messiah to come, the human society in which God wants to dwell. Those are the conditions of the world repaired, and they can only become real as a result of active striving after Tikun Olam.
Like belief in the messianic age, it seems to me that Tikun Olam is a dream that we as Jews do well to strive for. It can create not only blessing to the world, but also kedushah, a life of sanctity, purpose, and meaning.
Rabbi Eugene Korn, PhD. is editor of The Edah Journal and Adjunct Professor of Jewish Thought at Seton Hall University.