Tikkun Olam

The Zelman Partisans recently received an inquiry about liberal Jews and tikkun olam.

Y.B. ben Avraham addressed this back in 2014:

Gradually setting aside their fundamental belief in Torah, and longing for Geula, many Jews focused on secular, social action, to satisfy their ingrained drive for Tikkun Olam. After many, many centuries of exile, poverty, suffering, and death, many thought the Enlightenment (and the Jewish variant; the Haskalah) was the correct path. Perhaps, they thought, ‘this’ was the way to bring about the coming of Moshiach?

For all that I pen many of the columns here, I am not a Jew. Faith comes hard to me; even a belief system that has successfully maintained an identity for thousands of years. Nonetheless, I admire the strength of will that maintains in the face of adversity, and I see things that have happened to Jews as a cautionary tale; what has been done to one group — the Shoah, for instance — can be done to any other group, if they do not stand fast. And I admire the Maccabees for… standing fast.

Nor am I a scholar. But allow me to make a go of it.

Tikkun olam: “repair of the world”

Repairing the world, as best I understand it, meant helping, making wrong things right, fixing. In short, being part of the greater community.

Without abandoning the Jewish community.

It seems to me that tikkun olam has been twisted into forcing the world into Orwellian right-think, including the modern practitioners’ own minds. Not repair, but forcible redesign even of that which works. Which means they are abandoning thousands of years of faith that sustained their ancestors through tribulations difficult to contemplate.

Faith is hard. I think many modern, liberal Jews found it too hard, and gave up faith for form, in favor of conformity. Forced conformity, so they don’t have to work too hard at that either.

What then will sustain them now?


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills.

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3 thoughts on “Tikkun Olam”

  1. Carl,

    While this is but a rather short piece, compared to some you have written in the past, I think it might be one of the most important ones you have ever posted. For it addresses an issue that faces not only the nation of Israel, but the nation of the United States as well.
    For nearly the first 200 years of our history, it was a given that America, while not a religious nation, was founded upon Judeo/Christian principles, and no one disputed that.
    Our nation has turned away from those principles, and left any faith behind. We are now paying the price for our wickedness.
    The one thing that the Jews can hold onto to sustain them, is that they are still G-d’s chosen people. I pray that they return to their faith, before Israel becomes just as wicked as America. For the punishment is harsh.

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