Getting ready for this emotionally-laden journey to Poland with my mother who is a 93 year old Holocaust survivor. I will be posting my journal entries from there to help me process the encounters.

Tikkun Olam

Each synagogue service is a journey through the Four Worlds, rising from our concrete world of Action – Assiyah,  through to the emotional world of Creative Formation – Yetzirah, to the realm of the mind and intellectual understanding in the world of Thought – Briyah, up into the spiritual element of Atzilut – Closeness to Divinity; and then we climb back down the mountain bringing all the gifts of the insights and emotional connections we have gained.  We return to our regular surroundings grounded, refreshed, enlivened by the journey.  Near the end of each service I feel that switch from elevation and inspiration to a focus on application of these ideals to daily life situations when we sing Aleinu, one of the closing prayers.  

That prayer includes verses describing a time when idolatry will be abolished and all will call upon God’s name, and we will all be One.  The verse “le-taken olam bemalkhut Shaddai, to fix the world under God’s Kingdom,” as well as the repetitions of the phrase “Al-ken – therefore it is up to us….” Help us strengthen our resolve to act on the inspiration we have just received from the Torah portion, Rabbi’s message, and the prayers offered during the service.  We are not to leave those feelings of compassion and caring at the door, but carry them with us “when we lie down, when we rise up, when we sit in our house or walk by the way” as it says in the Va’ahavta prayer of love following the Shema. 

 How can we possibly “repair the world” when it is so overwhelmingly broken?  Kabbalistic mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria in 16^th century Safed, Israel, taught that when God contracted to make room for the creation of the world, God poured energy into vessels of Divine light. Those vessels shattered, and the fragments scattered as holy sparks infused into all of creation.  Our task is to retrieve those holy sparks from every aspect of our life, and thus repair, heal, and help complete the world.  Ways to repair the world, according to Luria, are through prayer, Torah study and the performance of mitzvoth – acts of loving kindness.  Thus we become God’s partners in creation.  

 “In a sense, tikkun olam expands God’s original covenant with the Jews at Sinai by adding a metaphysical and spiritual dimension to our ethical and moral obligations,” according to Howard Schwartz, a scholar of Jewish folklore at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

 Tikkun olam is now included in the mission of nearly all synagogues, and is often understood to mean doing projects of social action in the community.  This concept is seen as transcending Judaism and including humanity, in its far reaching goal of offering helping hands to the needy.   Funds are collected in synagogue not only to aid in local communities or to assist programs in Israel, but often for relief at the site of earthquakes, floods, famine and disasters in far-off countries.

The JCSVV Social Action Team, with Karen Schudson as Chair, has been involved in the Back Pack Program to bring food from the local food bank to school children who otherwise might be hungry over the weekend.  Other projects like the Men’s Club involvement in preparing hot meals at the Community Hot Supper served at St. Andrews, the Women’s Havurah support of the local Verde Valley Sanctuary for Women and Children, our leadership in the annual Mitzvah Day, and other outreach programs in which our members are involved, enable us to put our prayers into practice, and in some small measure to repair and heal the world. 

Come take the journey together during our uplifting services, and come back “down to earth” with renewed strength and resolve so that each one of us can pick up the holy sparks and do our part to repair our world.  

  

Blessing for the month of Tamuz (June 8 – July 7, 2013)

May we feel grounded in our tradition and teachings which should lead us to reach out in compassion to those in need.  May our hearts fill with love that leads to action that is healing and repairing, to tikkun olam, in our immediate circle and expanding to the wider arenas of the world. 

                                            -Amen.