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 16th 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.
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