Tikkun Olam - Repairing the World

Site The Tikkun Tree Project - Click to enlarge the Art image 

"Tikkun Olam" (literally, "world repair") has come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice. The term "mipnei tikkun ha-olam" (perhaps best translated in this context as "in the interest of public policy"), it refers to social policy legislation providing extra protection to those people potentially at a disadvantage.

In reference to individual acts of repair, the phrase "tikkun olam" figure in Creation and its implications: When God contracted the divine self to make room for Creation, the Divine light became contained in special vessels, or "kelim", some of which shattered and scattered. While most of the light returned to its divine source, some light attached itself to the broken shards. These shards constitute evil and are the basis for the material world; their trapped sparks of light give them power.

The first man, Adam, was intended to restore the divine sparks through mystical exercises, but his sin interfered. As a result, good and evil remained thoroughly mixed in the created world, and human souls (previously contained within Adam's) also became imprisoned within the shards.

The phrase "tikkun olam" was first used to refer to social action work in the 1950s. In subsequent decades, many other organizations and thinkers have used the term to refer to social action programs; Tzedakah (charitable giving) and Gemilut Hasadim (acts of kindness) as approaches Jewish progressives.

Therefore, we must do our part to fix and repair what was damaged by the sin Adam's.

The image cortesy: Tile (mural) of artist armenian Neshan Balian - “Olive Tree Of Jerusalem”