Mitzvah Day 2024 is less than a month away and we are hoping that our community, across all ages, will join us for our morning of service. There are projects to benefit local causes like the unhoused, our hospitals, and Wise Readers to Leaders. In addition, we’ll be supporting a range of vital Israeli beneficiaries, both those to respond to the crisis of the Gaza war as well as our usual partner organization. Join us! Bring your kids, grandkids, teens! Support our causes! You can do it all here.

To get you in the Mitzvah Day Spirit I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Tikkun Olam texts from the Jewish tradition along with my interpretations.

Let’s begin by dispelling a myth: Contrary to what some have said, Tikkun Olam is very much a part of Jewish tradition, ever since the phrase found its way into early prayer books and was then reframed by Isaac Luria. In his 16th century mystical thought, Tikkun Olam describes the way that ethical deeds by the righteous restore broken shards of God’s light to the world. As medieval mysticism found expression in modern Judaism, the notion of a human-Divine partnership founded in deeds of justice and compassion gained strength, but it draws from a wide range of ethical precepts and imperatives.  This is one of my favorites:

Deuteronomy 15:7-11

7 If… there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that יְהוָה  your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. 8Rather, you must open your hand and give them sufficient for whatever they need … 10Give to them readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return יְהוָה  your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings. 11 For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.

Only one paragraph earlier, the text says: “There shall be no needy among you, for God will bless you…” and then, just three sentences later it says: “if there is….” The ideal and the real are juxtaposed virtually within the same idea. We imagine a world where there are no needy people, but the world we live in is filled with insufficiency. Our responsibility is not to shrug our shoulders and accept the world as it is. Rather, it’s the opposite. We must open our hands and give that person what they need!

That very phrase, “what they need”, has been the basis of tremendous debates in the Jewish tradition.  Some say, look at what the person lacks and make them whole. If clothing, clothe them; if unsheltered, shelter them. Others say, if the person was used to riding a horse, give them a horse! It is a matter of restoring one’s dignity. Look here.

The two insights from this verse are powerful: first, support for the needy is an imperative and second, their dignity must be upheld. Just as they challenged our ancestors thousands of years ago, they remain the bar we must strive to achieve in our times as well.

— Rabbi Ron Stern