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.
As we endure yet another atmospheric river (who heard of these until only a year or two ago?), we recognize that the unthinkable is becoming real for us. Humanity’s collective actions over the previous 100 years have changed our climate. On the edge of the American continent, California seems to bear the brunt of the floods, droughts, and rising oceans. The evidence surrounds us and the science is incontrovertible. Could the rabbis have anticipated such massive climate change when they wrote the following? Doubtful and at the same time astoundingly prophetic.
אין מי שיתקן אחריך — there will be no one to repair (she-yitakein) it after you. The word tikkun appears here in the literal sense. A corrupt and defiled world will truly be one that is broken and in need of repair. Once a parable, now an accurate description and warning about the world we inhabit. We have not only been gifted with the capacity to understand how the world has been broken, we also have the ability, more than ever before, to fix it. What is lacking is the will and the commitment.
I look into both my grandsons’ eyes, one 11 months old, the other barely a month, and I feel my own commitment renewed toward ensuring a safe and habitable world for them. One of the most powerful arguments against aggressively pursuing climate change remediation is the expense that would be incurred by our current generation. As my wife and I continue to make economic decisions that will benefit our children and grandchildren, and at the same time encourage our children to do the same, I am acutely aware of the notion of generational commitments. We sacrifice for our children and grandchildren because we believe that we must ensure their future – even though we will likely not be around to watch them benefit. It is an investment in the future. Is a world-wide climate commitment that different? The current generation is required to sacrifice so that the subsequent generations will inherit a livable world. To deny that responsibility is analogous to the parent who makes irresponsible choices and burdens their children with liabilities that could have been avoided.
The evidence is extensive, the effects are real and increasingly predictable, solutions are becoming increasingly viable, the ability to act is at our fingertips. Will we be the generation that sets the bar for tikkun olam?
— Rabbi Ron Stern