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 start with a text from the Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:9.

The text has been modified for gender neutrality.

Therefore, a human was created single and alone in the world to teach that for anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if they destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if they preserved an entire world. And to promote peace among people, so that nobody could say to another, my parent was greater [of higher status] than your parent.

And to proclaim the greatness of God, the Holy One . . . For a person mints many coins with one die; they are one like the other. But God . . . stamps every person with the stamp of the first human, and yet no one is like any other. Therefore, everybody is required to say, the world was created for me. Source

Though the language is basic, the philosophical and moral importance is extraordinary. Versions of this text are found throughout the Talmud and the selection above is part of a broader discussion of a warning to witnesses before giving testimony in capital cases. Its intent is to remind the individual that, a) false testimony will not only forfeit one life but generations and, b) take care lest you assume that you might have the moral or societal high ground and dispense cavalierly with this person’s life, and finally, c) each human is unique and serves a purpose in the world.

Like all Jewish texts its meaning is not limited to the primary usage. We’ve seen “one who saves a single life…” in many contexts. It is a powerful reminder not merely of one life’s worth but of the capacity of that life to bring forth subsequent generations. The death of one may diminish humanity’s potential. The second clause affirms that no individual has superior parentage than another and is particularly powerful. Facing the unhoused, the addicted, the immigrant, the poor, it’s easy to pass judgment on the individual and presume to understand the circumstances that led to another’s misfortune. Thousands of years ago, our sages warned against this basic human proclivity.

Finally, reflecting the last clause, Martin Buber said:

Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. It is the duty of every person…to know and consider…that there has never been anyone like them in the world, for if there had been someone like them, there would have been no need for them in the world. Every single person is a new thing in the world and is called upon to fill their particularity in this world.

We are here because the world needs us. That is Tikkun Olam.

— Rabbi Ron Stern