Tikkun Olam is a politicised import into Judaism: discuss

This is the argument put forward by Jonathan Neumann, a UK based lawyer, in his book on the subject, To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel.

Mr Neumann implores people to read beyond the book’s title — which is probably wise, given that he will be speaking on the subject at Limmud, not exactly a place the “Jewish Left” stays away from. 

So what is Tikkun Olam? “Tikkun Olam has never meant ‘charity’ and ‘good works’ in the Jewish tradition,” the 31-year-old lawyer says.

“There are other terms and concepts for that — ‘Chessed’, ‘Darchei Shalom’, ‘gemilut chassadim’ — Tikkun Olam has never meant any of those things. It essentially means, or is understood as, ‘social justice’, a particular kind of Jewish social justice, but it’s never really had this meaning.”

He describes “social justice” as “a political, liberal ideology, covering a whole gamut of issues, particularly in US politics, from taxes to abortion.” He stresses that “Judaism does not mandate [this interpretation of] Tikkun Olam. But it does mandate charity and good works, both to Jews and to non-Jews.”

What proponents of Tikkun Olam put forward, he says, is “the idea that the general politics of social justice are rooted within Judaism, and that somehow Jewish tradition and Jewish texts endorse these views”. 

He explains that “the advocates of this approach point to a number of texts — the ‘Aleinu’ prayer, some parts of Talmud and the Midrashim, the Lurianic Kabbalah, and so on — and the appearances of Tikkun Olam in the rabbinic corpus.

“But if you actually look at these sources, which is what I do in the book, chapter by chapter, none of them say what the advocates of Tikkun Olam claim that they say — in some cases, they even seem to say the opposite. Tikkun Olam is essentially a foreign import into Judaism.

“It is too much of a coincidence to think that this ancient religion and civilisation could coincide so wondrously with the platform of the liberal-left Democratic party in the 21st century US. I mean, it’s ridiculous.” 

Mr Neumann is British, but lived for a few years in the US, where he experienced this phenomenon first hand. 

“For Anglo-Jewry and Anglo-Judaism, Tikkun Olam is nowhere near as influential and hegemonic as it is in the US,” he says. 

“From books for infants through school curricula, programmes for adolescents, campus initiatives and then synagogue committees, sermons from pulpits, journals, magazines, books, articles — all of these platforms, texts and so on, are committed to Tikkun Olam. Even liturgy has been adapted to emphasise it or to include it. 

“It has saturated American Judaism to the point that people think that Tikkun Olam is a mitzvah or the Mitzvah, the great teaching of Judaism. It’s US Judaism’s greatest and most well-known export to Non-Jewish America.”

In fact, Mr Neumann believes, the concept was actually an import to Judaism from American Christians.  

“I think it’s heavily influenced by the Social Gospel, a major Liberal Christian movement a hundred years ago in America,” he says.

“The Christians had this idea of establishing the kingdom of God on Earth, and the Jews, I think, the Reform movement and Mordechai Kaplan, the co-founder of the Reconstructionist movement, were quite enamoured of this idea. He [Kaplan] I think saw in Aleinu [a prayer said at the end of synagogue services] this idea of ‘perfecting the world under the Kingdom of God’ – ‘l’takein olam b’malchut shakkai.’ 

“My thinking is that it was originally the ‘kingdom of God’ phrase — the ‘malchut shakkai’ — that drew them to it, but then they kind of dropped that and it was the Tikkun Olam part that got people very excited.”

Mr Neumann believes that, contrary to the claims by some that Tikkun Olam is a way to bring Jews closer to Judaism, “the grand theology of Tikkun Olam has no answer to the question of ‘why be Jewish?’. Essentially it is a route into assimilation.” One of the main casualties of this way of thinking, Mr Neumann believes, is a decline in support for Israel.

“The issue for Jews is how they square the Tikkun Olam theology, which essentially has no place for a distinction between Jews and non-Jews, while also holding to a proud Jewish identity,” he says. 

“You really see this borne out in the philosophical writings of the advocates of Tikkun Olam in America. They see the Jewish people and the idea of Jewish chosen-ness as a relic and chauvinistic. They don’t like what Israel has become — at best for them Israel is a special case, they don’t really see a theoretical argument for it except that the Jews suffered in the Holocaust and they need a haven — but essentially their toleration for this sort of exception is, I think, starting to wear out.”

Jonathan Neumann will present a session called ‘Stop Doing Tikkun Olam!’ at Limmud