The Ivri Path: (3) Tikkun Olam

3. Tikkun Olam

Repair what has been broken

Healing our hearts, our communities, and the earth by returning again and again to the eternal inner goodness of every being

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Daniel Matt

The Essential Kabbalah, p. 94-95

At the beginning of Creation, when Ein Sof withdrew (tzimtzum) its presence all around in every direction, it left a vacuum in the middle, surrounded on all sides by the light of Ein Sof, empty precisely in the middle....the middle remained a vacuum... [which] transformed into an amorphous mass, surrounded in every direction by the light of Ein Sof.... So the Supernal Emanator puts its hand into the amorphous mass, that is, a ray of light returned from above. As this light began to enter the mass, vessels were formed. From the purest light, Keter; next, Chochmah; then, Binah; and so on throughout all 10 Sefirot. Since Keter was the purest and clearest of all the vessels, it could bear the light within it, but Chochmah and Binah, though more translucent than those below, were not like Keter. Not having its capacity, their backs broke, and they fell from their position. As the light descended further, 6 points appeared - 6 fragments of what had been one point of light. Thus the vessels shattered...

Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz
Breaking and Repairing in Thought, Art, and Society, Adi Foundation 2010

[T]he Shattering of the Vessels is not a flaw or a result of an unsuccessful attempt to build a world, but rather a part of the process of creation from the outset. The Shattering of the Vessels is... just another step of a different structure and plan. It is a second movement of a single melody. The shattering is a part of the construction process... I will give an example of how a wall is built. A wall is a human act of creation that begins with the breaking of the raw, basic rock into stones, and from these stones, which are fragments of rock, the entire building process begins... The sages said that a person experiences the greatest happiness while in the womb. There is a complete harmony between the fetus and its environment. All its needs are provided for... With birth, the fetus moves from a world that is completely good to a complex, multi-faceted, and complicated world... One can therefore say that the creation of the world was a break like this. One great reality, which in one sense was complete within itself, was shattered, and afterward came a new, complex, and complicated reality.

Five steps of Tikkun:

Step 1: Achrayut, The Other

Achrayut means responsibility

Root = “the other"

Bear witness to "the other"

Working with overblame

Hachna'ah: Intention versus impact

Step 2: Cheshbon haNefesh, Accounting of the Spirit

Havdala: Forensic evaluation of damage, internal motivations, mitigating external factors

All stakeholders implicated

All stakeholders affected

Step 3: Hamtaqah, Sweetening

Visioning alternate choices

Identifying Nekudat HaBechirah--points of choice

Step 4: Slicha, Apology

Integrate previous steps

Center the one harmed

Commitment to not repeating harm

Step 5: Nizikin: Damages

Repairing harm

Addressing all stakeholders

Held by community

Ongoing process

A righteous person is not someone who never messes up. A righteous person is someone who messes up and is doing the (sometimes slow and messy) work to make it right.

The work of making it right it fractal: it must be done within ourselves, between ourselves and others, between communities, between ourselves and the world.

Spiritual teacher Yocheved Sidof, drawing on the chasidic master the Kedushas Levi, explains that when the Torah teaches us to “appoint a judge at every gate” (Deut 16:18), it is “implying that we are to be judged compassionately at ‘whatever gate we are at’ i.e. at whatever point of evolution we have made, regardless of what lies ahead.”

Even if there is more work ahead of us, we act nobly if we engage fully in the step before us.

PRACTICE

• In a meditative setting, sit or stand, lower your gaze or close your eyes.
• Knock on your chest, let the rhythm guide a scan of your heart:
  • Where have you caused harm? Where have you forgotten your inviolable goodness? Where have you been harmed? Where have you forgotten the inviolable goodness of others?
• Pick one thing.
• Make space for what arises. Take your time.
• When the moment is right, undo your fist, flatten your hand, and massage your heart. Send love to all that arose, even that in which the God-light is obscured.
• Make commitments to action if there are commitments to be made.
• Breath deeply.
• Reroot in your body. Open your eyes.

INCANTATION

Psalms 139:8