Meditations on making the world a better place

THE Jewish concept of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “heal the world”) is central to the tenets of Judaism. Whether the concept is approached from the point of view of the Kabbalah -- that the world God created has been shattered and must be repaired through individual good deeds -- or from the perspective of many Conservative, Reform and reconstructionist Jews -- that all are commanded to work toward social justice worldwide -- the idea is a powerful call to action.

The biweekly magazine “Tikkun” was founded to promote this idea. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, founder and editor-in-chief Michael Lerner has compiled “Tikkun Reader,” a collection of some of its best essays. The writings cover a broad canvas, analyzing U.S. and Israeli culture, politics, religion and history from a leftist-progressive Jewish viewpoint. Many argue for an interfaith dialogue, a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and religious social justice in the United States.

Lerner groups the essays thematically. The section titled “Approaching God” includes a fascinating look at Pentecostalism and the future of Christianity by Harvard University divinity professor Harvey Gallagher Cox and a consideration of the unnamable, unimaginable identity of God by Daniel C. Matt, an authority on the Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism. “To call God ‘Nothingness’ does not mean that God does not exist,” Matt writes. “Rather, it conveys the idea that God is no thing: God animates all things and cannot be contained by any of them.”

The section on “Jewish Identity and Survival” includes Michael S. Kimmel’s essay about choosing against circumcision for his young son and instead using the bris ceremony to welcome the baby into the family and the community. “Although he enters a world filled with violence, he would enter it without violence done to him,” Kimmel writes. “Although he will no doubt suffer many cuts and scrapes during his life, he would not bleed by our hand.” In the section discussing Judaism, writer Daphne Merkin considers the old testament book “Song of Songs” and the idealization of romance and sexual desire, and USC theology professor Rachel Adler grapples with her change of mind about an influential essay she wrote 20 years earlier on religious laws concerning menstruation. “I did not know how to be accountable to the people who learned from me. I had never heard a theologian say that he or she had been wrong.”

What these essays have in common is a desire to be thoughtful about how one lives, to not just continue in the path of previous generations but to examine whether the traditions of family, religion and culture still serve their purposes. The intent is to get readers, Jews and non-Jews alike, thinking about humanity’s role in the cosmos, the suffering of our neighbors, the effects of greed on other people and the environment. It also is a call to more personal and collective responsibility for the world. As such, the book offers few clear-cut answers, but lots of meaty questions.

A section on “The Holocaust and Its Lessons” explores the legacy of the Shoah, while another considers the situation in Israel. One insightful essay by Kim Chernin, “Seven Pillars of Jewish Denial,” questions what she calls the “belief that a sufficient amount of suffering [on the part of Jews] confers [upon them] the right to violence,” a principle she sees animating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “[T]he way we perceive both our Jewish identity and the world ... involves us finally in a tricky relationship to language,” she writes. “That boy over there with the black face mask and a rock. That is a terrorist. That boy over here with a submachine gun, firing on the boy with the rock, he is a soldier.”

The final section, “Spiritual Politics,” explores such concepts as the “economics of meaning,” asking readers to consider the current market-driven economy and to question how it might be altered to better serve humankind.

“Tikkun Reader” offers a substantive examination of many aspects of contemporary life, asking us to weigh its questions, to engage intellectually and spiritually with large issues facing our world. It is a clarion call to consciousness at a time when it couldn’t be more urgently needed.

Bernadette Murphy is the author of, most recently, “The Tao Gals’ Guide to Real Estate” (with Michelle Huneven).