The True Meaning of Tikkun Olam – Kol Nidre (5769)

Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple – Beachwood, Ohio

Rabbi Joshua L. Caruso

       More than ten years ago, when I was a rabbinical student in New York City, I was taking my usual walk up Broadway on the way home from teaching religious school. My wife Leah joined me on the walk at this particular time.  It was commonplace to see the streets beset with homeless people, and it was often my ritual to drop some loose change in the hand of a beggar. This time, however, I was feeling even more generous. The man, dressed in dirty, tattered jeans said he was hungry. I took that as my directive, and promptly entered a nearby deli to purchase a turkey sandwich for him. I emerged from the deli, armed with a fresh and delicious smelling sandwich, and proudly handed it to him. He handed the sandwich back to me, asserting that he didn’t like turkey. I walked away miffed and angered that this man, who claimed to be hungry, did not accept my beneficence. Today, I realize how brazen, brash, and disconnected I was then. My wife wondered out loud why I hadn’t asked him what kind of sandwich he would have liked to eat. And I wondered, silently; embarrassingly; why I hadn’t even asked him his name. To me, this man was simply a nameless obstacle in my path, and was only placed there to give me a reason to do a self-serving mitzvah.

           “If there is among you a poor man…you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother. But, you shall open your hand wide to him sufficient for his need, in that which he wants”[1]

           These beautiful words are from Deuteronomy, chapter 15. There is little legal language, just the simple directive that we should extend a hand to the needy among us. Note that we are asked to grant the recipient not only what he needs, but what he wants. Accordingly, the giver not only acknowledges the needs of the poverty-stricken, but also acknowledges his personhood.

PART I – Eight Degrees of Maimonides

          Maimonides, the great twelfth century philosopher, organized the Jewish giving tradition, Tzedaka, into a graded hierarchy, from the most sublime to the barely acceptable.  It takes into account the effects on recipient and donor alike. The result:  Maimonides’ Eight Degrees of Charity[1]. The lowest degree - the eighth - reflects a giver who offers charity to a poor person grudgingly, with a feeling of pain. The next level corresponds to the person who gives less than she should give, but gives happily. In the subsequent level, the donor offers charity, but waits first to be solicited. As we move up the ladder, the penultimate degree of charity is one who “gives Tzedaka to a poor person and is unaware of the recipient, who, in turn, is unaware of the giver.” Maimonides affirms that “This is indeed a religious act achieved for its own sake.” It is clear that both the giver and the recipient’s anonymity must be guarded, in order not to cause embarrassment.

 Yet for all of the emphasis on the value of anonymity, the ultimate rung on Maimonides’ ladder is to “strengthen the hand of the other” and to make it possible for the needy to support themselves through a vocation. The tension between promoting the ethic of anonymity and the interactive, personal approach in “strengthening the hand of the other” is characterized throughout Jewish literature in stories and laws.

 PART II – Mar Ukba in the Fiery Furnace:

     The story of Mar Ukba, found in the Talmud, tells us about the practice of giving Tzedaka. Mar Ukba’s experience highlights the contradiction that exists between preserving anonymity and acknowledging someone’s personhood, face to face.

In Mar Ukba's neighborhood there was a poor man into whose door socket he used to secretly place small change every day. Once the poor man said, "I will look to see who does this kindness for me." It so happened that on that very day Mar Ukba went to make his contribution, and his wife joined him.

As soon as the poor man caught a glimpse of the two of them bending down at the door to leave the change, he went out to see them. In response, Mar Ukba and his wife fled from him and stepped into a furnace from which a fire had just been swept. Mar Ukba's feet were scorched in the furnace…but his wife's feet were not, and so she said to him, "Please place your feet on top of mine."

Mrs. Ukba saw that her husband was upset because her feet were not burned by the heat; but his were, and she said to him, “when the poor come to find me, I greet them at the door”.[2]

 Following the story, the rabbis are quick to explain why Mar Ukba chose to flee from his poor neighbor, concluding, “Better had a man thrown himself into a fiery furnace than publicly put his neighbor to shame”. Mar Ukba ran away so as not to cause embarrassment to the poor man.

Despite Mar Ukba’s sensitivity to his poor neighbor’s shame, he maintains the ethic of anonymity at the expense of confronting the humanity in both his neighbor and himself. It is telling that even though Mar Ukba goes to great lengths to preserve the poor man’s privacy, the poor man, nevertheless, seeks to make contact with him.  Jennifer Nadler, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto Law School - who wrote a journal article on this story[3] - suggests “that Mar Ukba’s neighbor is not ashamed of his circumstances”.  She points out that, “…the shame of poverty is an upper-class preoccupation. It is the concern of the aristocrat who falls on hard times; it is the concern of Mar Ukba, the public figure. The poor neighbor, by contrast, is not seeking invisibility. He wants to see and be seen by his benefactor.” In seeking to maintain the separation between himself and his poor neighbor, Mar Ukba maintains what Nadler calls a “power imbalance”. He knows the identity of his poor neighbor - his address, and class status - but the poor neighbor knows nothing about his benefactor.  Nameless and unidentified in the story, the poor neighbor may as well be invisible, and his benefactor’s anonymity contributes to the poor man’s sense of alienation.  

In Michelle Obama’s Democratic Convention speech, she invoked the language of Community Organizing: The World as It Is and The World as It Should Be[4]. If we only see our community in the manner of “the world as it is”,  as we see it everyday on CNN and the evening news, we might become so lost in our despondency that we will lose our sense of hope that “it doesn’t have to be this way”.  We can, however, view the notion of “the world as it should be” as a powerful reality waiting for us to actualize, rather than an impossible dream. In a balanced world, these two concepts – the world as it is, and the world as it should be – operate in tandem, acknowledging both the reality, and living the ideal.

 Our Talmudic story features both realities - the world as it is and the world as it should be. Mar Ukba lives in the world as it is, adhering to Jewish legal doctrine as it was set down by our rabbinic sages. While he steadfastly gives to his poor neighbor, he never looks beyond the poverty. By avoiding the personal encounter, Mar Ukba represents only the world as it is. The poor neighbor, in looking to make the connection, lives in the world as it should be where there are no class divisions; no need to be ashamed of one’s lot. Mar Ukba lives in the world as it is, and the poor neighbor lives in the world as it should be.

     Mrs. Ukba transcends this.  Remember…her feet were untouched by the fiery coals, even as her husband was scorched. This is so, she posits, because “when the poor come calling, I greet them at the door.” “(Mrs. Ukba) knows who they are and they know who she is….the poor come to her when she is at home and they can ask her for the particular things they need….”[5] Mrs. Ukba acknowledges the world as it is (poverty, shame, suffering), but she also lives in the world as it should be (love, acceptance, meaningful connection between human beings).

     I find it ironic that my NYC story featured homeless people who walked the same streets as I; who lived in close physical proximity to me, but who ultimately might as well have lived half-way across the world. Recently, I took a “field trip” with Fairmount Temple members to Lorain, Ohio. I reported on the indigence, crime, and economic hardships of this once proud city. Still, the greatest impact was made in the interactions we had with the city’s local citizens. As members of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, it felt as if we had been living on an island in Beachwood, suddenly introduced to the rest of the world. Even though Lorain is only a relatively short drive away, its residents were distant strangers. While our trip to Lorain did not solve the city’s vast array of problems, in some significant way we all felt connected personally to the individual plights of the people we met, face to face.  We felt truly engaged in repairing the world, simply by listening to their stories.

    Jewish tradition has often contributed its deeply rooted notions of improving our society to the rest of the world through language. Words like Mensch and Mitzvah have penetrated through to the common vernacular. More recently, we have even heard Bill Clinton[6], Richard Gere[7], and Madonna[8] speak the phrase, “Tikkun Olam”. Literally translated as “repairing the world,” Tikkun Olam has filtered into the American vernacular precisely because it embraces so well the many notions of altruism and justice for which there is no single word in English. In the Judaic tradition, however, Tikkun Olam is an ancient concept—so inherent in our beliefs that we almost no longer think to define it. It has become a concept that many Jews use to describe just about any form of social justice.

     So how do we work to actualize the dream of the world as it should be? We can start right here. Our community is filled with diversity: racially, economically, and culturally. Yet we don’t know each other. I meet congregants who feel embarrassment that they cannot meet our dues scale, or who do not feel comfortable in our building because they weren’t “raised with much.”  I meet members who feel they live on the margins of our community because of their sexual orientation. I meet people who feel left out, because they immigrated to this country, and they speak broken English. We do not need to take a field trip to Lorain to find the other; the other exists right here in our community.

     To engage the world as it should be, we must learn each other’s name, hear each other’s stories and share our mutual challenges. For the past year and a half a strong cadre of temple members has participated in one-to-ones. One-to-one’s are 30-45 minute meetings between temple members who not only share each other’s stories, but share in the process of communicating personal concerns for our local and world community. Fortunately, we have engaged a nationally recognized community organizer, Jonathan Lange, to aid us in this effort. Moreover, we have the privilege of counting fifth-year student rabbi, Anna Levin among our growing list of community organizing leaders – Anna seeks to build her rabbinate around this initiative. She is currently meeting congregants and conducting one-to-ones. Please let us know if you would like to be counted as someone who would begin breaking down the barriers of anonymity to better understand our community. If you’re intrigued, please join us tomorrow for our Stern Social Action Lecture tomorrow at 2pm, where Reverend Hurmon Hamilton, a pastor from Boston, MA, will be speaking on Congregation Based Community Organizing, a direct and active way for us to make a difference in our local community, in our TEMPLE COMMUNITY, face to face.

With the economic crisis weighing heavily on our minds and in our pockets, the idea of Tikkun Olam – of repairing the world - can seem out of reach. There is so much mending to do, and it feels overwhelming. Where to begin? The process can begin in the space of meeting between two human beings, each one an equal creation of God.