What Tikkun Olam Means Today
Throughout our tortured and tragic history Jews were taken hostage. Jewish communities often paid their ransom. The unparalleled medieval thinker, Moses Maimonides, exhorted his fellow Jews to redeem captives and even collected money for this purpose.
He writes: “The redemption of captives receives priority over sustaining the poor and providing them with clothing. Indeed, there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives. For captives are among those who are hungry, thirsty, and unclothed. They are in mortal peril." (Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor 8)
The rabbis ask, “Is there too high a price to pay for a captive?” They answer, “One does not ransom captives for more than their value because of tikkun olam.” (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 45a) Tikkun olam! Repair of the world!
We often use this term “tikkun olam” when arguing for the support of social justice causes. In this case, however, it implies that if we pay too much, we will undermine the world’s moral order. In other words, paying too much might overly burden the community. Or, the rabbis, go on to say, if we pay too much, the evildoers might be encouraged to take more hostages.
Throughout the years, I have studied these texts about pidyon shvuyim, ransoming captives. In the past I found the study of these sacred texts, and the wisdom of my rabbinic forebears, a helpful diversion from world events. “Look at the vexing questions of yesteryear,” I thought to myself. “Thank God, we don’t face such dilemmas!” Today, however, I find these texts only add to our grief. They compound our tragedy.
Hamas holds 203 hostages. I cannot get their pictures out of my mind. I cannot turn away from the image of an elderly grandmother carted off to Gaza in a golf cart, or the thought of injured, and brutalized, children being held captive.
Israel was intended to help us write a new story. Today we instead find ourselves revisiting an old story. And we lack the vocabulary to confront this challenge. I worry. If we rely, on previous understandings and prior texts, we may be returned to the past.
The instincts of liberal Jews are to fight against all wars. “Tikkun olam means peace,” we say. When attacked, and murdered, in this manner repair of the world can mean, and must mean, a restoration of the moral order. Hamas is the antithesis to the values we most cherish. Defeating these terrorists is the only option Israel, and the Jewish people, has.
In this hour, and in this moment, tikkun olam means fighting a war.
My teacher, Yehudah Kurtzer, writes: “The challenge we face is that the dominant moral instincts and biases that define liberal North American Jewry, including an abiding commitment to kindness, compassion, and peace, make it difficult to confront the sad and painful truth that Israel is fighting a just war based on a just cause, and that solidarity with both our fellow Jews and with our values means supporting this war against Hamas, as awful as it will be.”
Today, redeeming the captives is also about redeeming the Jewish soul. It is about once again liberating the Jewish people from victimhood and persecution. It is about protecting, and safeguarding, Jewish lives. It is about never again allowing Jews to be taken hostage or the Jewish soul to be held captive.
Today, fighting a just war is the fulfillment of tikkun olam.