Feminism as Tikkun Ha-Olam

By LEA SHAKDIEL

Progressive Jews have been using the term “tikkun olam” ever since the idealistic awakening of the 1960’s in the United States and in Western Europe. It is identified periodically with commitment to morally worthy causes, in keeping with the Zeitgeist: interracial solidarity, world peace, the war against poverty, and naturally, feminism too. This trend comprises a number of elements:

First, it is a creative response to the death of direct faith in God and in the myths of traditional religion, and the secularization of life. Naïve faith was replaced by the cult of freedom and individual self-fulfillment, but this failed to satisfy the need for a sanctuary from alienation, loneliness, and helplessness, the need to ground our lives within a framework of meaning that transcends the concrete. If the transcendental cannot be experienced through devotion to the divine, it can still be experienced through devotion to “the spirit of man,” in keeping with the humanistic ideal of a rational humanity lighting our path from ancient times to the endless reaches of the future. This belief in “the pedagogy of potential Man in real society” gives us the strength to take concrete action to repair a defective reality, to build a better world for our children. In other words, “tikkun olam” is perceived today as a version of personal and universal redemption, open to various agnostics and atheists as well: “For yet I shall believe in Man/ And in his spirit, a spirit bold.”

Second, adopting the term “tikkun olam” from Jewish sources offers Jews of various beliefs—religious, traditional, secular—a fine solution to the problems of identity that have plagued us all since Sa’adiah Ga’on’s assertion that “our nation is not a nation except by virtue of its divine laws” lost its predominance. We can celebrate our humanity, our acceptance into the family of “normal” nations, as one more nuance of universal culture, without ceding our Jewish self-perception, rooted in our specific historical tradition. We too have an ancient humanistic classical tradition, one that confers on us honorary membership among the founders of liberal democracy. How good it is to recall, for example, that one of our own, Rene Cassin, drafted the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights!

All of this was expressed in European languages, until the gradual return of the various streams of liberal Judaism to the sources of their national culture and identity. Thus in our generation, we are experiencing a change of direction. Instead of repairing Jews and Judaism under the banner of “Reform,” the colors of “tikkun olam” are now proudly flown—in Hebrew—as the mantra of an ethnic and cultural rite in the Holy Tongue, reconnecting Jews to their roots. “Tikkun olam” is not merely an abstract ideal, but a resounding semantic code, like the songs around the tribal fire—the convocational platform of a community. It is a modest and partial “tikkun” that enables every individual to participate in daily acts of charity in the immediate surroundings, linking this simple action to a communal and worldwide effort, without making the value attached to such action contingent upon effecting a drastic change in lifestyle, history, or the cosmos. There is no need for greater observance of religious precepts, donating all of one’s possessions to the poor, or even leading the Jewish People out of exile: It is both possible and imperative to improve the quality of personal moral, political, and spiritual life.

Feminists who join this aspect of Jewish renaissance in our generation strive to ground the women’s revolution not only in the necessary “tikkun” of the political and economic balance of power, but primarily effecting a perceptual and cultural change in both women and men, as human beings and as Jews reinterpreting a rich and complex heritage. Feminism is thus no more than an upgraded version of humanism. We decry the prevailing tendency to identify the abstract concept of “the rational human spirit” exclusively with men, and affirm that Man is a sexed being, with a mind that reflects the best of both male and female. Will it be “He and I” only who “will change the world” (to quote Arik Einstein, one of the most prominent representatives of the Sabra myth)? Kalanit Dover, for example, amended this to “She and I will change the world” and adopted it as the slogan for “Nissan,” a leadership training project she started for high school girls. This is, fundamentally, Liberal Feminism: a philosophy that accepts the social contract as charted by modern liberal democracy, while demanding that the female half of humanity be allowed to participate in equal footing, both in the struggle to attain its goals, and in the division of the spoils and fruits of its labor.

The first version of this article was published in Men and Women: Gender, Judaism, and Democracy, edited by Rachel Elior. (Urim Publications and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2004.) It is reprinted with permission from the publishers.