The Meaning of TikkunShalom and welcome to a special edition of Tikkun Tips, nuggets of eco-Jewish thought from your friends at the Teva Learning Center. After a long recess over the summer and holiday months, we are back, and seemingly just in time.
I want to start this year of Tikkun Tips by thinking a little bit about the very concept of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. The phrase is based on the Kabalistic idea that when the world was created, God tried to contain all of the divine light in a single vessel. The vessel could not contain this cosmic force and therefore shattered, sending sparks of Godly light all over the world. The act of Tikkun, or repair, is literally a gathering of these sparks and uniting them.
I spent the past week in Dayton, Ohio volunteering for voter turnout efforts for the upcoming election. I went around door to door encouraging those with spotty voting records to make sure to get out to the polls on Tuesday. After several hours of wandering I had spoken directly to maybe seven or eight people. My initial reaction was that this was somewhat inefficient and probably would not have much of an effect in the bigger picture. Throughout the week I experienced such a range of emotions about the upcoming elections. Optimism one minute and despair the next. And these emotions were only slightly tied to the individual candidates, but more so to the state of our democracy.
That night, returning to the home where we were staying, I saw a very poignant quote taped onto the fridge. It was Thomas Merton’s, Letter to a Young Activist. The following is the section that seemed most relevant:
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless, and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
This is the very basis of Tikkun Olam. If we attempt to take on all of the injustice in this world, we become overwhelmed and depressed. The battle is seemingly endless and insurmountable. But if we shift our focus to the work itself, the work that at our core we know to be essential, we can see things through more hopeful eyes. My goal was not to turn out 500 or 1,000 new voters. My job was to talk to a handful of people and make sure they understand the significance of this election. While I was walking my route, thousands of others were walking their routes, with similar results, I’m sure. But together we were recruiting tens of thousands new people, engaging them in the democratic process, empowering them to choose the leaders who make such crucial decisions for our country and our world.
But often the work is more challenging than simply knocking on doors or driving people to the polls. There are enormous obstacles that we must face. While in Dayton we were sent an email from a local voter who had received an odd piece of mail. Apparently from the local board of elections, the letter stated that anyone who had registered to vote trough organizations such as the NAACP, America Coming Together, or even John Kerry for President, have been illegally registered and will not be permitted to vote. We called the local board of elections and were assured that this was fraudulent and they were taking appropriate measures to pass on accurate information to their voters.
My heart sank. For all of the talk about our enemies who hate freedom and liberty, it seems that we have some of those enemies right here at home. This election has brought out some of the ugliest sides of politics that I can recall in my young political life. And while this election is one of the most important of our lives, I do not believe that the ends justify the means, no matter what political view you hold. The very democracy upon which this country was founded is being threatened, and it is threatened through the voting process itself.
Tomorrow you and I will go to the polls and cast our votes. We will take part in the political process that gives us, the people, and not a select few, the power to choose. And if you have the time over the next 48 hours to get involved, do it. Empower others to vote. Ensure that those who want to and are entitled to vote are not turned away unlawfully. Do not take this lightly. Just because your vote may count now, if we continue on such a path, it may not be too long until all of our voices are ignored. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Negative ads, voter fraud, unjust intimidation, lies, deceit, and manipulation. When will this ever stop? Well, it stops RIGHT NOW!
Signing off from Philadelphia, the birthplace of our democracy...Nati Passow
Teva Learning Center
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teva@tevacenter.org
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Be Informed
If you feel like someone is trying to interfere with your right to vote this election, call 866-OUR-VOTE, a special hotline run by the Election Protection Coalition. Know your rights! check out the
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