Finding Healing

Kol Nidre Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Margaret Jacobi

Yom Kippur is a time for new beginnings, for putting right what has been, and starting again with a sense of wholeness and healing.  One word which describes the process of putting right is ‘Tikkun’.  The word ‘Tikkun’ has a multitude of meanings.  We are familiar with it from the phrase ‘Tikkun Olam’,  and from our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot.  It is about restoring relationships and restoring the proper order of the world.   But as we begin this day of Atonement, this special day set apart to help us to begin anew, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. 

When I first came to Birmingham, a young man called Tim Roseman helped me to teach the Kabbalat Torah class. Fresh from a year in Israel, he brought with him a Reform Zionist model of Tikkun.  It was a series of concentric circles. The innermost was Tikkun Atzmi, repair of self, then there was Tikkun Kehilah and Tikkun Am, repair of our community and people, and the outermost circle was Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.  That model is a helpful way of thinking about Tikkun on this day. So I will begin tonight with Tikkun Atzmi, and tomorrow we shall think about Tikkun Kehilah, repair of our community and people and then  Tikkun Olam, repair of the world.

Tikkun Atzmi, repair of self,  is where we must start when we think about repair, but it is perhaps the hardest of all to think about, for it involves introspection and that carries risks.  It may be painful, but it may also be an escape from the world.  So Hillel warned: ‘If am  not for myself, who will be for me. But if I am only for myself, what am I?’   Martin Buber elaborated: ‘ To begin with oneself, but not to end with oneself; to start from oneself, but not to aim at oneself; to comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself . . .’ We must start with ourselves, for only if we are whole can we engage with the world with honesty and conviction.  Only then can we have the strength to face whatever difficulties there are as we struggle to repair our community and the world.  Only then can we muster the love which we must bring with us to the task.

What does Tikkun Atzmi mean?  In their book ‘In the Shadow of the Ladder’, Mark and Yedidah Cohen set out the philosophy of Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag, who was born in Poland in 1886 and came to what was then Palestine in 1922.   For Rabbi Ashlag, a Kabbalist,  Tikkun meant a process of healing, of becoming whole again and of coming nearer to what God wishes us to be.  He asks the question: ‘What is the purpose of creation?’ and gives the answer of the Talmud, that God created the world in order to give pleasure to God’s creatures.  So our souls were created with what Rabbi Ashlag calls ‘the will to receive’.   We have the ability to appreciate, wonder at and benefit from God’s creation.  That is how we start life.  But as we grow older, as we become responsible for learning Torah and performing Mitzvot, our will to receive is transformed.  We understand that receiving means not only physical benefits but, more importantly, spiritual benefits. And it becomes also a will to receive in order to give benefit.  We no longer become mere receptacles for God’s goodness.  We wish to share our gifts with others and, in imitation of God, to give.    We develop a capacity to feel sympathy for others, to feel their pain.  As we do so, we acquire higher levels of holiness and move closer to the En Sof, the Infinite One, the ultimate source of our being. This is our life’s work. Indeed, for Rabbi Ashlag, it is not really complete until beyond the grave. 

Learning Torah and performing Mitzvot is a discipline which leads us to Tikkun.  For us, as Progressive Jews,  it doesn’t mean that we have to lead an Orthodox life-style or study Torah in the traditional way.  It does mean that we should engage in Jewish wisdom, discovering meaning through what our tradition teaches. This may mean study of the Torah and Talmud, or it may mean study of modern thinkers such as Martin Buber,  Rabbi Arthur Green and Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who re-interpret tradition for our times, or the poet Marge Piercy, whose beautiful poetry, some of which you will find in our Machzor,  helps us to see Judaism and life in a new light.  Living a life of mitzvot may mean practising rituals which help us to focus on meaning in our lives, such as lighting candles to bring in Shabbat and ending Shabbat with Havdalah to mark the start of a new week. Or it may mean ethical mitzvot, such as avoiding l’shon ha-ra, gossip about others, or making sure we are more honest in our dealings with others.  If this year, we can focus on reading just one or two more books which help us think about ourselves and the world through a Jewish lens, and if we can focus on one ritual and one ethical mitzvah, we can start to open ourselves up to the Divine in our lives, and be more ready to give of ourselves to others.  So may we bring healing, tikkun, to ourselves, and be more ready to face the task that have been entrusted to us.

We start with ourselves. But Buber reminds us: ‘... no soul has its object in itself, in its own salvation. True, each is to know itself, purify itself, perfect itself, but not for its own sake -- neither for the sake of its temporal happiness nor for that of its eternal bliss -- but for the sake of the work which it is destined to perform upon the world.’  May our prayers on this day help us in our resolve to perfect ourselves, for the sake of the work we are destined to perform.

Rabbi Margaret Jacobi

Birmingham Progressive Synagogue