Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part dialogue series about activism and social change across the generations by mother-daughter pair Marji Yablon and Rhea Yablon Kennedy. Marji Yablon lives in upstate New York where she works as a writer, videographer, and performer focusing on issues surrounding prisoners, parolees, and individuals with physical disabilities. She has worked for Citizens’ Inquiry on Parole and Criminal Justice and Theater for the Forgotten. Her writing has appeared in Living and Being magazine, Cuisine of the Hudson Valley, and the Sunday editions of various regional newspapers. Her daughter, Rhea, lives in Washington, D.C. Rhea has worked as a community organizer, a personal chef utilizing sustainable ingredients, and a writer. Her articles, essays, and recipes on food and sustainability have appeared in Examiner.com, Washington Jewish Week, The Jew and the Carrot, and DC Food for All–in addition to PursueAction.org.
Rhea: Mom, the concept of tikkun olam–repair of the world–plays a major role in the services and actions of the havurahs I attend and has figured prominently in Jewish organizations I’ve been drawn to. It’s also central to my personal sense of Judaism. Has it been the same for you?
Marji: It’s kind of odd: The concept has been an important part of my outlook as far back as I can remember, but the actual term and its direct connection to Judaism came only in my adult life.
Rhea: I feel like I grew up in an environment infused with the idea of tikkun olam. One of my strongest memories of the High Holy Days growing up is coming out of services and seeing a rainbow of papers on a table. There were 12 different piles of photocopied papers, each detailing a nonprofit or cause that congregants could donate to. The rabbi (or perhaps the High Holidays committee) had come up with a new tikkun olam opportunity for each month of the year.
More informally, it was pretty common to hear people in our congregation talking about this or that liberal cause. I didn’t connect this to Judaism or the synagogue. In fact, if I saw the same people outside of the synagogue, they’d be talking about the same subjects — it was just their thing.
Marji: I’d like to think that it’s ingrained in many souls, among them the Jewish soul. Nevertheless, I do recall that I, too, was impressed with that side of that synagogue. In fact, on the night that I first visited there when I was deciding whether to join, the members were meeting about whether the building should be offered as a place of sanctuary for political refugees from El Salvador. I don’t know if they ever actually found a way to do it, but the decision that night was “yes,” and therefore so was my decision to join.
Rhea: That’s a great story! I’d never heard it before. Even though I remember that moment at the High Holy Days service, I don’t think I saw healing the world as a Jewish thing back then, until I was around Bat Mitzvah age and joined the youth group Young Judaea. There, the activities often emphasized that phrase, and the peer leadership was encouraged to organize community service activities.
Marji: I attended a yeshiva and still had never heard the term “tikkun olam” until I was older than you are now. There had been a subway crash in New York City. One person had been killed, so the newspapers focused on him. They interviewed his family, who explained that he had been an Orthodox Jew and an attorney who practiced law for the poor and disenfranchised. They told reporters that a big part of his life had been the pursuit of tikkun olam, which they described as a responsibility within Judaism to help heal the world. Reading those articles, meeting this man after his death, was an important experience for me, even though, like you, I had already been exposed to this concept of looking out at the world, near and far, and knowing that its needs were important to me. My role model had been my mother –your Grandma Lili, of course.
Rhea: What was Grandma’s understanding of tikkun olam?
Marji: I don’t think she was familiar with the term either, but might have picked up its essence from her mother, who had lived an observant life as a young girl in pre-World War I Hungary. During my mother’s childhood in America, they were extremely poor, yet her mother reached out and helped others. As you know, when she grew up, Grandma was anti-war before the term had become common, and displayed fairness and acceptance in all her dealings with other people.
I think that learning the term and its definition can help Jews in one of two ways: If they weren’t doing it already, it can help them realize they need to focus on more than themselves. If they were already feeling that way, it can give their need to help, their love of helping, a framework and a beautiful sense of “Yes!”
Rhea: That’s a lovely way of looking at it.
Marji: I should add that I’m at a point now where I think the ritual and spiritual side of Judaism is where it all begins. And I wish now that I had emphasized that even more than I did, especially during your formative years. I feel now that the level of observance at a synagogue and the rabbi’s ability to support that as well as to counsel and educate would be primary reasons for my decision to join. In fact, as you know, I joined a synagogue later on, when you were already away at college. For the first time in my life, it was not because of the location or congregation, but because of the rabbi. His level of spirituality and scholarship were the highest most congregants had ever known. At the same time, he was far more of an activist than they’d probably ever seen in a rabbi.
Rhea: Where does the concept come from, anyway? Do you know where it appears in Jewish texts?
Marji: As I understand it, that exact expression dates from only about 400 years ago. At that time, and long before that as well, the Jewish concept of “repair” meant the performance of religious acts, in order to return to a world without sin or material considerations. Of course, at this point, it has taken on a more worldly meaning. Now, there’s a magazine called Tikkun, and many synagogue have tikkun committees, whose members devise ways to help others around the globe. Interesting that it was around the early 1960′s, maybe a few years before that, that the word came to be used the way synagogues are using it now, and the way we’re using it here: the helping of those near and far, Jewish or not, in big ways and small, as a Jewish responsibility. I can’t help noticing that this evolution coincided with the Sixties, when the young grabbed hold of a tremendous sense of their responsibility–and their power–to right the world, no matter their age or standing in society.
Rhea: I wondered if tikkun olam might have had a resurgence then. But what about that exact phrase? Why use that, rather than some other word or a general sense that Judaism includes righting what is “off” in the world?
Marji: There’s another word similarly used now to indicate “good deed”: mitzvah. That actually means commandment, one of the 613 contained in the Torah or among the several others from the rabbis. You mentioned becoming a bat mitzvah. A bar or bat mitzvah is someone who is taking on those commandments–or all those relevant to them, considering such things as his or her gender, location, and existence after the destruction of the Temples. When Jewish organizations, particularly the Jewish Federation, hold an annual Mitzvah Day, it’s not necessarily a time for religious rituals and activities, but an opportunity for us to help others in our community. Some of the tasks I can recall on those days were the repairing of donated children’s books to be passed along to families and centers, playing music for patients in hospitals, and doing yard work for those who can’t. Of course, the Jewish Federation and others aren’t suggesting you only need to help one day a year. But it’s a good way to get in the rhythm, and an opportunity do it as part of a community.
Rhea: I think those terms are changing yet again. I get this sense that the Jewish community, especially people around college age, are starting to see themselves as “post-tikkun olam”. More and more, I hear about tzedek, justice. It’s still healing, just maybe at a more systemic level.
Marji: Maybe people–the young included–are more worldly, sophisticated. They know how bad it is out there.
Rhea: Maybe we can thank our Baby Boomer parents for that! But interestingly, the JCC in D.C. still draws lots of 20-and 30-somethings when they have a “make food for the hungry” activity or they paint a community center in a low-income area during a day of service. At the same time, more than 100 people from the same demographic crowd into Tikkun Leil Shabbat to take part in a service with a social justice speaker. I’m still figuring out where it can fit into my life and Jewish practice. Can you just perform tikkun olam by making lasagna from 7:00 to 9:00 on a Wednesday night?
Marji: Sure you can do it from 7:00 to 9:00. And thinking about it, planning more of the work, etc., can go on all the time. Maybe that’s the right way to do it anyway. Maybe there’s a good reason there are specific times of day for prayer–and there were specific times for sacrifice before that. It may help keep you doing it, and also allows you the time to take care of your own family and yourself, which is also important. You know, when I hear Robert Kennedy’s family talk about life when they were kids, it sounds to me like the epitome of a home where tikkun olam is part of the fabric, part of every breath. They describe him coming home from places where children were hungry, or people were hurt. And he’d come in all upset over it. At the dinner table, he’d tell them what he’d seen, and he’d say, “You all have to do something about this.” But he still came home for dinner, and they still had a normal schedule and normal life, as much as possible.
Rhea: Even though the Kennedys were famous for their Catholicism (which means people are endlessly confused when they see my last name), that story sounds like their service wasn’t connected to their religious observance. Do you think that your generation separated its social action from its religion? Or is it just my generational myopia that makes me think radical Jews and Catholics working for social justice in the inner city is new?
Marji: I don’t think it’s new. That’s what missionaries have basically done and still do–everywhere–although they have also had the motive or hope of converting people, which I guess they’ve thought was also for the people’s good.
Rhea: How do you see tikkun olam relating to your life now?
Marji: I see it as pervading it. There are numerous ways to perform it: talk about causes, email others about them, donate, write about it all. My current search for full-time work haunts me, because I could be accomplishing more through my work, and because I’m not able to give to a cause or two that I admire, each and every month. Still, there are letters to my legislative reps to be written, along with blog posts and articles that can bring crises and people’s brave solutions to readers’ attention. There’s plenty everyone can do, whatever their schedule or means. How about you? Where do you see tikkun olam fitting into your life?
Rhea: I combine my passion for triathlons and running with fund raising for causes. When it comes to sustainable food, I practice what I write about. I eat seasonally, have my own garden, and present about sustainable food at Jewish and non-Jewish events. I’m looking to my writing to become a vehicle for healing in even more ways. I feel good about that, given this world where a single blog post or article can reach millions of people. We’re also in a climate where a single article can take down a powerful military leader.
Marji: I’m not so sure one article can take down a leader too often. It can be part of a snowball effect, though.
Rhea: I guess you’re right. Let’s hope our writings (maybe even this one) collect a little snow.
Marji: So here we are, coming at this from different places but meeting in the same space of action.
Rhea: Good to see you here, Mom.
Marji: Good to see you too.
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