What Does Tikkun Olam Really Mean?

In 2012, at a speech before AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), then-president Barack Obama spoke of “the concept of Tikkun Olam that has enriched and guided my life.”¹

It wasn’t the first time he used the phrase, which, as he explained as a candidate in a 2008 speech (also before AIPAC), he understood to mean as “a commitment embedded in the Jewish faith and tradition: to freedom and fairness; to social justice and equal opportunity. To Tikkun Olam — the obligation to repair this world.”²

Many American Jews have a similar understanding of the term, and invoke it when speaking of a Jewish responsibility to help the poor, protect the environment, strengthen the community, defend immigrant rights, and a host of other worthwhile causes.

But is that an accurate definition of Tikkun Olam? What is the origin of the term? How is it understood in Jewish tradition? And how did it come to be associated with a political value like social justice?

In this article:

• What is Tikkun Olam?
• Tikkun Olam in the Talmud
• Tikkun Olam in contemporary usage
• How the Jewish people will fix the world

What is Tikkun Olam?

Often translated as “to fix, or to repair, the world,” the phrase “Tikkun Olam” is found in the High Holiday prayer services. It is the gerund form of the phrase, letakain olam (to fix the world/לתקן עולם), and appears in the second paragraph of a prayer called Aleinu, which is a part of the Musaf, or “Additional,” portion of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Aleinu was later incorporated into the daily liturgy,³ and nowadays is said three times a day at the conclusion of each of the three daily services (its authorship is attributed to the prophet and biblical figure, Joshua).

In context, the full sentence reads:

“Therefore we put our hope in you, God, that we may soon see your mighty splendor, to remove gillulim from the earth, and false gods to be utterly cut off, to fix the world (לתקן עולם) through God’s sovereignty (the kingdom of God).”

In particular, the prayer is a plea for the day when God will:

• Show His “mighty splendor,” which is a kabbalistic way of saying that in the future, things like suffering and the long Jewish exile will finally make sense
• Remove gillulim—the word literally means “manure”⁴—and means that God will rid the world of empty idols, falsehood and evil
• Cut off “false gods,” which, in Hebrew, is a reference to the “strange gods within you,” and means that in the future, God will nullify the ego

In other words, Tikkun Olam happens on that day when the world makes sense, evil is eradicated, and the ego is nullified. On that day, God will fix the world with the power of His sovereignty.⁵

Tikkun Olam happens on that day when the world makes sense, evil is eradicated, and the ego is nullified.

The prerequisite to God fixing the world is stated in the first part of the Aleinu prayer, which calls for every Jew to embrace the reality of God’s omnipotence and oneness. Judaism is a religion of personal responsibility, and you have a job to do. Once you do your work—and live with the reality of God as the all-powerful creator, sustainer, and supervisor of existence—God will fix the world in the ways mentioned in Aleinu.

Tikkun Olam in the Talmud

Tikkun Olam is also mentioned in the Talmud, in the tractate that deals with the laws of divorce (Gittin). However, the term’s usage is limited, and refers to specific injunctions the Talmud’s sages made either to discourage people from taking advantage of each other, or as a tool to close loopholes some people used to get out of religious obligations.

A famous example is called a “pruzbol,” which is a document that licenses a Jewish court to collect loan payments on a person’s behalf.

According to the Torah (Deuteronomy 15:1-2), “At the end of every seven years, you shall celebrate a remission year (sabbatical year). The idea of the remission year is that every creditor shall remit (or cancel) any debt owed by his neighbor and brother.”

In Talmudic times, the sages found that people with the ability to lend money refrained from doing so at the onset of the seventh year (called the shmita/שמטה year in Hebrew) for fear of not getting paid back. For the sake of Tikkun Olam, the sages created the pruzbol (פרוסבול), which, according to the important medieval commentator, Rashi (1040-1105), means “a repair for both the rich and the poor; the rich so they won’t suffer a loss; and the poor, so doors won’t be locked before them.”⁶ The pruzbol allowed creditors to hand their loans over to a Jewish court, and collect their debts despite the restrictions of the sabbatical year. According to the Talmud, that injunction is considered “fixing the world.”

Tikkun Olam in contemporary usage

The Aleinu prayer speaks of “God’s sovereignty,” which can also be translated as “the kingdom of God,” and it was that reference—or specifically the phrase, "repairing the world with the kingdom of God,"—that, about a century ago, first caught the eye of early progressive Jews.⁷

Dating back to the mid-19th century, an idea called the Social Gospel caught on as an animating principle of progressive Protestant thought. The idea was that before God would establish His kingdom on earth, man first had to implement, and sustain, a kingdom of God of his own. And man did that politically, by way of an ideal called “social justice.”

Those American Protestant progressives were incredibly effective—and influential—and ushered in a major era of change. They are the people responsible for things like the five-day work week, minimum wage laws, and Prohibition, the Constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol.

Many Jews embraced the progressive ideal of social justice, too, and, inspired by the idealism, and effectiveness, of the Social Gospel, sought a reference to a kingdom of God from their own prayers as an appropriate, and uniquely Jewish, expression of that ideal. They found it in the Aleinu prayer.

Over the years, the phrase stuck, although as times changed and progressivism took on a less religious, or more secular bent, the emphasis shifted away from the “kingdom of God” to focus more on the idea of “fixing the world.”

In the 1980s, Michael Lerner, an editor and longtime political activist, became the person most responsible for popularizing Tikkun Olam as the go-to term for “Jewish Social Justice.” He did that through both his activism, as well as with Tikkun, the magazine he founded with his then-wife, Nan Fink, in 1986. Lerner also coined the term, "politics of meaning," which future presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, later included as a part of her own political outlook.

How the Jewish people will fix the world

Even though the traditional understanding of Tikkun Olam differs from its contemporary usage, that doesn’t negate your responsibility for humanity. Jews are charged with the mission to be “a light for the nations.”

Jews are charged with the mission to be “a light for the nations.”

That expression is from the book of Isaiah 42:6, “I, God, have called you in righteousness. I took your hand, created you, and made you a treasured people. [To be] a light for the nations.”

But being that light isn’t obvious, although according to the 19th century scholar, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser (known as the Malbim), it is referred to in an earlier verse in the book of Isaiah (2:3),⁸ “Many peoples will go and say, ‘Come let us go up to the Mount of God, to the Temple of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths.’ For the Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem.”

According to that understanding, the world is looking to the Jewish people for guidance. As a Jew, you will be watched, judged, and held to a different standard. You will be different and expected to act differently. That may seem unfair, but it seems to be by design—the world is desperate for Jewish leadership, and the Jewish people are expected to lead by example.

The Jewish people aren’t expected to preach or to actively seek converts. As noted above in regards to the first paragraph of the Aleinu prayer, you change the world by embracing your Judaism and living your values. If history is an example—especially in regards to those enlightenment ideals some consider “self-evident”—it seems to already be working.

1. Full transcript of Obama’s speech is here: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/04/remarks-president-aipac-policy-conference-0
2. https://www.npr.org/2008/06/04/91150432/transcript-obamas-speech-at-aipac
3. According to the Iyun Tefilah (in the Otzar Tefilos), Aleinu first appears as part of the daily morning service in the 12th century work, the Machzor Vitry.
4. See the Iyun Tefilah, where he also calls it garbage and refuse
5. The Hebrew name of God used here refers to how He created the world with the dimensions and limits it currently has.
6. Rashi on Gittin 36B/37A, also note, he spells it “proz/פרוז” with a zion (ז).
7. This section is adapted from the first chapter of the book, To Heal The World?, by Jonathan Neumann (2018)
8. According to the Malbim on Isaiah 42:6, the “light” in “light unto the nations” is the “Torah that goes out from Zion.”