My colleague Rabbi Eytan Kobre was not terribly taken with the 2015 commencement address by Yale president Peter Salovey one in which he enjoined the class “to improve the world… [which] in the Jewish tradition is called tikkun olam.”
I understand what galled Reb Eytan about this particular speech. First so much nonsense is spewed in the name of tikkun olam including support for many causes that are contrary to Hashem’s explicit plan for the world. And as Rabbi Kobre reminded us the term is most commonly referred to in the context of tikkun olam b’malchus Shakai.
Second many Jews including many Orthodox ones got very excited over President Salovey’s utterance of two Hebrew words and invocation of Jewish tradition along with his yichus. He is a proud member of the distinguished Soloveitchik family.
According to Reb Eytan Salovey should have told the graduates that improving the world starts with the arduous life-long task of tikkun hamiddos. Much more to my friend’s liking (and mine as well) would have been the 2008 commencement address given by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and reprinted in Remembering Who We Are: A Treasury of Conservative Commencement Addresses.
Justice Thomas departed from what he called the “standard fare” of graduation speeches that charge the young to go “out there” and do great things — “out there” being defined as a realm separate from their personal lives. Instead he told the graduates that “the great battles for most of us include conquering ourselves and discharging our duties at hand.”
He spoke of his grandparents dirt-poor sharecroppers in the red Georgia clay and their kindness and decency the dignity with which they conducted themselves and their respect for others. He enjoined the graduates to show gratitude and appreciation to those who have sacrificed for them along the way and to develop self-discipline good manners and punctuality.
Reading the speech I was reminded of George Will’s distinction between values and virtues. Values are cheap; everyone has hundreds that he or she is only too happy to proclaim. But virtues must be acquired through effort and it is they that define a person.
STILL IT STRIKES ME that Reb Eytan is a bit too dismissive of the types of activities enumerated by Salovey as examples of tikkun olam: starting a business that employs people and contributes something new; serving others in one of the learned professions; lighting the fire in the belly of the next generation of high school or college students building a service organization that listens and collaborates with those it seeks to help. And one could expand that list indefinitely.
Granted that tikkun hamiddos is indispensable for any meaningful Jewish life. Granted further that the term tikkun olam has been hijacked by the Reform movement often in ways antithetical to Torah. But the impulse to look around and ask what needs fixing whether in the classroom our neighborhood our community or the larger society finds much support in the Torah.
The activities of which Salovey gave examples do not become “hollow charades” just because some of those who have excelled in them are lousy fathers or husbands. There are those who never lose their temper but may have a hard time giving to tzedakah. Middos are rarely found in one complete package and just because one still has work to do in one area does not negate what he has achieved in another. Concern with those less fortunate and the desire to help them is also a middah.
We are Hashem’s partners in Creation and it is incumbent upon us to strive to bring the Creation to its completion. And doing so has both a public and private aspect. The Midrash (Tanchuma Tazria 5) records that the evil Turnus Rufus asked Rabi Akiva which is greater the acts of Hashem or of man. (His question was designed to undermine bris milah which the Romans saw as a mutilation of the body.) Rabi Akiva replied that the acts of man are greater: For example a baked loaf of bread is greater than the wheat from which it is made.
The Maharal (Tiferes Yisrael 2) explains that Hashem created everything in the natural world in such a way that it would require completion by man whose seichel raises him above the natural world. That is man’s role as partner.
At least one measure of a person is the scope of his sense of achrayus. Hashem is referred to as “Hagadol” because there is nothing outside of His purview. And the larger our realm of concern and sense of responsibility the greater we are. Malchus (kingship) is a function of taking responsibility both for oneself and the community as a whole as we find with respect to Yehudah (See Sichos Mussar I:15). Immediately after Esther accepted upon herself responsibility for all Klal Yisrael by agreeing to go to Achashveirosh the verse reads “Esther tilbash malchus — Esther was clothed in royalty.”
Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz points out that Esther was at that moment imbued with an ability to discern Hashem’s Will that even Mordechai did not possess. It was she and not Mordechai who declared a three-day fast including Seder night.
Rabbi Noach Weinberg interpreted the rabbinical injunction to view the world as if it was created for oneself — bishvili nivra ha’olam — to mean that we are responsible for everything in the world. His constant message to anyone he met was “Do something! Don’t just sit on the sidelines and shake your head in disgust do something! The world is yours grab it and make it as beautiful as the Almighty intended it to be.”
He shouted at prodded and demanded of his students to take achrayus for the entire world. And in response to those demands they did change the world in major ways: Discovery seminars Aish.com Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project and Project Inspire are just a few of the initiatives started by his talmidim.
Nor was his concern just with the Jewish world. Another student Raphael Shore created the Clarion Fund that has produced powerful documentaries — Obsession Iranium The Third Jihad — that have gained mass audiences and alerted the world to the threat of radical Islam.
His was not an activism limited to reciting Tehillim. He noted the inconsistency of those who felt that Tehillim was a sufficient response to rocket fire on Sderot but that Jerusalem municipal elections merited closing the Bais Yaakov seminaries and enlisting the students in electioneering.
I will confess to feeling pride when I read that Israel which represents 0.2 percent of the world’s population sent 30 percent of the rescuers to Nepal — the true “disproportionate response.” And that pattern recurs constantly after natural disasters everywhere in the world — Haiti Japan Thailand and Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami.
Actually pride is not the right word for I personally did nothing. Rather I experience a strengthened confidence in the bright future foretold by the prophets of the Jewish people one in which we are united together in recognition of Hashem. Though the intention of those rescuers and the medical personnel may not be to repair the world under Hashem’s dominion the impulse to take responsibility for the world around and to relieve suffering is profoundly Jewish. And as long as that impulse is so powerful in Israel we can still look forward to the true tikkun olam b’malchus Shakai. —
What’s Good
for Rashi…

Not long ago in my morning shiur we came across a fascinating Rashi (Bava Metzia 108b: Rashi s.v. shechinei ha’ir u’shechinei hasadeh shechinei ha’ir kodmin). Rashi begins his explanation by excluding another possible interpretation before bringing his own. Then Rashi suddenly interjects the words “lo dikdakti ba mipi rabbeinu kol tzarki — I was not sufficiently attentive when I learned the sugya from our teacher.” Rashi adds that he first explained the sugya according to the understanding he excluded above.
Now I can’t claim to have seen every Rashi in Shas or even half of them or to remember each one. But I cannot recall ever encountering similar language in Rashi. I remember Rashi bringing one explanation as his first interpretation of the sugya and then another one that he arrived at upon further reflection. And he does occasionally make reference to his teachers. But the admission of having paid insufficient attention was unique in my memory.
I cannot vouch for why Rashi included this semibiographical detail. But I learned something about the unique transmission of the Torah from generation to generation. Rashi stands head and shoulders above all other commentators. The Rambam famously writes that he intended to write a commentary on the entire Talmud but “the Frenchman” preceded him.
Given his unique stature it is hard for us to imagine that Rashi the great teacher of Klal Yisrael was also a talmid once. He was not born with his full powers. Torah cannot be derived logically like chess or mathematics; it must be transmitted from father to son rebbi to talmid.
Even the most seminal figures are also part of a mesorah from generation to generation. And if they fail to pay careful enough attention to their teachers — teachers whom they may one day far surpass in learning — they are prone to err. And if that was true even of Rashi how exponentially more so us.