Led by Reb Judith Goleman and Basha Hirschfeld
The phrase “tikkun olam” means to repair the world. It points to the human responsibility for fixing what is wrong with the world. It is connected to the Kabbalistic teachings which say that God poured out the qualities of kindness and truth into vessels which could not hold them and they broke into an infinite amount of pieces, so that shards of holiness are scattered throughout the world and in each of us, and our job is to put the pieces back together. The way we can do this is through "acts of loving kindness."
There is also the famous saying “You are not required to finish the work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.” This is from Pirkei Avot or “The Ethics of the Fathers” (sometimes called “The Sayings of the Fathers”), a collection of wisdom from the Jewish Talmudic sages. This saying is attributed to Rabbi Tarfon, who lived and taught 2,000 years ago.
The Mahayana path of Buddhism points to everyone being in the same boat and interconnected, which means that none of us can get enlightened (wake up to what is) until we all get there. So the path of the bodhisattva asks each of us to think of others, and put others before ourselves until all have attained enlightenment.
How are these two paths related? Join Reb Judith and Basha in a conversation about the similarities and differences between the two.