[Avodah] Ideal World

[dfinch847 at aol.com]

Micha Berger writes:

"I seem to recall Aleinu's phrasing of our mission statement is that we 
strive to create an ideal world, lesaqein olam bemalkhus Shakkai."

The notion of creating an "ideal world" is an interesting one. It 
mirrors the concept of tikkun olam, which is often invoked (albeit not 
by the RW) as a Jewish duty to extend oneself to reform the secular 
world. From a different point of view, Aleinu's ideal world, like 
tikkun olam, has little to do with social unity or reform, either 
within the Jewish community or outside of it. Instead, it refers to the 
proper process of Talmud, i.e., the construction of an imaginary 
utopian agrarian society under rules derived from Gemara. This ideal 
world exists only in our heads, as a space within which we can 
concretize or "apply" rules that otherwise would remain hopelessly 
abstract.

This isn't to say that social unity within the Jewish world isn't 
important. Most of us yearn for unity, but we are notoriously bad at 
acheiving it, to our great loss. Unity means tolerance, and too many 
Jewish true religionists believe that tolerance of apikorsism is 
apikorsism itself. I'm reminded of the famous comment by an American 
platoon leader in Vietnam: "We destroyed the village in order to save 
it."

David Finch
dfinch847 at aol.com
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