Speech
A Perfect World (2002)
As we welcome this week the new month of Nisan, the חודש הגאולה (the month of redemption), I recall the Gemara in Berakhot 43b: האי מאן דנפיק ביומי ניסן וחזי אילני דקא מלבלבי, אומר: ברוך שלא חיסר בעולמו כלום וברא בו בריות טובות ואילנות טובות להתנאות בהן בני אדם. If one goes out in the month of Nisan, the beginning of Spring, and sees the trees blossoming, he is required to utter a blessing: “Blessed is He who created a world with nothing amiss, and placed in it beautiful creatures and beautiful trees for the pleasure of humans.” In other words, a perfect world. Really? In a world of suicide bombers and rampant international anti-Semitism, of drug culture and AIDS, of racism and genocide and, in the Jewish community, pugnacious ignorance, smug mediocrity, and progressive alienation from all that has been cherished and sanctified for almost 200 generations? Yes, the world is perfect. Oh, I know quite well that that is a fiction, but a glorious fiction it is – I would call it a sacred fiction, a statement that defies common sense but, if held and pursued single-mindedly, ultimately leads to uncommon truths. For there are fictions that, if you believe in them with all your heart and soul, even if your mind defies them, miraculously turn into truths, sacred truths. If you believe that this is a perfect world, and שלא חיסר בעולמו כלום, then you will make it into a perfect world – you will repair its defects and sublimate its evil passions and make it better and nobler and holier. That, to my mind, is what תיקון עולם really means. As we say in our עלינו prayer, לתקן עולם במלכות ש־די – to repair the world based upon the ideals and model of the divine Kingdom. So, I urge you, as newly minted רבנים, to engage in the heroic struggle to create absurd fictions and then turn them into sublime truths. Here are six such sacred fictions, especially for רבנים ומחנכים: *Every Jew, no matter how estranged, no matter how far gone or assimilated, is redeemable if you try hard enough. *I…
