Människans uppgift är att vara Guds medarbetare; Gud behöver människan lika mycket som människan behöver Gud. Gud behöver människan som sin medarbetare i att reparera världen. Genom att börja med sig självoch hela sin egen själ kan man även hela sin egen del av världen och detta leder till att Gud själv helas. Man kan säga att vi ständigt skapar Gud, med det goda vi gör tillsammans i vardagen. Men utan att veta om det.
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Tikkun Olam = Repairing the World
The phrase “Tikkun Olam” literally means “world repair.” It is commonly used to refer to the pursuit of social action and social justice. However, few realize that the phrase and the concept behind it originate in kabbalah, in the teachings of the 16th century mystic Isaac Luria.
According to Luria, in order to make room for the world to be created, God needed to contract. That contraction is called tzimtzum. Kabbalists consider tzimtzum to be a great act of love. Think about the times in your life you’ve “held back” to make room for someone else to grow. God then created special vessels to contain the Divine light God would use to create the world. However, God’s light was so vast, many of the vessels shattered, scattering shards all over creation. While most of the light returned to its Divine source, some attached itself to the broken shards. Kabbalists believe that these shards are all that is bad in the world, these broken pieces in which sparks of light are trapped.
Our purpose, therefore, is to help gather the lost light. That is the entire purpose of the mitzvot, commandments. Whenever we perform a mitzvah, we separate what is holy from what is profane and release the light within. Every day we have an opportunity to collect shards and release their light.
In many ways, the way we use the phrase “Tikkun Olam” today does capture the original intention. When we speak of tikkun olam, we are speaking of fixing what is broken in our society. On MyJewishLearning.com, it is written that tikkun olam “appears to respond to a profound sense of deep rupture in the universe, which speaks as much to the post-Holocaust era as it did in the wake of the expulsion from Spain and other medieval Jewish disasters.”
For the kabbalist, ultimately tikkun olam repairs not only what is broken in the world but also what is broken in God. It is difficult theologically to consider what it means for part of God to be broken, after all God is perfect, right? However, Jewish tradition allows for us to constantly question and wrestle with God, to have the confidence and chutzpa to believe that sometime we know better! Perhaps one way to understand the idea of a broken God is to imagine that it is God’s reflection in the world which is broken, not God Godself. It is as if the shards scattered throughout the world are fragments of a sacred mirror which reflects the Creator.
Fundamentally every man participates in this work. Every wrong deed postpone the redemption and every good deed brings the redemption closer. Even the existence of the world can depend on your action or mine. A good action or even thought can save the the world ; though we will not know that.
My blog seems to have the wrong title ! I have actually reblogged a few texts about books ( in English ) och på svenska har jar återgett den utmärkta svenska prästen Annika Borgs kritk mot den svenska kyrkan !
Do I have to change my blog name into Reblogs by Carita Fogde ?
Tydligt och klart
Av Annika Borg
Häromdagen skrev jag kritiskt om Svenska Jerusalemföreningens tidskrifts senaste nummer. Det tycktes nämligen som om föreningen, som har haft goda syften, kidnappats av en politisk ensidighet och att man för en aggressiv teologisk hållning gentemot Israel och judar. Bland annat citerade jag en text av Ulla-Stina och Göran Rask.
På Facebook kommenterar journalisten Ulla-Stina Rask mitt inlägg så här:
“Det var en fruktansvärd text. Pajkastning rakt igenom och grundlösa påståenden staplade på varandra. Verkar klippt rakt ur Mossads handbok för propaganda.”
” Att berätta om våra trossyskon i Palestina kallas för att ge en demoniserande bild av Israel!?? Är vi judar eller är vi kristna? Varför konverterar inte Annika Borg och hennes gelikar till judendomen, det är för mig en gåta. De har bytt ut Jesus mot den nu sittande israeliska regeringen och dyrkar sen som en avgud. De verkar ju totalt ointresserade både av Jesu undervisning…
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En dos Israelhat i brevlådan
Annika Borg är alert som vanligt
Av Annika Borg
Under många år har jag fått Svenska Jerusalemföreningens tidskrift i brevlådan. Föreningen bildades i början av 1900-talet och har till syfte att stärka kvinnors ställning genom undervisning för flickor, bidra till fred och försoning samt stärka den kristna minoriteten – i det Heliga Landet. Goda syften alltså. Föreningen driver Den Gode Herdens skola i Betlehem, för flickor.
Men, genom det senaste numret av tidskriften kan jag konstatera att de fredliga och goda syftena upphävts alternativt kidnappats av hårdföra politiska intressen som inte talar försoningens språk, utan ger en helt ensidig och demoniserande bild av Israel och därmed våra judiska trossyskon.
Redan i den inledande texten väljer ordförande och biskop Jan-Olof Johansson att citera en kvinna som kallar muren i Betlehem för “apartheidmur”. Det julevangelium biskopen vill förmedla handlar enbart om checkpoints och dagens ockupation. Här sätts genomgående likhetstecken mellan den romerska ockupationen på Jesu tid och dagens…
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Att läsa Kairos-dokumentet, några reflektioner
Bra skrivet
Av Annika Borg
I denna text reflekterar jag över två linjer i det så kallade Kairos-dokumentet: den ersättningsteologiska och det bitvis antisemitiska inslagen i dokumentet. Jag menar att Svenska kyrkan måste inse allvaret och plocka bort dokumentet från sin officiella hemsida.
Här finns den svenska översättningen av Kairos-dokumentet att läsa.
Kairos-dokumentet är ett dokument som fått hög status inom Svenska kyrkan, dels genom beslut i kyrkomötet 2012 och spridning till kyrkomötesledamöter. Men formuleringar ur det återfinns också i debattartiklar från medföljare i de ensidiga kyrkliga följeslagarprogrammen i regionen. Och man vidareförde det i samband med julkampanjen 2013 om bojkott av varor från ”ockuperade områden”. Det ska vidare studeras i församlingarna och distribueras på olika sätt och i kringmaterial av Svenska kyrkan. Men vad står det egentligen i det?
Kairos-dokumentet är författat av palestinska kyrkoledare i regionen (oklart dock vilken representativitet och legitimitet dessa har) och är ett rop på hjälp…
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Squirrels make unwise financial decisions
Love this book
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The Story
Before I began reading this play, I had a vague recognition of Ibsen as a foreign playwright with some influence on the movement of modernism. I certainly had no interest in reading his plays, all depressingly named such things as A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People. How very narrowly did I see these plays through a funnel, shaped by my detestation for tragedies (having, of course, assumed that Ibsen wrote tragedies). I have learned the error of my ways.
This particular play, probably the most famous of Ibsen’s, judging by the high number of students made to study it at A level, is a bit more kitchen sink than a tragedy. We find ourselves in a snapshot of life in a family home – the kind you might expect Oliver Twist to look longingly into at…
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Achilles and the Great Sulk
The Iliad by Homer
The story
It was the comic-style version of The Iliad by Marcia Williams that began my long acquaintance with the (probably) eighth century BC tale. If you click on the link above, you will see the book in question on Amazon. Such versions, from the 2004 film Troy to the influence exerted on the computer game Age of Mythology, show what an impact on popular culture this masterpiece has had. Even if you can’t read Ancient Greek, or even yet if you can’t quite manage the lengthy translation, you will somewhere harbour the knowledge of exactly what happens in The Iliad. At some time in your life, The Iliad has fired your imagination.
Oh my, who could forget the tale of fair Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships? However, if you ask a lot of people, they will tell you that this…
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“So much does Odysseus excel all others in cunning wiles; no human being can vie with him”
Classic of classics
The Odyssey by Homer
The story
I’ve recently been told that nostos, from which we get the word ‘nostalgia’, means homecoming. This epic tale is all about nostos. After the Trojan war, a great hero (not the greatest, but pretty well-respected) Odysseus, somehow both favoured and cursed by the Gods, struggles to get home to his wife and his son. His journey will include ‘outwitting’ (or out-brutalising) monsters, avoiding seduction by beautiful women and denying the truth that he is an ageing man clinging to his inflated reputation. Basically, an Ancient Greek James Bond. Meanwhile, evil suitors have installed themselves in his kingdom (did I mention he’s a king?), eating his wife and son out of house and home.
Intrigued at all?
The blurb unsatisfactorily tells us:
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All the philosophy of a big drink and a foghorn
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
The story
Firstly, let’s raise the tone. This play is lively, witty and has some of the snappiest comebacks in theatre (if you can survive the Americanisms).
Now I shall drop the bass.
Mundanity. Shame. Bitterness. Can we keep our spirits and our spirits (preferably whiskey) up when beneath the surface we feel so much more than our light-hearted jokes can say? What we get to see in O’Neill’s most personal work is a play that takes place in an American family summer house over the course of a day. Two parents; two sons, and something has been corrupted in each one.
Why should you read Long Day’s Journey into Night? Because the demons we face are sometimes in our head, and sometimes in our loved ones. There has never been such an apt study of this fact.
The back of the…
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Lechaim-To Life : Reflections by Carita Fogde 