Tikkun Leil Shavuot – Jewish Learning with an Israeli Twist

In American Jewish circles, Shavuot is probably the most neglected of the major Jewish holidays. The Torah puts it on equal footing with Sukkot and Pesach and together they comprise the three pilgrimage festivals. The first two festivals are each a week long and have a variety of rich and engaging rituals that both teach us about the holiday and imbue them with meaning –building and dwelling in a Sukkah, participating in a Passover Seder. Shavuot, though, is only one day (or two for Conservative and Orthodox Jews outside of Israel) and its biblical rituals are connected to the Temple sacrificial rites that are no longer practiced. The rabbinic sages recognized this problem and derived another meaning for the festival. Though the math as presented in the biblical account never seems to quite add up, the rabbis figured out a way to count 50 days from the Exodus from Egypt to the Revelation at Sinai - thus the connection was made between Shavuot and the season of the God’s gift of Torah to the Jewish People.

The tradition of a Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an all-night study session in preparation for receiving of Torah anew, began with the medieval kabbalists and remained within that rarified circle for centuries, really until the last decade or so. Most often the word “tikkun” is connected to “tikkun olam” another kabbalistic term that has been reinterpreted in our times as social justice or “repairing the world.” Tikkun can also mean improving oneself, which perhaps is the origin of its association with learning. In recent years, though, the practice has grown in popularity and now many Jewish communities host a Tikkun Leil Shavuot on the eve of the holiday. Many synagogues in the U.S. do a Tikkun “lite” – a guest speaker, a panel, or maybe even an artistic presentation that begins early and ends way before midnight. In hipper and more concentrated Jewish communities, like New York, there are a range of options both in synagogues and non-denominational settings, some of which actually do go all night long. Tikkun Leil Shavuot is now a veritable cultural happening in cities and towns throughout Israel. It’s rare that things get going before 10 pm and programming runs throughout the night. In fact, there even are now pre-Shavuot Tikkunim such as the dusk to dawn White Night festival that took place on the campus of Tel Aviv University the night before Shavuot. In Jerusalem, aside from myriad synagogues, there are multiple downtown venues that host Tikkunim from cultural centers like Beit Avi Chai and the Begin Museum, to religious educational institutions such as Hebrew Union College and the Hartman Institute. In Tel Aviv, Alma College has hosted a mega-event at the Tel Aviv museum for many years. This year in Tel Aviv, Shavuot was promoted a la the popular TV show “Dancing with the Stars” where big name teachers and artists were featured by various organizations hoping to draw in the crowds.

I spent the night in Haifa, a bustling city that tends to host more business people and academics than it does tourists. Haifa prides itself in being a multi-cultural city, with Palestinian citizens making up about 10% of the population, almost all of whom can trace their roots in Haifa and surrounding villages for generations. Haifa is also home to the Technion, Haifa University, the Baha’i Temple and gardens, the Israeli navy, and an assortment of international high-tech industries like Microsoft, Cellcom, Intel, and many others. It’s a beautiful city, but there isn’t all that much to do there for a tourist. At least on the surface….

Haifa is also home to the Leo Baeck education center that includes one of the best schools in Israel and is a vibrant force in the city. Leo Baeck is loosely affiliated with the Reform Movement in Israel and shares core commitments as articulated in their mission to “democracy, egalitarianism and human rights and to teaching the living values of progressive Judaism which inspire social change and repair of the world.” (http://www.leobaeck.org.il/english/?CategoryID=896&ArticleID=4) It is situated in a massive complex has been described as the school with a pool and a shul. The campus includes a kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high schools, and a community center with the requisite sports, social, and informal educational activities for youth, families, and adults. There is also a Reform synagogue attached to the complex that is closely intertwined with the educational offerings. Leo Baeck also operates satellite kindergartens and community centers elsewhere in the city, usually in low income, and mixed ethnic neighborhoods including Arabs and Jews.

For the second year in a row, the Leo Baeck Education Center played a leadership role in bringing together a number of organizations to sponsor a citywide Tikkun Leil Shavuot. The Tikkun was held at The Auditorium, the municipal cultural center located in the heart of the Carmel, an upscale neighborhood of hotels, restaurants, and magnificent views. The evening was organized around a core theme, taken from Deuteronomy 10:19 – “And you shall love the stranger.” There were three different time blocks of simultaneous sessions, including those that were amplified and those that were not (for the more observant in the community who don’t use microphones on Shabbat and holidays). Sessions were a mix of traditional text study and a more contemporary focus on topics such as “The conversion process in Israel as a reflection of our values and our fears”, “Ruth the Moabite: A Cinderella Success Story”, and “A Jewish lens on Palestinian poetry.”

At its peak, there were probably 800 people who participated in the Tikkun, attending sessions, drinking coffee in the lobby and listening to live music played during the breaks, schmoozing with friends and acquaintances. Most in the crowd would probably describe themselves as secular and center-to-left in their political views. And yet, here they were, engaged in a late night celebration of a religious holiday that was a wonderful blending of Jewish and Israeli culture. The overarching theme was topical and highly relevant. The teachers included Reform rabbis, academics, journalists, activists, and politicians, an exciting mix of new voices and old, coming together to share their mutual concern and commitments to learning, to the future of their society, and to simply to celebrate Jewish culture as a collective.

The evening began around 9:30 pm with a dramatic reading of the Book of Ruth, staged by students from a local drama school. The main event took place after that and featured a panel discussion on “The Other in Israeli Society” that just about filled the 600+ seat auditorium. Speakers included the mayor of Haifa, two Jewish social justice activists, and a Palestinian Muslim feminist community organizer.

It was a lively discussion that touched on a range of social issues – socio-economic, racial, ethnic, religious, gender divides, and more. When it came time to hear from the audience, we got few questions and a lot more comments and assertions, most of which criticized the mayor and his team for not doing enough to promote equality among the disparate groups in the city who do not get a fair share of the resources. At one point the moderator asked the mayor if he ever had an experience of feeling like the “other” and his response was “no”. From his perspective, Haifa is a model city that is doing great things for all of its citizens in equal measure. He was particularly proud of his record in building co-existence and tolerance among Haredim, Russian-speaking immigrants, Christian and Muslim Arabs, and secular Jews. There were certain members of the audience who were less enthusiastic and made their feelings heard. In fact, there were some rather heated but humorous exchanges where public decorum slipped both in the audience and on the stage. Overall, though, it felt to me like we were all sitting around in a giant living room and having a passionate family debate about issues at the core of what makes collective life meaningful. We reached no conclusions, solved no problems, and but we (mostly) listened to each other and engaged in an important conversation about the living values of a Judaism that teaches us to pursue justice, do acts of kindness and work together to build a better world – indeed, a tikkun of the head, heart, and hands on this eve of the Festival of Weeks that asks us to recommit to the Torah as the embodiment of rich and meaningful Jewish life.