Lyrics from Rav Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
We Jews are not bound by a clear set of rules, a belief that the Torah is a set of facts or even that God exists. Our bonds are loose, diasporic, defined by loving disagreement one to another. Our existence itself is a challenge to and a resistance of a dominant culture that often uses us as a cushion for its own injustices. One that only grants us its protection as long as it needs us.
We are the Jews who refuse to play the dominance game. We refuse to sacrifice the safety of others for our own. We refuse to be used to make other groups vulnerable. We stand in solidarity with our problematic and messy neighbors in a demand to be different, unassimilated, joyously ourselves.
In an old story Jews tell each other, the divine light of creation was once held in a vessel. That vessel shattered, sending sparks of divinity into us all and leaving cracks in the world that needed repairing. Our task in life is to repair those cracks, to repair the world.
This is where we get the concept of Tikkun Olam (תיקון עולם), repair the world.
Like the world, we too are shattered. Like the world, we too are whole.