The Paradox of Jewish Power: Tikkun Olam and Modern Jewish Identity

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his essay On the Genealogy of Morals, argued that oppressed peoples develop what we might today call “defensive moral systems,” which attempt to transform a sense of powerlessness into claims of moral superiority. More recently, discussions of “transgenerational trauma” in the works of Yael Danieli and Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, among others, examine how collective identity can be shaped for generations by memories of group suffering, even among those who didn’t directly experience it. These psychological and persistent group responses to oppression are evident in Jewish history and illustrated in the evolution of the concept of tikkun olam. This evolution, in turn, sheds light on one of the central paradoxes of contemporary Jewish identity.

For nearly two millennia, European Jewish existence was defined by powerlessness. Throughout this time, tikkun olam remained primarily a religious and mystical concept. Its dramatic transformation into a mandate for universal social justice occurred relatively suddenly,  precisely as American Jews were achieving unprecedented status and influence in the mid-20th century.

The phrase first appears in the Aleinu prayer, composed around the 3rd century CE in Babylonia: “לתקן עולם במלכות שדי” (l’taken olam b’malkhut shaddai) – “to fix the world under God’s sovereignty.” Here, the concept referred to religious worship (not social justice) as a mechanism of healing.

A dramatic reinterpretation emerged in 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah. In Rabbi Chaim Vital’s “Etz Chaim,” recording Isaac Luria’s teachings, we find: “תיקון כל העולמות תלוי במעשה התחתונים” – “The repair of all worlds depends on the actions of those below.” This mystical framework saw tikkun olam as the gathering of divine sparks scattered throughout creation. While more expansive than the Aleinu’s version, tikkun olam remained firmly grounded in religious metaphysics.

The concept’s transformation into a mandate for social justice began during the period of Jewish emancipation in Western societies. Reform Judaism’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, written at a time when American Jews were achieving unprecedented civic integration, declared: “We recognize in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men.” While not explicitly invoking tikkun olam, this universalization of Jewish moral purpose laid crucial groundwork.

The Civil Rights era marked a decisive shift. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in The Insecurity of Freedom (1966), wrote: “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement.” This redefinition of religious obligation as social activism helped establish a new paradigm.

By 1973, Eugene Borowitz could write in “The Mask Jews Wear”: “Our Jewish obligation to perfect the world under the rule of God (tikkun olam) requires that we be concerned for the welfare of society at large.” The Reform movement’s 1984 Gates of Prayer siddur reflected this new understanding: “You [G-d] have taught us to uphold the falling, to heal the sick, to free the captive, to comfort all who suffer pain.” The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s 1984 manual Seeking Justice completed the transformation: “The concept of tikkun olam mandates that we look beyond our own community… Social justice work is not simply charity or good deeds, but a fundamental part of what it means to be a Jew.”

In 1887, around the time when the Pittsburgh Platform redefined American Reform Judaism, Nietzsche observed that two contradictory moral systems had developed in ancient Rome. One, the morality of the masters, defined strength as virtue. The other, the morality of the slaves – and note that Nietzsche was specifically referring to Jews under Roman domination – defined weakness as virtue. The oppressed, he argued, develop moral systems that valorize traits like humility and compassion, frame powerlessness as virtue, and view resistance to power as righteous.

The modern interpretation of tikkun olam reflects the persistence of the Nietzschean slave morality – i.e., the defensive psychological stance of oppressed Jews throughout diaspora history – into the modern period. Even while Jews attained unprecedented freedom and social status in the modern era, their moral system, developed under centuries of oppression, asserted itself as an increasingly central component of Jewish identity (or at least, of the demographically dominant form of Jewish identity in America today).

The transformation of tikkun olam from a religious concept about the importance of worship and divine sovereignty to a mandate for universal social justice reflects both the persistence and the evolution of survival mechanisms developed under powerlessness. The moral framework developed in response to oppression hasn’t disappeared with increasing security and influence. Instead, it has been redirected and universalized.

Modern trauma theory helps explain this paradoxical timing. Scholars like Danieli have observed that responses to persecution become embedded in group identity, transmitted through families and institutions across generations. These adaptive mechanisms, originally developed for survival, can become more rather than less pronounced when the original threat is removed.

If you think of human beings as vectors of culture, rather than as agents of culture, you can see that the psychological defenses associated with trauma seek new outlets even after they are no longer needed for their original purpose. This helps explain why the universalization of tikkun olam accelerated precisely as American Jews were achieving unprecedented security and influence.

The resulting paradox creates unique challenges for contemporary Jewish identity. How do we honor moral insights born of historical persecution while adapting to new realities of Jewish power and responsibility? How do we balance universal obligations with legitimate communal (or “tribal”) interests? Perhaps the answer lies not in adopting one moral system or another – that of the strong or that of the weak – but in embracing the paradox.