The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation: Tikkun Olam: Fixing The World, But For What, For Whom?

Having, attached yourself to the Palestine solidarity movement as an ultra-orthodox Jew; I’m not yet lavish in my praise for you. What excites suspicion is that your conduct, vis-à-vis Palestinian possessions, could be tied to the religious edicts surrounding the coming of messiah. Although the question of messiah’s arrival is more than likely immaterial—the question of ethics is not. ~ilana

Charity ought to be about fellow-feeling, not factional preferences. ~ilana

Contra classical natural law theory, my own religious order, Judaism in its popular rendering has always appeared to me quite sectarian. The faith to which I was born frequently seemed a we-only litany, more about Jews and for Jews than about the world, or for the good of the world. The Paleolibertarian G... MERCER, ILANA Check Amazon for Pricing.

For “a spectacular sense of otherness and unity” (Jon Krakauer, Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Under the Banner, p. 262), only the Mormons, tethered to their territory of Utah, equal Jews, with whom Mormons also strongly identify.

Myself, I came alive ideologically when I reached the New World, in the mid-1990s. It was as though a new world of ideas heretofore unknown had unfurled to quench the soul and the intellect. Alas, it did not come from Judaism, to which I was born.

I discovered the very American libertarian non-aggression axiom, which flows, at least in my opinion, from Thomist Catholic philosophy, Just War theory, and the Stoic doctrine of natural law, whose first “interpreter and transmitter” was Cicero,[1] to be followed by Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Roman Church.

As plain as plain is the idea of charity. It’s a religion surety, I had surmised, that benevolence is meant to improve society, not the State; and to do so through personal, not political, acts in the community. Charity ought to be about fellow-feeling, not factional preferences. As instructed in Leviticus 19:18, “You should love your neighbor as you do yourself,” וְאָהַבְתָ לְרֵעֲךָ כָמוֹךָ.

Consider the concept of Tikkun Olam, תקון עולם, the Jewish obligation to repair the world. Perhaps willfully—and to comport with my natural-law bias—I had always interpreted Tikkun Olam as a sublimely modest Jewish obligation.

Developed by the scholars and sages of a dispersed people, Tikkun Olam, I had hoped, was intended as a humble thing—as the duty of the Jewish individual to help, bit-by-bit, to bring about a better world in unassuming, day-to-day righteous acts. In his community and beyond.

In the best sense of that much-abused term “Orthodox” is a reader of ours, “a Torah observant Orthodox Jewish man,” and an attorney at law. JBS, Esq. speaks of Jewish “Chosenness” as follows:

As you are likely aware, Judaism is an ancient religion based upon God’s revelation of Himself to Hebrews at Mt. Sinai. Zionism is a recent [19th Century] political movement associated with Judaism but is not Judaism. Most Jewish people conflate and blur the distinction.

The ‘Chosen People’ concept is misunderstood by most Jews.  God ‘chose’ the Jewish people to receive, accept, keep and fulfill His Torah and teach it to the world, to be a ‘light unto the nations.’ That is all being ‘chosen’ ought to mean, not a Jewish ego trip.
As to Jewish entitlement to the land of Israel: fulfillment of their Godly duties is required.  I think Zionists believe otherwise; that military capture is sufficient. God twice banished Hebrews from the land for their failures and sins.  Many Orthodox Jews (myself included) believe that Jewish entitlement to the land of Israel will require the appearance of Mashiach, the Jewish messiah.  I don’t know much about that. (May, 2026)

Although there is a certain degree of comic protest about my next question; I ask it not to be a smart Aleck:

Does what our laudable reader say mean that, come Mashiach, real or imagined, ultra-orthodox Jews could be given religious license to rob Palestinian homesteaders? That, you see, is unclear. With respect to the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Jewry; although the question of messiah’s arrival is more than likely immaterial—the question of ethics is not. Into the Cannibal&rsqu... Mercer, Ilana Check Amazon for Pricing.

In particular, the question of situational ethics and ethical relativism.

Having, attached yourself to the Palestine solidarity movement as an ultra-orthodox Jew; I’m not yet lavish in my praise for you. What excites suspicion is that your conduct, vis-à-vis Palestinian possessions, could be tied to the religious edicts surrounding the coming of messiah. History, more significantly, is replete with people who followed a false messiah. There is even a concept for this eventuality in Hebrew lore: משיח שקר (mashiach sheker).

These days, my own humble perspective on the daily practice of piety is a mirage in the desert.

Certainly, my modest, morally universal interpretation of Tikkun Olam is not the one adopted by Jews who are “chosen”; namely favored, esteemed and elevated by gentiles and by institutional Jewry.

Starting with the barefaced Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, Jews and non-Jews alike have lent spiritual credibility to hubristic insolence. Suffused with such hubristic insolence, during the war on Iraq, Friedman had praised former Prime Minister Tony Blair, demonstrably a war criminal, for “always [leaving] you with the impression that for him the Iraq war is just one hammer and one nail in an effort to do Tikkun Olam, to repair the world.”

“Tikkun Olam in this modern sense,” confirms the encyclopedia Britannica, “has become the predominant ideology” following World War II. “Healing the world after its fundamental breakage in the Holocaust” is seen to require “a robust social and this-worldly project.”

In every way more extreme than laptop bombardier Thomas Friedman is a rabbi who shares a vastly different take than mine on Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world (“Israel: The Narcissistic State,”). The rabbi begins his teachings with an assertion few would quibble with: Tikkun Olam prevails when good dominates over bad.

But wait. When does good best bad? (11:46 minutes into “Israel: The Narcissistic State,”). “When clal Israel rules the world.” Translated from the Hebrew: When the Jewish collective rules the world. When the nations of the world are subjects of the Jewish People, says this rabbi, during his shiur (“lesson”).

A “goy” has “Tikkun” (rectification), avers the same rabbi, when said “goy” realizes the supremacy of the Jewish People and assists them in any way. Gentile existence is “for the betterment of the Jewish People.” (11:35-13:06 into “Israel: The Narcissistic State”) Under the rule of the Jewish People, he claims, the world and its people achieve rectitude and correction. In other words, the gentile must recognize the (putative) supremacy of the Jewish People for Tikkun Olam to prevail.

Is this rabbi’s ruling a fringe doctrinal position? Do those ultra-orthodox rabbis who stand bravely against “Zionism,” also reject the indubitably hubristic concept of “Chosenness”—of Jews as His Chosen People? Or, do they, like most other rabbis, simply reassuringly frame “the Jewish idea of a chosen people” as “the most liberal and tolerant approach to religion possible”; a burden only to Jews; but a blessing to gentiles, as does another rabbi, Shmuel Kaplan, of Maryland. Pure Encapsulations Ma... Check Amazon for Pricing.

With similar certainty does one Rabbi Pini Dunner labor to distance Tikkun Olam from manifestly universal biblical values, such as the one about loving thy neighbor as thyself. Dunner’s shell-game is a rejection of what he dubs progressive values, on the ground that these can alienate a Jewish person from “the past,” as well as hamper his respect for his “heritage.”

The intra-faith cacophony is indeed confusing.

For my part, I suspect the idea of Jewish Chosenness is the kernel of the maniacal and murderous contempt for The Other, manifest in contemporary Israel.

What I can further tell you is that my own notion of Tikkun Olam was imbibed by reading, in the Hebrew, the shtetl authors, who wrote originally in Yiddish. These authors—Sholem Aleichem and Peretz are examples—evince little of the hangovers of politics or Zionism. Their story-telling is purely descriptive, non-polemical and poignant. Heavily Jewish, it has heart for humanity, too.

On Mencken’s recommendation (AI confirmed), I purchased a 1950 used copy in the Hebrew of America, a book by Sholem Asch. Yes, no other than H. L. Mencken put me on to the author named Sholem Asch, which Mencken reviewed in English. With aching simplicity, Ash describes the cultural shock and the New York heat that bring about the demise of a small Jewish boy on arriving in Ameria. The child had been uprooted from the diaspora’s intense bonds of faith, family and community, and plonked into the atomistic, hedonism and consumerism of American life.

Asch’s frail Jewish boy expires longing not for Zion (Israel), but for the cool, snowy beauty of his east European home village. In addition to Zionism, also absent from the early literature in this genre is the Jewish Supremacy, which I first fingered on March 31, 2024, in the essay, “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War, And All Customary International Humanitarian Law.” This Jewish supremacy is a mutation of Jewish Chosenness.

I am not alone in opining so openly—although other than Dr. Norman Finklestein, Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levi and Ron Unz; few are the Jewish individuals who dare acknowledge, for fear of Israel and its Western lobbies and lickspittles, that the “Judaism-Zionism bifurcation” should be legitimately and critically examined, given the erasure of Palestinian life ongoing, the genocidal onslaught on swathes of Lebanon, and Israel’s fight-to-the-finish with Iran. And considering that this trespass was commenced with overwhelming Jewish-Israeli acquiescence, and with the cover of institutionalized Jewry; a cohort that, combined, forms a sizeable portion of our Jewish community worldwide.

Organized world Jewry is an arm of Israel. Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, goes through the litany of genocide-supporting entities that had checked their humanitarian facade at the Ben Gurion airport, but would now like to reclaim luggage “lost,” for the purposes of being accepted into polite company. “Major British and American pro-Israel Jewish organizations have in their majority remained fully supportive of Israeli actions,” writes the jaded Palestinian scholar. Optimum Nutrition Micr... Check Amazon for Pricing.

In the event that Jewish leaders, belatedly, caper about this or the other Israeli or American atrocity; the protest is almost solely anchored not in moral argument, but in utilitarian, sectarian, outcome-based concerns. Nothing else matters to them, other than that this or the other massacre, one among thousands, is bad for Jewish hostages, could impact Israel’s long-term viability, would encourage antisemitism. Or, as when “U.S. Jewish organizations criticized Trump’s diabolical Gaza plan, purely because they were “concerned” it would jeopardize the ongoing “hostage-release agreement.”

By Pew’s April, 2026 poll, “Jewish Americans and White evangelical Protestants have mostly positive views of Israel, at 64 percent and 65 percent, respectively.” In every meaningful way, too many Jews have supported this ebulliently evil entity, Jewish-Israel.

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Part 1: The Judaism-Zionism Bifurcation: Chosenness

[1]. Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law, A Study In Legal And Social History And Philosophy, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1998

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