Emerging Community Pantries in the Philippines during the Pandemic: Hunger, Healing, and Hope

This research is a critical approach to the emergence of community pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic as at-once contestatory and transformative narratives, foregrounding the Filipino poor’s experience of hunger, suffering, and marginality, while also highlighting their collective hope for a better world. I began by exploring the emergence of the community pantry in the Philippines, which was prompted by the government’s inadequate response to the plight of the hungry poor due to prolonged mandatory lockdown in the National Capital Region. I then turned to Emmanuel Levinas’ concept of hunger as the basis for the ethical giving displayed in the community pantries, which is a symbolic arena where leadership is questioned and the marginalized voices of the hungry poor are both mainstreamed and articulated. I brought ethical giving into relation with the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam as the platform for the possibility of healing wounded relations. I constructed a particular weave between the community pantry and the Filipinos’ shared experiences of hunger that touches on the ethical that can create liberating spaces for collective hope. In conclusion, I argue that this study is valuable for confronting unexamined assumptions of the relationship between hunger, healing, and hope for critical pedagogy and critical spirituality, which can have significant philosophical and theological implications.

Practical Esotericism and Tikkun Olam: two modern renditions of a medieval mystical idea

In this paper I look at a specific Hebrew religious term, Tikkun Olam, to examine the manner in which it signifies differently in two specific cases. While we understand that meaning is carried in both denotation and connotation, and while a genealogy of meaning is often useful to understand the manner in which meaning has changed across time, this paper recounts the manner in which a single word may signify differently synchronically, at a single point in history.

Schorr, Alvin

Alvin Schorr (1921–2016) had a long and distinguished career fighting poverty on many fronts. His career was essentially identified with public social policy, particularly with the issues surrounding income maintenance. After working for several years in social service agencies, he began a career in policy in the government and academic sectors. He dedicated his life and career to fighting poverty. His personal motto was, “Tikkun Olam,” which refers to repairing the world through acts of social justice and kindness.

Ubuntu Through the Lens of Tikkun Olam

This chapter will explore concepts of Ubuntu, which is the South African concept of togetherness. However, it will explore this concept through the lens of a Jewish concept or philosophy called “tikkun olam.” Tikkun olam is a Hebrew term that roughly translates to “healing or repairing the world.” In the light of COVID-19, there are many different realms of communication that have been explored. Many have been forced to be world citizens. With that being said, having various forms of communication does not necessarily mean that we are understanding each other better. The author will explore various forms of communication, connections, etc. and explore a premise that to be together in a healthy realm, we must be healed before we can heal our world. Ironically, this is also the case for those who are suffering from aspects of COVID-19.

Failing My Way to Success

This chapter on “Failing My Way to Success” offers an “in the trenches” account of social entrepreneurship drawn from the 2015 memoir Failing My Way to Success: Life Lessons of an Entrepreneur. The book chronicles personal and professional disappointments, betrayals, and bankruptcies from which grew the author’s hard-won lessons of failure and the climb back to success. These lessons range from business best-practices to interpersonal skills to philosophical truths, but at their heart lie two ancient principles. The first warns against self-deception, expressed as the axiom “know thyself” and is perhaps the toughest challenge that the beginning entrepreneur faces. The second is the Jewish concept of tikkun olam—“repair of the world”—the belief that we bear responsibility not only for ourselves and our immediate circle but for the world at large. This essay argues that perhaps the most important definition of “success” is the capacity both of means and spirit to fulfill this command.

Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis

Exploring a contemporary Judaism rich with the textures of family, memory, and fellowship, Jodi Eichler-Levine takes readers inside a flourishing American Jewish crafting movement. As she travelled across the country to homes, craft conventions, synagogue knitting circles, and craftivist actions, she joined in the making, asked questions, and contemplated her own family stories. Jewish Americans, many of them women, are creating ritual challah covers and prayer shawls, ink, clay, or wood pieces, and other articles for family, friends, or Jewish charities. But they are doing much more: armed with perhaps only a needle and thread, they are reckoning with Jewish identity in a fragile and dangerous world. The work of these crafters embodies a vital Judaism that may lie outside traditional notions of Jewishness, but, Eichler-Levine argues, these crafters are as much engaged as any Jews in honoring and nurturing the fortitude, memory, and community of the Jewish people. Craftmaking is nothing less than an act of generative resilience that fosters survival. Whether taking place in such groups as the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework or the Jewish Hearts for Pittsburgh, or in a home studio, these everyday acts of creativity—yielding a needlepoint rabbi, say, or a handkerchief embroidered with the Hebrew words tikkun olam—are a crucial part what makes a religious life.