I agree, from when I read it too. But unsurprisingly, I have a bunch of thoughts about this! Here are some disjoint ones:
I wonder about Tarfon's view of the possibility of "completing the work" each of tikkun olam and of learning Torah. It seems like learning Torah is an endless task -- not only is it not our responsibility to complete the task, but nor is it possible. But some more Messianic folks definitely would find that tikkun olam can be completed -- we do our job, then comes Moshiach, we finish planting our trees, gg to the Accuser.
I think that being the people of Torah and the people of tikkun olam is inherently inseparable, even without the progressive-Judaism lens. Being the people of Torah implies a calling to being a people of mitzvah, and the liturgy (at least, of the high holidays) makes abundantly clear that the mitzvot that are between us and Hashem are equally (or less!) important than the mitzvot that are between us and the world.
This rewriting process, also, I think is not unique to modern Judaism. The concept of lo bashamayim hi ("it is not in the heavens"; I interpret this as that we get to decide what Torah means to us together) is not just in the Pentateuch, but appears in Talmud -- the story of the Oven of Akhnai is a long debate over the concept that we interpret the law. Doing so would not make us "not the people of Torah" -- it would make us just as much the people of Torah as our ancestors, but it would make all the people of Torah the people of tikkun olam, too (if, somehow, we were not already).
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Date: 2024-11-07 07:52 pm (UTC)