The Israeli Tikkun Olam Group
The Israeli Tikkun Olam (transformation of society) group has been meeting every month for eleven years. It is led by Amira Ityel, with Rami Ben-Moshe assisting. It is a supportive and hopeful space for activists and those who want to take action. We discharge on the challenges we face and on our dreams and plans. And of course we celebrate victories (and there are plenty!).
Amira Ityel: Society is collapsing, just as Harvey Jackins predicted (see Logical Thinking about a Future Society). In our group we contradict feelings of isolation, of early helplessness and hopelessness, and of not doing enough. We gather hope and we discharge. Then more hope is revealed and with it the power to act. This group is like my second family. With it, I can express my activist side, gain strength, and continue my activities.
I organize women who oppose the Occupation (). We began as a group of peace activists in Tel Aviv, and over time we became a group of worldwide activists. With friends I also established an organization that brings Palestinian children to the sea. Every summer hundreds of Israeli volunteers bring hundreds of children who live in the Occupied Zones to the sea for a magical day. This contradicts my country’s segregation and discrimination policies.
The following RC practices are well received in my work: “news and goods,” introductions, everyone speaking in their turn, and no voice being ignored. All of them contradict “noisy” Israeli discourse. Among the staff I emphasize appreciation, that it takes just one person to lead, persistent support for the leader, and discharge.
Naama Yaari: Once a month I accompany Palestinian shepherds in the Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills. With others, I help them graze their sheep. If there is a problem, we talk to the army.
I also volunteer for an LGBTQ+ support line. People usually end the conversations saying, “You helped me. Thank you.”
I’ve counseled on accepting the “other” and not being prejudiced toward them. In the past I sometimes talked negatively about ultra-Orthodox Jews, and working on prejudice caused my language to change.
Each time I’m in the Tikkun Olam group, I say, “I don’t do anything,” and every time the others remind me of how much I do.
“Tsipi Israel”: I started a group of allies to young people. I am now looking for ways to reach teachers and parents. Our group allows me to work on my distresses, get ideas, and find support to promote my ideas.
Hagai Helman Tov: I’ve organized some people who have a variety of identities. We meet regularly in small, heterogeneous groups and talk about our lives and activism.
I was motivated to do this because increasingly we have been meeting only in groups of people who are like ourselves. We need to counter this trend. We can work together, care about each other, and learn about the needs of different groups in society.
I have incorporated into our activities many ideas from RC, such as the RC definition of leadership, the idea of supporting leaders, and how we can support people while not necessarily agreeing with their positions. This approach unites the participants, even when there are disagreements.
I work on a pattern that says I’m not doing enough. This allows me to see that I’m doing important and meaningful things. My project is progressing slowly and isn’t immediately rewarding, so it’s challenging to persist with it. I don’t know if I would have succeeded without the Tikkun Olam group.
Rami Ben Moshe: My activities outside of RC are mostly about relations between Jews and Palestinians, especially within Israeli society, and thinking about how to create a common society.
I help produce an annual event called “Nakba-Independence.” It is a meeting of Jews and Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis. We hold it at an important time for Israeli Jews, Memorial Day and Independence Day, which is when Palestinians in Israel mark Nakba Day, their day of disaster—a situation that creates acute alienation between Jews and Arabs. We also hold it in places that are significant to this situation, such as in the ruins of Palestinian villages from before 1948 and in Neve Shalom/Wahat El-Salam (the Oasis of Peace), a village established by Jews and Arabs.
We listen to each other and get close. I bring what I’ve learned in RC, for example, language liberation. I make sure that the Arabs speak Arabic some of the time and that we have simultaneous interpretation. We have also had short workshops on recovery from war and working for peace.
Our Tikkun Olam group is a safe space in which to share what we do, and want to do, and discharge on the distresses that arise. We inspire, encourage, and support each other. The group gives me ideas and motivates me to increase my activities.
Tsvia Waks: I have used RC, especially listening, with family, friends, and in general. It has made my relationship to the world clearer and stronger. My thinking about young people has become clearer. I read a lot of Harvey Jackins’s writings, and I translate parts of RC theory into Hebrew to delve into them more deeply. I am a yoga teacher, and I use RC ideas in my teaching.
Tom Pessah: I am active in Zochrot, an Israeli organization that promotes commemorating the Nakba and Palestinians’ right of return. I also write posts on websites—especially for young U.S. Jews, to encourage them to be more active in relation to Israel and the Occupation.
About four years ago I started volunteering with Amram, an organization that deals with the children from Yemen, the East, and the Balkans who were kidnapped by the state of Israel in the 1950s. It is an important way for me to be active as a Mizrahi Jew. There’s an online archive of testimonies, mostly from the families of the missing children, and I initiated a project to translate them into English. The Hebrew database includes about a thousand testimonies, and we’ve already translated about four hundred.
Re-evaluation Counseling is helpful in this work. I support the translators, editors, and people who add testimonies to the database. I give responsibilities to people and appreciate them.
Most of my work in Amram is with women in leadership roles, women with strong opinions and tremendous knowledge. It’s helped me that, from RC, I’ve become more aware of men’s patterns. I’ve also benefited from RC’s work on Mizrahim.
Our writing of this article was a huge contradiction to our feelings of powerlessness and isolation as activists. We would like to know if groups similar to ours exist in other countries.
(Present Time 208, July 2022)