Soul searching on Tikkun Leil Rabin
Tikkun Leil, literally 'night of healing,' now applied to night of Yitzhak Rabin's murder
As each year slips by, the night on which Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated becomes more distant/ last year it was closer/ next year it will be further away/ therefore, this year's pain differs from last year's pain / and next year's pain will differ from this year's pain / and now the pain is the present pain. (An excerpt by poet Bari Zimmerman).
"The present pain" to which Zimmerman refers, is the joint pain of hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and it is also the motivation behind "Leil Tikkun Rabin" - a serious of 10 days of in-depth studies spearheaded by the chain of alternative Jewish study schools aimed at Jewish revival.
Marking Rabin's murder presents an opportunity to conduct national introspection; it is not aimed at settling accounts with the past and with others, but rather to find healing, explain the initiators of the event.
"Why should an event revolving around Rabin's murder be held ?" asks and answers Rani Yavin, director of the alternative Jewish school Elul, and one of the Tikkun Leil Rabin event founders.
"When we began our preparations we received responses from all over the country. Many told us that they usually devote the day in memory of Yitzhak Rabin to study; they try to fill the vacuum that official memorial services leave behind. We realized that a large audience felt a similar need and thought it would be fitting to mark the day in a contemporary way," Yavin said.
Leadership crisis
The leadership crisis in Israel, which has increased over the past decade, and which characterizes the Tikkun meetings, also characterizes the schools' path.
The series of meetings set to be held at 20 locations nationwide, are being held for the second consecutive year and are likely to turn into a tradition. Organizers hope to create a relevant local debate. For this purpose, they recruited dozens of teachers and public figures, who along with meeting participants will learn Jewish and Israeli texts and look for ways to improve society.
"One of the organization's objectives is to reach a broader public, to make people understand that the doors of the Jewish schools are always open," Yavin added.
"We have decided to make a concerted effort to make every person know that he or she can freely access Jewish culture and adopt the elements that best suit each person. Thousands come to our schools every year. But these thousands are not the hundreds of thousands we would like to host either ad hoc or regularly, in order to satisfy an ongoing or opportune need for intellectual studies or an emotional attachment to Judaism," Yavin said.
The 12 schools comprising the chain are all dedicated to Jewish revival and make the study of ancient texts easily available, alongside new ones. The organization represents a growing trend in the last decade and joins the Tikkun Leil Shavuot events.
The schools operate locally practically without any advertising, and each has its own agenda while sharing a common desire to make Judaism accessible to all.
