What I want to do instead is to talk about something which is at the core of Jewish spirituality. I want to talk about tikkun . Tikkun , the healing of the world, is lived out at different levels. The first level, the primary level, has to do with obeying the commandments. When Jews read the Hebrew scriptures, the torah , they see a whole variety of commandments.
Some commandments are positive things to do .
And some are negative, things we should not do. There are a total of 613 commandments, or mitzvot , in the Hebrew scriptures. The first level of tikkun has to do with obeying the commandments. Jewish mystics taught that the world as we know it is a shattered place. It is broken, and the sparks of the original goodness are hidden in the world's shattered fragments.