How the Ideas of Samson Raphael Hirsch Can Help to Rectify American Judaism’s Shallow Obsession with Tikkun Olam

One of the outstanding German rabbinic minds of his day, Samson Raphael Hirsch sought to articulate a vision of Jewish Orthodoxy capable of appealing to a Jewish community that was increasingly secularly educated, bourgeois, patriotic, and at home with Gentile mores. To Kylie Unell, Hirsch has much to teach the American Jews of today, especially those for whom the notion of tikkun olam—an ancient concept of “repairing the world” that has come to be synonymous with contemporary notions of “social justice”—is paramount.