His family picked up on a similar sentiment. “The minute we realized the question was values, we all went to tikkun olam,” Lander said, explaining that tikkun olam has particular resonance in his family: “What is our purpose here? Our purpose is to repair the world, to help others in need of help, to take in strangers, to have empathy.”Dr. Lander was sworn in by the Vice President yesterday.That realization, in turn, reminded Lander of an expression found in the Mishnah, the earliest collections of rabbinic interpretations of oral Jewish law: “It’s not required that you complete the work, but neither may you refrain from it.”
In scouring the Library of Congress catalog for a copy of Mishnah, however, Lander stumbled upon something a bit more specific: a 13-page volume containing the Pirkei Avot, a subset of the Mishnah that focuses on ethics and contains the expression.
Lander couldn’t help but notice the publication date: 1492, an era when Jewish populations were expelled from the Kingdom of Spain. ...
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