Tikkun In The Kitchen Poem by gershon hepner

Experiences that don’t transform
were designated “culinary” by Brecht;
to find what is beyond the norm
start tikkun in the kitchen, borscht with Besht.

Heidi Waleson reviews a production of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Die Soldaten” (“Singers Munster at the Drill Hall, ” WSJ, July 10,2008) :

It was quite an experience, and Zimmermann would probably have been thrilled. Yet I was perhaps ultimately more “culinary”—in the Brechtian sense of theater that brings pleasure to the audience but fails to transform it—than what he intended.

Note that Besht is the Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of the Hassidic movement who restored the concept of tikkun to Judaism after it had lain dormant for centuries.

© 2008 Gershon Hepner 7/10/08