Lessons from fabric, friendship, and the quiet work of Tikkun Olam

My dear Jewish friend,

this morning I slipped into my old favorite jeans — the pair I bought so many years ago in White Plains, New York, back in a chapter of life that still feels close to my heart. I’ve worn them through so many seasons, in so many ordinary and meaningful moments. But today, as I looked down, something caught my eye: a deep tear above the knee. A rip right where the fabric had grown thin, worn down gently and quietly by years of movement, lifting, living, and simply being.

The material had grown brittle at the very point of greatest strain.

And for a moment I just sat there, because it felt like a mirror to the world around us — how the fabric of our society, too, frays where pressure gathers, where fear builds, where hopes are stretched thin. Places that once felt strong can suddenly feel fragile.

As I studied the tear, my eyes drifted toward the rivets — those small, round, steady pieces of metal that Levi Strauss once imagined into being. And I noticed something so simple and yet so profound:

The fabric tore where it was weak,
but not where it was reinforced.
The rivets held.

It struck me immediately:
When people care — when they step in, when they hold the fragile places, when they dare to strengthen what is worn — they become the rivets that keep the fabric of the world from falling apart.

With that image still warm in my mind, I found myself thinking of Levi Strauss himself.

He was born in Buttenheim, only nine or ten miles from Bamberg where I presently live. His world, too, had its fractures. As a Jewish boy in 19th-century Bavaria, he grew up within limits, in a society whose social fabric was torn in many places and not even woven in others. And still, he carried hope across the ocean — hope packed into memory and imagination — searching for possibility beyond the horizon that was handed to him.

And in America — amid effort, dust, and dreams — he made a discovery that would change everything: the reinforcement of stress points with rivets. Such a simple idea, yet so wise. Those tiny metal anchors kept the denim from tearing under pressure, turning ordinary work pants into something strong, dependable, and resilient. And I couldn’t help but think how true that is in life as well — how much we rely on people who quietly hold the fragile places, who strengthen what is strained, who keep the fabric of our days from coming apart. You, and the community at Kol Ami, were exactly such “rivets” for so many during the pandemic.

And so, thinking of all this, I bought not only a new pair jeans, but also a vest braided from two strands woven tightly into one whole piece.

Those two strands are us —
American and German,
Jewish and Christian,
different stories,
shared humanity,
linked by hope, by compassion, by something gentle and silently brave.

You welcomed me — a German Christian — into Kol Ami. You opened a space that not everyone would have opened. Some of our fellow volunteers were descendants of Holocaust survivors, and yet there we stood, side by side, folding boxes, filling bags, offering care in a time when so many were shaking. Quietly mending what was torn. Quietly living Tikkun Olam.

I think often of Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, whose words return to me like a steady hand on the shoulder:

Judaism teaches that we human beings are God’s partners in completing Creation.
We mend the tears, we bind the wounds —
that is our sacred task.

Liebling, Mordechai. Making Our Synagogues Vessels of Tikkun Olam. Artikel in The Reconstructionist, Fall 2003. In: Faith in Action / Jews for Racial & Economic Justice: A Theology of Resistance

And sometimes that sacred task is as simple as packing food into boxes — which is exactly what we did together.

At the center of all of this stands the teaching that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim —
בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים — in the image of God,

each of us reflecting something eternal,
each of us different and yet held in the same divine light,
sisters and brothers to one another.

And I return to a verse that quietly accompanied us without ever being spoken:

“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף

Deuteronomy 16:20

A double call — as if the ancient voice already knew how easily the world’s fabric tears, and how much perseverance it takes to keep weaving justice into the places where it is most needed.

And so I continue — now as director of pastoral training in Bavaria and Saxony, walking with future pastors and chaplains as they grow into their own callings. I try to weave this spirit of repair into their formation, hoping these threads will travel farther than I ever could.

The braided vest reminds me every day of our friendship and of the gentle, steady work we shared. Even when the fabric of the world stretches thin, some strands — and some rivets — hold.

Let me end with a reflection inspired by Psalm 34, carrying quietly the strength of those rivets — the steadfast points where human kindness keeps the world from breaking:

“May the One who gathers the brokenhearted
strengthen every place where the weave grows thin.
May the One who binds wounds
bless the hands that hold the fabric together.
And may the small, steadfast deeds of love —
quiet as rivets, shining as shelter —
outlast the pressures that seek to tear the world.”

My dear friend, your courage, your trust, your kindness —
they walk with me into every new day.
Our friendship inspires me daily in my work, my choices, and my hopes for this world we share.

With love,
Miriam ❤️