Havana Curveball by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider (review)

The Jewish concept tikkun olam—which literally means fixing (or healing) the world—is frequently overused and sometimes nothing more than shallow and self-satisfied lip service dripping with politics and political correctness, none of which should be allowed to detract from the centrality and importance of the concept. Tikkun olam is a reminder that each individual must act to complete the work of creating the world.

Havana Curveball is an hour-long documentary about tikkun olam. It opens with references to Mica, the son of the filmmakers and the protagonist of the film, and to the prophet Micah, biblical champion for justice. Less than thirty seconds in, the viewers see a quote from Micah 6:8 (though the quote actually comes from Rabbi Tarfon in Pirkei Avot, known in English as “The Ethics of the Fathers”); and with that quote is a reminder that tzedakah, the Hebrew word that loosely translates as “charity,” is formed by the Hebrew root tzedek, which means “justice.”

Mica’s journey begins at age thirteen, as he becomes bar mitzvah and chooses for his obligatory tikkun olam project to collect baseball gear for Cuba. Why Cuba? Mica’s grandfather fled the Holocaust and found refuge in Cuba in November 1941. Why baseball? Mica’s first childhood memories, he explains, were playing catch with his grandfather. Why send equipment to Cuba? At the time, Mica explains, “I thought it would be easy.”

Very quickly he discovers that tikkun olam is not meant to be easy. US laws do not allow him to ship the equipment directly to Cuba, but Canada’s laws do. So his family loads up their Prius and drives the equipment to Vancouver. As the months drag by, and following copious amounts of paperwork and phone calls that offer no indication of whether the equipment has arrived in Cuba, Mica makes an unusually insightful observation for a (then) fourteen-year-old: “I felt almost personally offended that the project was so difficult.”

Instead of giving up, however, Mica responds to the challenges of tikkun olam by choosing to make the project even more difficult: he decides to deliver a shipment of baseball gear directly to Cuba himself. Mica consults an attorney, who cautions Mica of possible consequences and offers suggestions for traveling to Cuba legally; Mica also encounters Pastors for Peace, who cheerily encourage the fifteen-year-old to ignore the law and travel without regard to consequences.

Ultimately, with the attorney’s guidance, Mica departs for Cuba, still clinging to an idyllic image of what awaits him: “It was all very picturesque and movie-like in my mind.” When he arrives, disabused of his preconceptions, he truly learns about tikkun olam—that it is not about feeling good but about doing good. Sometimes, in fact, it does not feel good at all. The watershed moment in the film comes when he encounters an aggressive group of Cuban teens who fight with each other selfishly to claim exclusive ownership over each piece of equipment he holds out to them, as Mica and his father beg them, in vain, to share. “I think I needed to see that for myself,” Mica reflects, “that some of my donations would not be received exactly as I’d wished them to be. And I understand . . . But it was harrowing to see.”

In the end, Mica’s understanding of tikkun olam is in direct contrast to the preachy, sanctimonious versions often seen elsewhere. Mica does that which is simple yet just, understanding the role of tzedek in tzedakah; and he does so with admirable and remarkably mature humility, observing at one point, “The more you know, the less you know.” He understands Rabbi Tarfon’s message, saying, “I never thought it was Nobel Peace Prize stuff. It’s not the most significant thing that anybody has ever done. But I think it did help a little bit.” He even understands the teachings about tzedakah from the Rambam, who taught donors the importance of...