Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the complexities of Micah 6:8 and why this verse is more relevant than ever.
Shortly the Jewish community will be studying the famous words in the prophetic Book of Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8. These are usually translated in the following way: 'Do justly, love goodness and walk humbly with your G-d.'
However, as always we have to unpack these words, and I started doing so when watching the proceedings in Parliament regarding our former Prime Minister and would-be 'world-king', Boris Johnson.
At the same time as this event, four other people were addressing members of the House of Lords on behalf of memorialists in the case of the ongoing saga of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, a case which had already been thrown out by the High Court, with no leave to appeal.
But this government is extremely wily, and bent on getting its way, more so than any other I've come across post war in this country. This government is simply not interested in facts, in justice, in loving goodness or walking humbly, with or without G-d (perish the thought).
By contrast, the four memorialists (representing a Jewish peer, on behalf of herself and five Holocaust survivors; two charities interested in preserving heritage, parks and environment; and a member of the Buxton family whose ancestor enabled the Parliamentary 1833 Slavery Bill), were dignity personified. Meanwhile in the House of Commons, and continuing for over seven hours, our former Prime Minister was being exposed, and shorn of his Commons pass (in absentia of course).
All this reminded me of the difficulty of understanding the passage in Micah, and I can only offer a number of suggestions. The Micah passage is supposed to encapsulate the entire 613 commandments into three main principles. But this shortening process does not make things easy at all.
For a start, do we always know how to 'do justly'. Does 'doing justly' mean attending law courts, obeying the law, or always believing the police? What if the law courts, law and/or police are not worthy of obedience? What about in Nazi Germany, for instance, where murder of Jews was legalized and the compliance of the press assumed? Does it maybe mean, acting fairly towards your neighbor, but who are our role models in this?
Who will a child choose to follow? Are parents the main role models, or is it now the government? What about teachers, rabbis, or what we call our own 'conscience'? Maybe it comes down to religious norms. But what if these are downplayed or even disrespected by those in authority, including not only governments, but also teachers and rabbis? What do you do in these kinds of cases?
Then what about 'loving goodness'? For a start, chesed does not really mean 'goodness' and is difficult to translate. Does chesed maybe convey 'loving kindness', loyalty, faithfulness, or some kind of trait that is genuinely impossible to render into English correctly? And what role is played by the phrase's place in the sentence? Do you 'do justly' while 'loving goodness'. Do justice and goodness/chesed go together like a horse and carriage, or are they opposed notions, which need different approaches. This is simply not made clear in the text.
And hardest of all is the phrase 'and walking humbly with your G-d.' Do you 'walk humbly' while you are doing justly and loving chesed, or does it simply mean, as some have interpreted it, that you should keep your head down at all times. If so, then you might find it it very difficult to 'do justly, loving chesed,' both of which are actions rather than states of passive being. In any case the Hebrew is not the usual word for 'humbly', rather expressing the idea of behaving 'modestly' or 'discreetly', i.e. without fanfare.
So, possibly all this conjures up a quietly efficient and very busy person, constantly on the lookout for ways of righting wrongs, behaving cheerfully all the while, and never letting anyone know that they are anything other than ordinary. Does such a person exist in the real world?
The context of this maxim is important. It starts with a clarion call to the children of Israel: 'He has told you, Man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: only to do justly, loving goodness and walking humbly with your G-d.' But who has told them, exactly? Some commentators think that G-d Himself told Man (i.e. Adam). But where exactly was Adam told? In the Garden of Eden, or every day of our lives?
Presumably what is good and what the Lord requires of us are one and the same thing. But some think it isn't G-d who told us, but our role models: parents, rabbis, teachers. The trouble is that in many cases, these adults are no longer our role models, and truth is no longer as certain as it used to be. So many now translate the phrase as 'It has been told you, oh humanity.....'. Both 'Adam' and 'Man' being regarded as somehow no longer politically correct terms to use in contemporary society.
Thinking back to Boris' fate while pondering Micah, who can forget the former's clarion call to 'Let my people go' in order to 'get Brexit done', forgetting, it seems, that releasing us from slavery is only 'in order that they [the people] may serve Me (Exodus 9:1). The problem with soundbites is that they often come back to bite us. Exodus isn't liberation per se – it's service. Micah isn't about being a 'nice' person. Rather, it's a call to the complicated state of everyday simplicity without becoming a simpleton. This is obviously much harder than it looks. Do you know any leaders, religious or otherwise, who fulfil all these criteria?
Micah is certainly not advocating a tick-box exercise. He expects an extremely high standard of personal behaviour, ethics and restraint, together with overflowing love for our fellow human beings. Overflowing love and restraint don't usually go together, but that is what he seems to be asking of us. This isn't even justice tempered by mercy, a la Portia in the Merchant of Venice.
Micah is advocating total immersion in everyday life, without however becoming tainted oneself, or falling for the power and the glory, the glittering prizes. Much easier said than done, though. So much more reasonable to bow out and avoid all kinds of hassle. Or, simply blag your way around life, pretending rules don't exist and currying favour like a lovable cheeky chappy, until you are found out, of course.
True justice doesn't need tempering, of course. It is already tempered with mercy; it is always restrained, though passionate. Some of our sages, living in diaspora not so many moons ago, advocated complete self-abasement in the presence of others. But is this really doing G-d's work in the present age? What about responsibility? What about caring for fellow human beings by becoming involved and, yes, getting 'sullied'?
What Micah might be getting at is the practice of transferring one's ego into a life of service to others, which often among Jewish individuals, is indeed the pursuit of justice. This balance takes a life-time of practice, with many ups and downs along the way. But we have to remember that no-one is an island, and what may be good for the soul is not necessarily what is needed by our neighbour, who needs us to pick up the pieces, now!
In this country, and elsewhere in the very spoiled and indulged Western world, where choice abounds, and one's life is not usually on the line, boredom has set in, and for this reason, people are playing around, very dangerously, with definitions that have been cherished from time immemorial. Our school system is under fire as never before from a combination of indolent ministers and hungry civil servants, all of them bent on destroying what they call 'faith'. What is at stake is the Jewish way of life as passed down through our children and grandchildren, and this is now proving to be an existential threat to our survival as a community in the Western world.
The same ferocious energy currently being used by the powers-that-be, and their complicit Jewish allies, to close down Jewish schools, is also being used to bulldoze through the Holocaust Memorial to 'British Values', reminiscent more than anything of Robespierre and his post French Revolution Reign of Terror. Everyone knows that the proposed construction is a dreadful mistake, for a number of reasons, which were valiantly expressed some days ago in the House of Lords by four people of integrity. By contrast, in the House of Commons, at exactly the same time, our parliamentary system, the same system through which the government and their hangers-on plan to implement their frightful and frightening monstrosity in Victoria Tower Gardens, was being exposed as never before for the self-serving entity that it has actually become.
There are no easy answers to this state of affairs. However, we mustn't stoop to the level of those who are hell bent on destroying both us and our values. Instead, we must strive painstakingly in both theory and in practice to demonstrate that 'doing justly, loving chesed, while walking discreetly with one's G-d' is not irrelevant for this day and age, but must be reinterpreted for contemporary men, women and children. And if our rabbis and teachers are no longer capable of protecting Jewish norms of good-neighbourliness in a very alien world, then we shall have to take up the baton ourselves.
The beauty of Judaism is that it isn't a hierarchy – it is for every man and woman. And if, as many now suspect, leadership is sadly lacking in our own society, then it is up to us ordinary people to show the way ourselves. This is not just for the soul of the individual, but for the sake of our children. Micah is and always will be a timeless prophet and thinker. There is no more noble sentiment than the one he expressed in the 8<sup>th century BCE: 'do justly, loving chesed and walking discreetly with your G-d, for this, Man, is what we have been told.' But we were never told that it was easy.
