Part 3 concludes the essay on how the Christian mistranslation of the biblical verse Micah 6:8 has damaged Judaism and Jewish life in the USA, and my ideas of how to heal the damage.
Jewish Education in the USA
One of the questions that started me poking around this subject was, “How does or doesn’t this affect the world?” Unfortunately, the majority of Jews in the United States are completely ignorant about present Christian belief and even more ignorant about Judaism. Fundamentally, anyone born to a Jewish mother is Jewish, while only about 10-15% of those are Orthodox or Sabbath-observing. That large majority of 85-90% has had very little if any education about Judaism, does not know Hebrew, and neither knows nor cares anything about traditional Jewish law.i
What most American Jews “know” about Judaism is what they learned from the wider—secular and Christian—cultures.ii “Sunday Schools,” generally synagogue-sponsored sessions on Sunday mornings, are often taught by teachers just as ignorant about traditional Judaism as the studentsiii.
Many of these Jews are activists, both of social and environmental issues. Pushed onto liberal Judaism, not true of traditionally educated. Their misunderstanding of Micah 6:8 is, I believe, one reason that so many of the causes they support are antithetical to traditional Judaism and offensive to Christians.
As a child in Reform Jewish Sunday schools, the Christian version of Micah’s famous statement was drilled into me:
He has shown you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Liberal Judaism is progressive. Rabbinic leaders were raised in the same environment as other non-Orthodox Jews, with a heart toward their people and their tradition. That is, they also grew up with the Christian words of this quotation solidly in their minds and hearts, but with the secular/Christian meanings of those words.
What do we humans do when as adults we read something that includes a quotation we have heard a thousand times and internalized? We don’t read it carefully, word for word, or we speed over it because we “already know it.”
The result is that the rabbis who studied in liberal Jewish seminaries, and the children educated about Judaism in schools sponsored by these groups, have the concepts of “justly” and “mercy” stuck in their minds as two-thirds of what God wants of us. And concepts internalized at a young age become almost impossible to change.
Relevance for Judaism in the World Today
Liberal Jews, good-hearted people who have been taught and truly believe they understand what God, through Judaism, wants of us, have been at the forefront of the progressive movement. At this time they support abortion, transgender rights including surgeries for minors, and illegal immigrants. They fight against ICE and “Islamophobia.”
Progressive Jewish communities have a lot of money. Undisturbed by 17 Jewish holy days and the weekly Sabbaths on which work (including conferences) is prohibited, and by the kosher food laws which limit casual meals with coworkers, they have few religious barriers in the workplace.
Because they are educated, organized, and articulate, the harm that these people’s misguided humanitarian impulses do is enormous. They sincerely want to reform the world according to their beliefs. In so doing, they push agendas that are morally bankrupt according to traditional Jewish and Christian standards—Biblical standards. Believing that they represent Judaism and Jewish values, they earnestly spout their Jewishness at the tops of their very loud voices. This offends almost everyone with traditional values.
Many Jews in the Orthodox world are shieldediv from the dominant culture by a insular world-view where the good of the immediate community and Jews world-wide matter, but outside issues do not. The Orthodox community also has a deep knowledge of the past that has left a strong distrust of the secular/Christian world. This distrust, coupled with a proscription against proselytizing, has resulted in a desire—even a belief—that we Jews are safest when we keep our heads down and don’t make waves.
It’s important to note here that Jews don’t proselytize because we don’t believe it is necessary. Judaism teaches that non-Jews who follow the Seven Laws of Noahv are also loved by God. Man was created in the image of God; every person who behaves like a person and not like an animal is a Godly person. God chose the Jewish people to further spirituality and morality on earth, a nation of priests who taught the others how to behave. The world has infinitely more just and moral societies today than it did 1000 or even 500 years ago because of Judaism, which branched into Christianity and Islam. This means that the majority of people are behaving, more or less, according to Jewish values. No need to convert to Judaism to be godly.
Christians who uphold Biblical standards, which are based on and similar to traditional Jewish values, are important. In the USA for the last 40 or 50 years, the group most supportive of Jews and Israel has been Evangelical Christians. While some Evangelical denominations teach that Jews should move to Israel and convert to Christianity, many do not. Rather, they acknowledge and honor Jesus’s Jewish birth and upbringing, are interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity, and believe that Israel is the Jewish homeland. Conversion of the Jews is not part of their creed.
Meanwhile, what Christians and secularists learn about Jews and Judaism come today from outspoken progressives as well as from the anti-Semites who abound online.
A Result of This Cultural Morass
American Jewish ignorance of—and dislike of—traditional Judaism is partly based on negative stereotypes of Jewish law and tradition that are picked up from the secular and Christian environments in which the vast majority of American Jews live. This problem is so deeply ingrained in liberal Judaism that even Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, sometimes sounds more like a disciple of Jesusvi than of Moses:
Reform Jews are committed to social justice. Even as Reform Jews embrace ritual, prayer, and ceremony more than ever, we continue to see social justice as the jewel in the Reform Jewish crown. Like the prophets, we never forget that God is concerned about the everyday and that the blights of society take precedence over the mysteries of heaven.
Embracing ritual, prayer and ceremony is a focus on pure emotion. These aspects of Judaism are based on individual experience and individual expression. “Never forget that God is concerned about the everyday and the blights of society...” ignores that God through His prophet Micah reminded us that the everyday blights on society are to be handled through His laws. As we saw in Part 1, emotion is not a sound basis for civil society. In the past two years we saw this in the fight over “transsexual women” in women’s sports, bathrooms and locker rooms. This has led to the rights of one misguided man taking precedence over the rights of tens or hundreds of women.
The quote above also points out what happens when the concept of humility is confused with that of modesty. “Like the prophets, we…” is diametrically opposite the concept of modesty. But “Reform Jews are committed to social justice. Even as Reform Jews embrace ritual, prayer, and ceremony…” is a statement of false humility. The translation is, “Look at us, we are just prayerful people doing God’s will,” exactly like Jane Austen’s William Collins.
This arrogance has led to social justice movements that ignore the rights of the majority while noisily bringing attention to perceived injustice without addressing the root causes.
In 1972 as a new caseworker for a state welfare department, I was told I could not teach budgeting; changing my clients’ culture was not my job. In my home visits I was to ensure no men were living in the home, that homes were clean, that clients understood the benefits available to them, and that mothers of school-age children were seeking work.
Looking at the result of the social policies that began with President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s—the destruction of the Black family and the dramatic rise in crime among poor families with no responsible male role modelvii chief among them—we can see that addressing visible issues without looking at root causes is bandaging the surface injury while ignoring the infection raging below.
Solutions
Every community has zillions of social issues that need correcting. Most communities have a shortage of loving foster homes. Financially distressed people need volunteers to teach financial literacy or provide legal guidance. Elderly, disabled, and low-income single moms need help hanging curtains, changing bulbs in ceiling light fixtures, and cleaning gutters.
One year my synagogue had T-shirts printed with the words, “Temple Emanuel Wishes You A Merry Christmas,” and we volunteered at a free Christmas meal. Months later a woman stopped me in Costco and said she had appreciated that temple members had volunteered at the Christmas meal. She had recognized the hat that I’d worn that day, which I was wearing again at Costco.
Our community also painted Star-of-David grave markers for the town’s big Memorial Day exhibition, which includes a field of markers naming each person killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. VFW volunteers made the markers for us, added the names, and put them in proper order on the field. But it took a Jewish volunteer effort to request and paint appropriate markers for our dead.
Getting one’s hands dirty or giving up valuable time in helping others is a way of showing that you are not better than them. Besides physical skills like rotoring drains or changing light bulbs, professionals can provide free local services of many kinds, from legal aid to financial counseling and coaching, teaching English to immigrants and helping others improve reading skills, visiting at a local old-age or veterans’ home, and more.
When small, local problems like these are solved under the banner of the temple or synagogue, the sponsorship shows the community, in a quiet, modest fashion, that Jews are helpful and care about the people around them.
Through the Ten Commandments we gave the world the concept a work week followed by a day of rest, of respecting the property of others, of avoiding sexual relationships that disturb the security of children, and taking responsibility for our actions, and the concept of impartial justice.
In these days of rampant antisemitism, we Jews need effective ways of identifying ourselves and our contributions to the world. Long lists of Nobel prize winners and technical breakthroughs are meaningless if not offensive to the majority of non-Jews. Focusing instead on local problems by actually working on them, not just talking, would be much more effective.
Jews who actively assist others within their community fulfill the mission of tikkun olam—actually strengthen their community—without offending anyone. They improve the standing of Jews in their community in a way that lobbying for the latest news-making social action movement cannot.
These activities also give pride to unaffiliated Jews, bringing them back to their roots. One woman in that Christmas dinner line had not known there was a synagogue in our small city. She called the week after the meal and asked about a Jewish cemetery for her terminally ill mother, who although not religious had been worrying about her burial. Bringing in these unaffiliated also provides an opportunity to improve Jewish education in America, so that people actually understand what our tradition teaches.
Thanks to Scott Stephens, whose substack, The Quiet Warrior Life, always leaves me with new ideas and new ways of looking at old ones, and to Sim Zacks, for his careful critique and long discussion that helped me make this better.
i Many liberal Jews think they are very informed about the tradition, which has led to people who misplace their hostility onto Orthodoxy. I knew a young man, raised in a Conservative Jewish home (the Conservative Jewish denomination, not politically conservative), who attended an after-school non-Orthodox Jewish educational program through high school. He told me he thought he’d teach a Talmud class at the Hillel (Jewish students’ organization) when he got to college. But once there, he met Orthodox boys who had studied Talmud as a regular high school course for four years. My acquaintance realized that he had only learned what the Talmud was, its history, and a few shallow details about a very few topics. He was shocked to realize how little he actually knew, and turned his shock against Orthodoxy instead of blaming the sham “education” he’d received.
ii Some myths about Judaism are Christian projections, not Jewish at all. The concept of Jewish guilt, I believe, stems from the belief that was taught by churches for over a thousand years that Jews killed Jesus and therefore bear that guilt to this day. It morphed into the concept that Jewish mothers are the world’s best at laying guilt trips on their children. The lie that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzot stems from the Eucharist—the central Christian act of communion, taking a bit of bread and wine that symbolize the blood and body of Jesus. For the relationship between this rite and Passover, see the Britannica’s entry on “Eucharist.”
iii During the months I taught first grade in a Reform Jewish Sunday school, I was required to attend a conference of teachers at the Reform Sunday schools in the region. In the session on teaching about Shabbat, the speaker asked who lit Sabbath candles. Only I and one other woman, someone I knew from the Orthodox synagogue we attended, raised our hands, and if not, why not. The answers were that (1) the ritual was meaningless to them and (2) Sabbath observance interfered with their children’s sports schedules or their social lives. The ignorance and lack of interest teachers showed in other classes was similar. These were teachers being paid by unsuspecting parents to teach their children about Jewish values, history, and traditions. I was even admonished by the principal of one of Boston’s largest Reform Sunday schools for mentioning, in a historical story about the Spanish Inquisition, that the Inquisition was a product of the Catholic church—because they had students with one practicing Catholic parent. In what venue, if not the Jewish religious school, would children have the opportunity to learn about the disaster of the Inquisition? And where else in a Jewish context could they discuss any discomfort they might feel with being half-and-half?
iv Some groups are very shielded, others not so much. But most Orthodox Jews live in communities with a dense religious Jewish population and have fewer and shallower relations with non-Jews than less religious Jews, who generally live in communities where Jews are scarcer.
v For more on the laws of Noah, see my two previous essays, https://www.tantehannawrites.com/p/the-noahide-laws-part-1 and https://www.tantehannawrites.com/p/the-noahides-part-2 .
vi See Part 1 of this series.
vii Role models in some communities appear to be athletes, criminals, and “baby daddies” whose irresponsible sex lives result in countless children whose fathers have no relationship with them or their mothers. The women, given welfare money with no expectations, have no way of earning self-respect by successfully working and so confuse finding real meaning with the short feelings of being wanted that skanky clothing, sexy behavior, liquor and sex with strangers gives them.