Sherwin Wine, Author at Sherwin Wine

The Rabbi Writes – April 1968

Posted on August 14, 2024August 14, 2024 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Judaism April 1968

Rumors of violence have become the daily conversational fare of most Detroiters. Gloomy predictions of urban devastation share the limelight with cynical pleas of helplessness. While whites are advised by patriotic vigilantes to train themselves for self-defense, black militants warn their bewildered flock to expect phony incidents designed to justify police repression. A pall of mutual suspicion and hatred hovers over the city and poisons racial relations. Hostility is so respectable that suburban whites freely verbalize the bigotry they were too embarrassed to announce a year ago. Black anger, over three hundred years old, is daily revealed in grandiose threats of violence and destruction. Despite hosts of committees and countless Pleas for moderation, the present communication between black and white makes the Johnson – Ho Chi Minh dialogue appear chummy.

So-called white liberals appear the most bewildered. Trapped between white racism and black nationalism, they see their integration utopia sabotaged by social forces too powerful to resist. Negro militancy has declared them to be bigots-in-disguise whose patronizing view of Negro needs has harmed the black self-image as much. as admitted haters. Black Power advocates have accused them of seeking to support a social and economic structure which thrives on the colonial exploitation of black labor. White racists chide them for their illusions about Negro gratitude and remind them that, in the final moment of crisis, they will have no place to stand but on the white barricades. A polarized society allows only two classifications and simply being human isn’t one of them.

The frustration of the white liberal is re-enforced by the guilt he feels. Tucked away in the distant safety of his suburban refuge, he rationalizes his flight from the inner city with too much passion for comfort. After all, he has chosen white segregation (for whatever “respectable” reasons) despite his integrational propaganda. And the task of living with Negroes is left to lower-class whites, who are ironically condemned for their bigotry. At least, the parochial old Pole from Hamtramck remains in the city.

Nor does the Vietnam war ease the dilemma. Resolution after resolution is passed by the committees and agencies of the liberal establishment to insist on massive federal expenditures – but to no avail. The money for our urban battlefields is being squandered in a futile war where defeat is inevitable. The special rub of the war is not only the absence of funds for black housing and employment but also the political paranoia that humiliation in Vietnam will yield. Ego-crushed white nationalists will not be more generous to Negroes after losing their Asian battle; they will demand convenient domestic scapegoats.

A brutal realism is the first requirement for those who wish to improve white-black relations. It will do no good to parade the pious propaganda that Seeks to mold non-existent good Will and to utilize non-existent financial resources. it will honestly .assess what cannot be attained. as well as those goals which can be achieved. It will not lie to whites about their inner thoughts and feelings; nor will it deceive Negroes with bold illusions of power. Realism, most importantly, will easily distinguish between what whites are willing to do and what they ought to do. It will also distinguish between what black militants say Negroes want and what the masses of inarticulate lower-class blacks really want.

If one must clarify what is not presently achievable, he needs no crystal ball to predict that there will be no immediate end to racial violence. The causes of black anger are too profound to allow even the most generous federal subsidy to assuage it. Inner city rioting and destruction are inevitable for many years to come. The white community in America is not prepared to repent in a decade the collective sins of three centuries. Nor is it evident that Any action short of violence will provide the necessary catharsis for the bitter fury of an H. Rap Brown and a Leroi Jones-Defiance of the white man which starts out as a means to a more noble end, becomes by its consuming passion the very end itself.

It is, therefore, naive to assume that the white liberal can prevent the increased use of police and military power to control and repress. The white establishment desires immediate security more than it desires to alleviate Negro suffering. Violence terrifies the middle class. If they must choose between a curtailment of their individual freedom and the protection of their lives and property, the former will suffer. Black violence is a prelude to a kind of infant fascism, where the forces of law and order emerge as the saviors of society. To an army humiliated by the debacle of Vietnam, domestic guerilla warfare provides an ideal arena in which. to redeem their reputation. At least, the white natives are friendly.

To imagine that one can achieve a dramatic reduction in white racism in the near future is Also illusory. When normal relationship of even the,”libeal” Jewish suburban housewife to the Negro community is the dependence on ‘Negro domestics, the image of’the black man as a social inferior is built into the very fabric of bourgeois society. After all the brotherhood oratory is blown away, Jewish liberals cannot live without their “shvartsee”. The only economic niche that Negroes possess is the performance of menial tasks that no one else is willing to do. Gratuitous moral advice about how “one must start at the bottom” is strictly irrelevant. I know of no local Jewish household that would allow its most incompetent child to become a maid. Being a Bolshevik sounds more respectable.

The near permanence of the black ghetto is a corollary of white racism. While light-skinned, Caucasian featured middle-class Negroes will derive the full benefit of open housing laws and slip, in discreet numbers, into the suburban sanctuary, the lower-class urban black will continue to endure the prison of his tribal reservation. In a social-climbing white society where status is fluid, the average Negro, whose color defines his class, is much too threatening to be more than a fleeting neighbor. Segregated living is an expression of the overwhelming desire of the white community. The residential behavior patterns of both bigots and liberals are indistinguishable.

As for the militant pleas to establish a black nation in some territorial parts of the United States, no proposal is more desirable – and none is less feasible. “Black Zionism” would be the best answer to the enormous self-hate of the American Negro. A truly independent state, in which all authority figures would be black and in which the continual provocations of white racism would be absent, is an ideal dream. Why should the Negro have to endure the agony of the perpetual defendant in a society which puts him on trial twenty-four hours a day and rewards his greatest efforts with the dubious honor of white tolerance? It is too devastating an experience to deserve such cheap rewards.

But reality intrudes. Black Americans are, by every valid social criterion, a distinct nationality – and an unfortunate one. Unlike French Canadians who possess a vast territorial base, enjoy the prestige of an ancient culture, and constitute over one-third of the population of Canada, the American Negro is a dispersed race, culturally severed from its African roots, and comprising but a tenth of the state’s citizens. ,It operates from no power base of self-confidence, prestige, economic indispensability, or numbers. Its urban Bantustans can be cordoned off and controlled by a vigilant government, while affluent white society can ultimately dispense with its services in an automated age. The facts are painful but clear. White America has no compelling material reason to surrender to extremist black demands. If the Negro cannot accept the role of a tolerated petitioner, if his ego balks at the smugness of the white establishment, then he has two choices – suicide by street violence, or emigration. A prosperous America, in which the vast majority of the white population is economically content, will not be easily, intimidated (even if justice demands that it ought to be).

It is for this reason that the African culture movement is doomed to failure. Black militant proposals to secede from the Anglosaxon milieu and to create an alternative culture for Afro-Americans are socially bizarre. It may be true that bourgeois values are perverse, soul-destroying, and unceratingly competitive – but they are the functioning values for economic advancement in modern America. It may be both charming and therapeutic to thrust earrings into male ear lobes, drape oneself in a Nigerian djallaba and mumble Swahili in ‘a Yoruba voodoo temple, while reciting the glorious history of the Mali empire – and also conducive to maintaining the lowest possible economic status with the greatest amount of effort. For no ethnic group in America has escaped the pressures of assimilation to the Anglosaxon culture game. To attempt to do so would be to abdicate any opportunity for social advancement. (Muttering Yiddish curses while adorned by a Polish CA tan is hardly the best entry to American corporate life on any level.) Identifying with African achievement may be as ego- strengthening as Jewish identification with Israeli might. But a vital Kikongo culture in America is no more viable then a vital Hebrew one. Self-esteem is derived from real power – not from a thespian withdrawal to a cultural hippieland.

The independence of the white middle-class and its power to demand conformity of all ethnic groups precludes vast federal expenditures to transform the ghetto landscape. The Kerner Commission Report notwithstanding, white Americans, conscious of their wealth and numbers, Will prefer to purchase their security more cheaply through police power. Why Should they spend billions when millions will do? Even a timely end to the Vietnam war will not radically alter the picture. Tax relief seems the more likely alternative. Open housing laws cost nothing, while rebuilding Detroit requires A Massive governmental commitment that a Congress’ attuned to public opinion will resist.

What then is achievable? What can the much maligned white liberal, who has some Vague attachment to an integrated humanistic society, hope to accomplish in this crisis?

The first and essential step is honesty. What often prevents an effective dialogue between the sympathetic* white and the sensitive black is the immense self righteousness of the former, who imagines that prejudice and exploitation are the sins of his neighbor. Without the willingness to admit our participation in a social structure which derives considerable social and economic benefits from Negro inferiority, white. assistance is nothing more than a cruel sham, confusing the pleasures of patronage with personal acceptance. We are often, by our overt behavior, as much white racists as the bigots we so passionately condemn. Without the humility of self-insight our efforts to help will only be pretentious.

Honesty must be followed by realistic compassion. To encourage black militants to indulge their raucous demands because we feel their claims are just is to be more sentimental than useful. The job of the concerned white is to prevent his guilt from interfering with his sound judgment. Wild demands for black autonomy and Africanization are illusions of power divorced from what is real. Those who make them in the long run harm their people and divert their energies from what is achievable. The white humanist supports a black leadership which knows that middle-class America is in no economic temper to support a socialist revolution. The price of any kind of Negro power in America is bourgeois conformity. It may be cruel and patronizing to tell deprived ghetto Negroes to talk and dress like white Anglosaxons. It may even be boorish to ask them to imitate all those stuffy do-gooders who come from their suburban luxury “to help the poor.” But what other alternatives exist? A self-pitying futile nationalism breeds only bitterness.

In fact, the concerned white is dubious of how accurately the black nationalist leadership articulates the goals and desires of the Negro masses. While a Malcolm X certainly verbalized the unexpressed anger of the American Negro, the Mao-Tse-Tung ambitions of a Stokeley Carmichael have less to do with the dreams of the unemployed Negro male rioter than the consumer economy advertising on NBC television. The bewildered and alienated jobless black with no trust in the future may be easily to violence. But his rage does not arise from the fact that he is a self-conscious dedicated proletarian revolutionary; it emerges from his failure to become the self-esteeming middle-class consumer the mass media idolize.

The keys to black advancement are the very corporate “villains” who create this frustrating vision. The American economy is controlled by giant corporations which have the economic power to provide the job training, employment, and housing for countless thousands of destitute blacks. It is in the economic interest of these institutions to preserve domestic harmony and to increase Negro purchasing power. In the absence of adequate federal support, their involvement is indispensable. In fact, it is sometimes easier for a profit oriented upper-class corporate leadership to act benevolently toward the Negro poor than a Congress attuned to the public opinion and irrational fears of middle-class whites. (Even A. T. & T. is less exclusive than most of the craft unions.) The president of General Motors may appear less romantic than Che Guevara and less bombastic than the Reverend Cleage. But he has a bit more to do with the realities of black power. He also has the good sense not to propose that the angry blacks seize economic control of their tribal reservations and end up, like the ‘successful’ Navajo Indians, by owning their own poverty.

White liberals; are often unable to utilize the real power resources of their own environment. Trapped by their silly propaganda, they denounce a corporate leadership they have never bothered to approach, and turn to a bigoted democratic electorate for concessions which will never be given. Perhaps the procedure ought to be reversed.

It is, of course, necessary to point out that, regardless of what economic opportunities are provided, large numbers of the inner city poor are beyond job training and permanent employment. They are either too hostile, too frightened, or too self-hating to be productively redeemable. They can only be sustained by a guaranteed minimum annual income (although it is highly doubtful that white voters are Presently willing to endorse it).

It is also important to indicate that there are countless articulate well-educated, and economically productive Negroes who find a white racist American society emotionally intolerable. Their grievance is not correctible. Like the sensitive Jews who found the subtle and overt anti-semitism of European countries psychically unbearable and immigrated to Israel, the only solution to the dilemma of the “proud” Negro is departure to an African environment where anger will not inhibit his creative talents. If such a suggestion seems both cruel and un-American, it is because we are deceived by a juvenile political propaganda that has nothing to do with the real America.

A white humanist who is both empirical And compassionate does not feed cliches to his audience. He recommends what is possible.

The Rabbi Writes – October 1967

Posted on August 14, 2024August 14, 2024 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Judaism, October 1967

San Francisco has always been a bourgeois city, the capital of Western elegance. But images change. Today the slum of Haight-Ashbury has dismissed the old “sophisticated” pose and trans-formed the city into the mecca of the psychedelic cult. A metropolis that prided itself on the impeccable dress of its citizens now features hordes of bearded beatniks chanting Hindu hymns. Adorned with a variety of anti-bourgeois clothing, the “hippies” have turned whole neighborhoods into havens of LSD colors and rock-and-roll rhythms. They have even taken a respectable English word like “straight” and given it a crooked connotation.

The philosophy of “hippiedom” is no mere passing fancy. Sustained by the pronouncements of Allen Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, the faithful have emerged in dozens of other cities and have recruited thousands of eager young people to their cause. Hundreds of students, from the most respected of middle-class homes, have dropped out of school to join the hippie ghetto and to express their total rejection of parental values. While many of the dropouts are fearful rejects of middle-class culture, many are talented and sensitive young adults, who, if they chose to play the bourgeois game, could win the game superbly, achieving all the rewards of money and prestige.

To view the hippie phenomenon objectively is particularly hard for American parents over thirty, whose vested-interest drives them to pursue success in our industrial culture. While the rejection of all that is sacred to our social striving is bad enough, the use of drugs as the chief vehicle to hippie ecstasy is absolutely terrifying. A bourgeois world which cannot cope with its tensions without alcohol, tobacco, and tranquilizer pills, ironically resists the chemical therapy of the hippie mystics. The reaction to the psychedelic message is rarely neutral. If the children respond with applause, the parents react with angry disgust.

How can we evaluate this “happening”? Is it a sign of some revolutionary good transforming our society, a rejection of all that causes hate and war, a genuine perception into the reality of man’s ultimate needs? Or is it, as its opponents maintain, a symptom of social decay; a flight from human responsibility, and a contemptible rationalization of selfishness and failure? In order to be insightful, we must measure the psychedelic claims against the psychedelic reality. We must soberly check to see whether the hippies “achieve” what they claim to achieve. The following observations may help us distinguish pretension from substance.

IF (1) Few people talk as much about “love” as do the hippie philosophers. “Straight society is an irrelevant, cruel, sneaky, dehumanizing, soul-devouring fraud” – which encourages destructive hate through competition and fosters mutual hostility through the greed of private property. Only by rejecting the world of competitive striving and private Materialism, the hippie ideologist maintains, can the essential benevolence of man express itself.

The truth of this thesis is hard to prove or disprove-. Experiments in non-competitive communal living are too few to provide sufficient evidence for-judgment. Whether Man is genetically aggressive or conditioned to hostility by the social games he plays is still open to question. But the sincerity of hippie experiment! is open to observation. It can be tested by how complete their withdrawal from bourgeois culture is effected passing free pretzels out to amused bystander in Golden Gate Park is no indication of basic change at all. Love-ins in public middle-class gardens, in full view of gawking tourists and bourgeois television, may provide less love than the pleasures’ of hostile defiance.

The irony of hippie life is that it chooses to practice its-anti-middle-class way of life in the heart of the bourgeois world. Most of the nineteenth century communal idealists sought, with evident hardship, to establish colonies of communal living outside the “disease” of urban living, the hippie protagonists, in overwhelming number, choose to live in cities. While the logic of hippie philosophy would dictate a total rejection of urban living and a withdrawal to islands of mutual love, the flesh and blood hippies cling to the jungle of ‘the urban slums where they are reduced to scrounging for, survival and defending themselves in subtle warfare with the surrounding natives.

A neutral observer might be led to the conclusion that the dynamic of hippie behavior is not the creation of societies of mutual love at all, but, rather, the establishment of a visible, organized; ritualized rejection of middle-class culture, which derives its psychic energies from the need to express public hate of middle-class values.

Perhaps; a symbolic relationship exists between the hippie ghetto and the bourgeois world. Perhaps, the hippie needs the shocked bourgeois tourist in order to give vent to his Strongest feeling – an almost uncontrollable rage and contempt; just as the middle-class bigot needs the hippie to define his own sense of soCia1 respectability. The two groups depend on each other in their mutual desire to hate. They must live close to each other in order that one side may visibly shock, and the other side play the game of being shocked. The propaganda of love looks a little silly in the setting in which it is publicly advertised.

While the outer violence of the political activist may be absent and deplored, the inner violence of repressed hate lurks underneath. The hippie has chosen to live in the most competitive way possible, by defiantly displaying his wares in the nasty battle of the urban market.

(2) No doctrine is more sacred in the hippie ideology than the suprema of freedom. To be free is to be authentic, to be a genuine individual. To be free is to resist the prison of social roles which forces every citizen to conform to fixed behavior patterns and to see through the morality games of any culture. To be free is to liberate oneself from predictable action and to indulge the surprise of one’s uniqueness. The pleasures of genuine individuality are the reward of freedom.

One would, therefore, imagine that the average hippie devotee would be the supreme individualist, whose behavior pattern conformed to no social role, and whose actions were largely spontaneous and unpredictable. But the evidence is a sad debunker of this pretension. The psychedelist has simply created a new social role – the task of “being a hippie”. From beads, to long hair, to the use of mind-expanding drugs to ritual pronouncements about love, the hippie script has been written to cover every phase of conscious living. Professional psychedelists are highly visible and their behavior patterns are quite predictable, in many cases more predictable than the “conformist” bourgeoisie they denounce. In their imitation of each other, they have simply created a new occupation and a new conformity.

The perceptive social observer knows that social roles are inevitable. He is wary of fanatic attempts to renounce them. He suspects that these feverish rejections only produce equally rigid social patterns in response. Humorful wisdom suggests that there is no way of avoiding playing the game of father, mother, doctor, lawyer, teacher, or “hippie”. An individual, who desires to be more than a hermit, selects or accepts a part in the drama of life – and tempers its demands by laughter, compassion, and occasional surprise.

It is, therefore, highly doubtful that people under thirty, who have developed neither self-esteem or critical skepticism, are capable of extracting the maximum freedom from the social game.

(3) The hippie maintains that our American perceptions are too pragmatic, that we are always judging the values of events and experiences by their future consequences, and that we have, as a culture, become insensitive to the intrinsic value of the present. In our mad pursuit of future success, we are too tense to see the glory of NOW. If we can only acquire the path to “timeless” ecstasy through meditation, mesmeric chanting, or chemical inducement, life will be free of the anxiety-ridden pursuit of the future.

The consequence of such an outlook would seem to be an indifference to the reality and significance of time. Yet, few movements are more time-conscious than the hippie phenomenon. Few psychedelists transcend the barrier, of thirty. Adults who are beyond that age are viewed as fairly “square” senior citizens, who are emotionally incapable of perceiving the hippie truth. Psychedelism seems designed as a cult for youth, with compulsory graduation after ten years indulgence. Unless one is a “guru” like Ginsberg or Leary, a member’s days are limited in the cult. After thirty, the initiate is viewed with suspicion and appears a bit oddball to the newer devotees.

The contemporary psychedelist is frightfully aware of time. He must squeeze in as much “experience” as he can possibly latch on to before the ominous sentence of “old age” reduces him to a hippie emeritus. Despite his professed indifference to the future, the devotee expresses unremitting contempt for those who have passed through the “beyond thirty” barrier and have become inevitably square. One begins to suspect that the hostilities of youth to authority in general have made the hippie the victim of a time obsession. By his own action, he has confirmed the patronizing evaluation of his “straight” mentors that hippieness is “only a phase they are going through”.

(4) The materialism of Western technological culture is the special bugaboo in the hippie devil land. The concern of all economic levels with consumption rather than creativity is especially distressing to the psychedelic ideologists. The quality of experience, and not the quantity of goods should be the most important concern for man. Each man should devote his time to “being himself” and not to achieving power over others through the artifacts he acquires. But, what about the material goods that are required for mere survival, and not for status identity? How does the hippie propose to provide for these?

It is important to note that psychedelism has arisen in an American economy of abundance. In China and Russia, where scarcity prevails, a segment of the potential labor force which chooses to regard itself as a professional leisure class, would be short on endurance. No community, with a shortage of essential material goods, can allow hippie free play. The recruits to the psychedelic ghettos come largely from the secure middle-class, where material security prevailed, and where the presence of adequate food and shelter was taken for granted. Whether they choose to work or not, the economy which provides them with the materials for their survival will very easily endure.

The irony of the matter is that the economic structure that enables the creation of psychedelic records, Andy Warhol movies, and reproduced poster art, must be a highly sophisticated technical culture. The pose of poverty is only a sham.

The hippie critique of our culture is not without merit. The assaults on hostile competition, conformist role playing, obsession with the future, and nervous consumption for status identity are necessary, even though cliched. The dilemma is that the solution creates anew the very same problems it is designed to eliminate. The psychedelists could use a little of their own advice in their assaults on the bourgeois world – a little more humor, and a little less self-righteousness.

The Rabbi Writes – August 1967

Posted on August 14, 2024August 14, 2024 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Judaism, August 1967

The world is still astounded by the smashing military victory of the Israeli people. The incredible destruction of the Arab armies in such a short period of time by vastly outnumbered troops and highly vulnerable air squadrons has altered the map of the Near East and revised its balance of power. While many observers had predicted the ability of Israel to defend itself, few had foreseen the deadly efficiency of its skill. Even the ludicrous incompetence of the Arab military leadership cannot detract from the superb efficiency of Dayan’s army.

The startling events are still too close to our experience to provide us with the perspective of accurate prediction. Until the smoke settles and the verbal hysteria abates, the future of Nasser and Hussein, Suez and the Syrian heights, will be difficult to calculate. While Russian passivity and restraint are good for peace, the humiliation of the United Nations is not. The inability of the Soviet Union and America to agree exposes U.N. powerlessness and reduces its procedures to the level of verbal aggression therapy. The justice of the Israeli victory is no compensation for the failure of world unity.

However, from the Jewish point of view, there are implications of the Israeli triumph that reveal certain Jewish realities which are often overlooked. The behavior of the Israelis and the reactions of Diaspora Jewry in the hour of crisis enable us to see ourselves as we really are. Illusions are dispelled. Several basic Jewish existents emerge from the fray.

(1) The war crisis has dramatically disclosed that the most compelling factor in Jewish life is still the state of Israel. Thousands of Jews who remain utterly unmoved by the appeals of religious discipline and theological doctrine, for whom both the synagogue and Jewish culture evoke only indifference, responded with unstinting sacrifice to Israel’s danger and with total exultation to her victory. Even the most assimilated members of the community whose cultural milieu is pure Anglosaxonism identified passionately with the peril and the triumph. It was as though the Jewish ego and Jewish self-esteem were inseparable from the survival of the state.

The cause of the phenomenon is hardly mysterious. In a world where antisemitism has historically created the status of the Jew and defined his identity, group self-consciousness is manifested in a sense of shared fate and common social destiny. The state of Israel is the first effective embodiment of Jewish resistance to the age-old hatred. Its destruction would be psychically catastrophic. For one Israeli soldier marching confidently to Suez is better therapy for the nervous bourgeoisie than a thousand interfaith banquets.

It has recently been asserted that American Jewish interest in Israel is waning and that the acculturated Western Jew is displaying declining interest in a distant Near Eastern state. The recent crisis proves this false. The non-Zionist Jew who may even find a Hebrew milieu repellent, and who would resist any personal residence in Israel derives immense ego support from its presence and success. The sociological truth is that the most dynamic institutions in any Jewish community are the Israel oriented philanthropies. The satisfactions they yield are vicarious. But they seem to cope with Jewish insecurity far better than any local indulgence.

(2) No phenomenon of modern times has been more harmful to the Jews than nationalism. For European chauvinism has usually gone hand in hand with a paranoiac fear of outsiders and racial antisemitism. No people has suffered more from the ravages of narrow patriotism than the Jew. If he was politically an internationalist and cosmopolitan, it was an act of self-defense. Ethnic tribalism was his most dangerous enemy.

But, underneath the sophisticated cover of the Western Jew, lurked the sting of national rejection and the desire for an environment of total acceptance. Jews responded to the nationalist terror by becoming nationalists themselves. Zionism was born out of the Jewish need to “normalize” Jewish existence, to find in group solidarity and territorial concentration the cure for alienation. For the victims of the holocaust the cult of urban individualism was emotionally unsatisfactory.

It is, therefore, an insensitive observation to assert that many European and Latin American countries could have absorbed the large numbers of Jewish refugees after the Second German War. Neither economic prosperity nor objective physical safety were the issues. The emotional security of “belonging” to both people and land was the indispensable requirement. Jews would gladly die for any nation which merged their ancestral memories with patriotism.

Jewish nationalism is the only vital force in Jewish life today. No other cpmmitment can evoke the discipline and fervor of the passion. There is no existing religious or political creed in any Jewish milieu that can match it. The cool courage and group discipline of the Israeli people derives from more than the individual will to live. It arises out of the deepest conviction that the survival of the Jewish state is worthy of supreme sacrifice.

The intemperate annexation of the Old City of Jerusalem (which, after all, was in Israeli hands regardless of label) and the emotional resistance to the repatriation of Arab refugees transcends considerations of domestic security. How can a Jewish state return a plot of land which is the symbol of ancient Jewish glory? And how can a Jewish state be feasible when close to one-half of its citizens will be speaking Arabic? The Poles tried to force the Ukrainians to speak Polish; and the Germans tried to force the Czechs to speak German – and to no avail. For each nationalism spawns a new one. And Arabs take a second seat to no-one in feeding on ancient glories and linguistic pride.

It is “comforting” to know how normal we Jews are. The antisemite has acetsed the Jew of being internationalist, cosmopolitan, individualist, and hopelessly urbanized – divorced from any genuine territorial roots and peasant virtue. His accusations are false. Under our sophisticated veneer we feel and think the same way most other people do. De Gaulle may be right; never underestimate the power of nationalism – French, Arab, or Jewish.

(3) The recent war revealed the new image of the Jew. The old image of the nervous and frightened bourgeois, begging for approval and pleading for acceptance is disappearing. The self-confident sabra unafraid to fight and contemptuous of public opinion is replacing it. The Jew used to be identified with obsequous withdrawal from physical battle. Today Moshe Dayan has emerged as the paragon of warrior courage. The current jokes about Arab cowardice and battle incompetence mirror the humor of European conversation half a century ago; only the Jews were the butt of the jokes in those days.

The tables have been turned. The Jew is now identified with one of the most efficient military machines of modern times, and is viewed as the contemporary expert in blitzkrieg. He is no longer photographed as a fleeing refugee, terrified by the power of his conquerors, he is now a conqueror himself, able to express compassion for refugees. The picture of Jewish helplessness which aroused pity, but never respect, has yielded to the image of power.

Vatican displeasure with the Jewish occupation of Jerusalem is derivative of this change. The Church could always deal with the Jew, sometimes even magnanimously, when he was a beggar and petitioner. But when the Church is forced to become the petitioner and to deal with the Jews as authority, figures, no matter how generous or protective the Jews may be, the situation is psychologically intolerable. The Vatican’s psychic dilemma is no different from that of the white liberal who patronize Negroes but cannot work for them.

The new Jew will have to forego the favorite weapon of the old Jew – self-pity. He cannot have his cake and eat it. He cannot plead weakness, reciting the litany of his past sufferings and simultaneously enjoy power. Auschwitz and the victory in Sinai are emotionally incompatible. People who feel strong do not need to twist the guilt-feelings of their neighbors.

(4) In ancient times the Hebrews were a hill-country people who were overwhelmed by the superior technology of an invading sea-people called the Philistines. The Israelites were the backward natives, while the Philistines represented the efficiency of “modern” weaponry. Today, the roles have been reversed. The Arabs are the backward natives, while the Jews represent the skills and competence of European technological success. The Arabs are in the Hill-country while the Jews occupy the sea coasts and the plains. And the Jews possess what the Arabs must acquire for their own entry into the scientific world of the twentieth century.

Jews may cringe at the suggestion that Israel is an outpost of Western cultural imperialism in the Near East. But that is exactly what it is; and there need be no shame in affirming the truth., The Saudi Arabian delegate to the United Nations, with all his denunciations of Western materialism and with all his applause of Bedouin simplicity, cannot disguise the poverty, disease, and fatalistic dullness that has characterized the traditional Arab way of life. The Arabs could use a little Western “materialism”. It might reduce the intensity of their frustration and soften the shrillness of their chauvinistic rantings. A world that realizes the material promises of a Nasser would no longer need Nasser.

A word of caution. Jewish arrogance is both immoral and useless. The way of life which Israel represents in the Middle East is not originally Hebrew or uniquely Jewish. It represents a sharp break with our historic Jewish past. The world of scientific technology is a creation of Western Europe and is hardly the stuff that Talmudic discipline is made of. Moreover, despite our jokes, the Arabs may ultimately acquire the necessary science efficiency in less time than it took the Eastern European Jew or the Japanese.

For humanists, the presence of Israelis as potential technical missionaries is an ideal one. And the quiet courage and competence of the Israeli people is much to be preferred to the childish bravado and whining of the Arab leadership. But intransigent nationalism, whether Jewish or Arab, (which are prevailing realities regardless of our desire), may never allow these personal skills to be properly used.

Humanistic Judaism in the 21st Century – Sherwin Wine

Posted on November 30, 2023November 30, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

Video: Rabbi Sherwin Wine – Humanistic Judaism in the 21st Century, Sherwin Wine in 2001

A Humanistic Kaddish

Posted on November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Kaddish image

YIT-GAD-DAL V’-YIT-KAD-DASH SH’-LA-MA B’A-L’MA.
NIV-RA SH’-LA-MA KHEE-R’-OO-TA-NA V’-NAM-LEEKH MAL-KHOO-TAY
B’KHIE-YAY-KHON OO-V’-YO-MAY-KHON OO-V’-KHIE-YAY D’-KHOL BAYT
YIS-RA-EL BA-AH-GA-LA OO-VEE-Z’-MAN KA-REEV. V’-EEM-ROO SHALOM.
Y’-HAY SHLA-MA RAB-BA M’-VA-RAYKH L’-A-LAM OO-L’-AL-MAY AL-MIEYA.
YIT-BA-RAKH V’-YISH-TA-BAKH YIT-PA-AR V’-YIT-RO-MAM V’-YIT-NASSAY
V’-YIT-HA-DAR V’-YIT-AH-LE V’-YIT-HAL-LAL SH’-LA-MA B’-AL-MA B’-REEKH HOO.
L-AY-LA MIN KOL BIR-KHA-TA V’-SHEE-RA-TA TOOSH-B’-KHA-TA V’-NEHE-
MA-TA DA-A-MEE-RAN B’-AL-MA. V-EE-M’-ROO SHA-LOM.
Y’-HAY SH’-LA-MA RAB-BA V’-HIE-YEEM A-LAY-NOO V’-AL KOL YIS-RA-EL
V’-EEM-ROO SHA-LOM
NA-A-SE SHA-LOM BA-O-LAM. A-LAY-NOO V’-AL KOL YIS-RA-EL V’-EEMROO SHA-LOM.

Wonderful is peace in the world. Let us create a peaceful world and let us establish its kingdom now and in the future. May peace come upon us to bless our lives. May we always continue to honor peace in the world even though no praise can equal the importance of its reality. May peace and life prevail for us and for all Israel. Let us work to create peace here on earth for all people, and let us say Peace.

Two Visions of America

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.

The Philosophy of Humanistic Judaism: Part II Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

The Philosophy of Humanistic Judaism: Part II Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine

Humanistic Judaism Magazine Spring 1969

Jewishness is a modern paradox. While it is easy to define Jews it is hard to define what makes them Jewish. The criteria of identity are so unconscious that few people can articulate their standards. Although they are strong and compelling, verbal description rarely does them justice. The state of being Jewish seems to r e sist the conventional categories and to emerge as a unique phenomenon.

Understanding the Jewish condition is inhibited by security needs. A minority vulnerable to hostility and persecution wants to create a public image of impeccable respectability. The religious definition of the Jew, which is the official “party” line of the community establishment, has less to do with the facts than with the need to be socially conforming. In a unitary American culture, which is intolerant of permanent ethnic diversity, Judaism must be essentially religious or forego its normality. After proper deference is paid to the propaganda of pluralism, lasting group loyalties which require neither church nor temple still appear as mildly subversive.

If we view religion narrowly as the organized expression of a theological point of view, or more broadly as a community reflection of a unique philosophy of life, then, in neither case, is the essence of contemporary Jewish identity religious. The metaphysical and ethical beliefs of American Jewry are as diverse as those of the general population. If the Lubavitcher Hasidim and the Workmen’s Circle are part of the same group, then the group can hardly be defined by a single orientation to the cosmos. Membership in the community is pragmatically independent of either private belief or public creed.

The interfaith “what we Jews believe” syndrome is one of the more pathetic deceptions our culture provides. It hides the breadth of Jewish disagreement and obscures the real bonds of group unity.

Certainly, the racial definition of the Jew is less than appropriate. It has become almost a cliche of ADL propaganda to deny (with a host of scientific evidence) the myth of ethnic purity. Although Jews publicly resist genetic uniqueness, their private conversations about Jewish hereditary ‘genius’ reveals a viewpoint little different from the grosser racialism . Our people are ambivalent about the charge of physical identity. They like sharing the genes of Einstein as long as they can avoid any necessary connection with those of Fagin. When Kaufmann Kohler, the leader of Reform a half century ago, asserted that Jews possessed an innate gift for spiritual greatness, the Jews applauded. But Hitler and the antisemites changed the mood. Racial superiority was delightful; racial inferiority was less than tolerable.

It is undoubtedly true that, in given areas of the world, rigid inbreeding produced a regional Jewish ‘type.’ But there was no uniformity among the types. Modern Israel reveals the genetic diversity of world Jewry. The stark juxtaposing of European, Asiatic, and African Jews, so visible to the tourist eye, explodes the racial theory.

Cultural unity is no more adequate as a proper definition. Being an illusion, it survives in the dreams of secular chauvinists. Without the vehicle of a Jewish language, the behavior patterns of the Jewish citizens of Western technology tend to be indistinguishable from those of their middle-class neighbors. Israel’s cultural uniqueness lies in the revival of the Hebrew language. Lived in English, Israeli life would become standard American. If contemporary nationalists fight desperately for linguistic uniqueness, they do so because they know that, without it, assimilation to an international industrial culture is inevitable. Since Yiddish is dead and functional Hebrew is confined to a small minority of world Jewry, English speaking American Jews can share the society of their Anglo Saxon colleagues more easily than the world of either their Russian relatives or their Israeli cousins.

Painting, music, and drama have also ceased to have clear national styles. The modern variations in artistic expression cross national boundaries and cause dissension within every country. Our present technology is molding an artistic smorgasbord which is more universal than the language compartments suggest. As one of the most ardent participants on this cosmopolitan feast, the Jew is divorced from the very parochial conditions which would make a cultural definition possible.

Nor can one honestly assert that Jews are ethically distinct. Many apologists maintain that Jews possess moral virtues that other groups do not, and that group identity is defined by a set of commonly held ethical values. When pressed to be more specific, the defenders of this thesis usually resist. If they do make citations, they invoke the family unity of the Jewish home or the pursuit of education. Since neither of these values is uniquely Jewish, the moral definition collapses before the evidence. And since the ethical behavior of Jews is not noticeably superior to that of other groups, the thesis savors of a hutspadik pretension. Active Jewish liberalism may have many individual exponents; but it hardly characterizes the vast majority of contemporary Jews.

The attempt to equate Jewishness with a set of eminently respectable social values is an act of moral boorishness. It suggests, by implication, that these values (if they are defining virtues) are absent from the behavior of nonJews. Such an act of gracelessness is typical of the self-righteous. It reveals a kind of humorless arrogance (which is not uniquely Jewish).

Scholars who are desperate may end up by relegating Jewishness to the category of “mystery ,” or by peevishly asserting that “anyone is Jewish who says he is .” But neither solution is satisfactory. The first romanticizes confusion; and the second ignores the involuntary character of Jewish identity.

An adequate definition of Jewish status must begin with an honest appraisal of how Jews identify each other. There is obviously an operative standard of inclusion and exclusion. It is neither theological nor racial nor cultural nor m oral. If we look carefully we will see that it has less to do with personal behavior than with family connection.

Jewish status, like one’s last name, is a matter of birth. As we are born into our nuclear family, so are we born into our Jewish condition. We may become theists or humanists, Zionists or anti-Zionists, Birchers or Marxists, devotees of Moses or lovers of Zen–but, as long as we and others are aw are of our family tree, our Jewishness persists. Conventional Jewish mothers do not check the ideological commitments of their prospective sons-in-law; they want to know who the parents are. An antisemitic atheist from a Jewish womb is acceptable; a circumcised Hebrew -speaking American who believes in the truth of the Bible is not.

Conversion to Judaism has been historically rare, not only because of Christian persecution, but also because missionary prospects viewed Judaism as a kind of family affair. To become a Jew was not only to accept the discipline of the halakha but also to assume the ancestry of Abraham. It was to sever one’s familial connections and to pretend to be a child of another tribe. Without a pervasive sense of common forefathers, the religious bonds would have been insufficient to insure group unit. Even the blackest of Jewish blacks in Abyssinia and the most Tartarish of Jewish Tartars in the Crimea insisted on their physical descent from the patriarchs. Without that illusion, the legitimacy of their status would have been open to question.

Rabbinic Judaism affirmed this standard by declaring that the offspring of a Jewish mother was irrevocably Jewish. No apostasy, no repudiation of hallowed beliefs, no mockery of community custom, could alter his identity. Jewishness came with the womb and expired only with death. New members might be adopted (‘conversion’ has an ideological non-Jewish overtone) into the group; but their acceptance and the acceptance of their children were never secure until the adoption was forgotten.

The outside world responded to this criterion by viewing Jewishness as an inherited condition. Disraeli may have been a devoted member of the Church of England, lauding the virtues of Protestant Christianity; but in the eyes of his public, he remained a Jew –albeit an Anglican one. Marx may have despised all forms of organized religion, branding them the opium of the people; yet, in the view of both friend and foe, he was irresistibly Jewish –even though in an atheistic way. Womb identity was not an antisemitic invention; it was a venerable Jewish tradition, which both insider and outsider applied with consistency.

Now racial and familial identity must not be confused. The first implies (if we use the precise university definition) physical uniformity. The second only demands a sense of shared ancestors. Two people, of visibly different genetic makeup, may still share a common set of grandparents–or think they do. A family that started in Jerusalem might disperse itself throughout the world, intermarrying with wide varieties of racial types, and still retain the sense of closeness that common ancestry provides. The familial feeling would lie in genealogy–and not in physiology.

Even sharp cultural differences would not inhibit group intimacy. The Rothschilds became in each of their environments, either impeccably English or impeccably French, or impeccably German, without shedding the family loyalty that went beyond financial interest. Even the Sassoons, embracing Oriental and Occidental extremes, enjoyed a world-wide family unity. Racial, linguistic, and philosophic differences often surrender to the power of the mishpokha feeling.

Jews are no exception. As one of the oldest enduring extended families, they have spanned the world, participated in all its major cultures, savored all its vital religious ideologies, and simultaneously retained the group bond. Whether it be the pleasure of family roots or the pressure of external hostility, the cause of their togetherness has been independent of ethical value and cosmic belief.

An honest Judaism starts with this reality and builds on it. Instead of forcing Jews into ideological and cultural niches that do not fit, instead of defining Jewishness by universal moral values that most people never live up to, instead of foolishly trying to mold a people to meet the demands of a ruthless respectability, we ought to just relax with what we really are. We ought to good-humoredly confront the fact that if we insist on searching for a common set of theological notions or social values which describe all Jews, living or dead, we are condemned to futility. If we cannot accept membership in an international extended family united by feelings of shared ancestry and ties of common history, without the pretension of ethical distinction, we cannot accept our Jewishness. The propaganda of religious leaders and cultural secularists have refused to confront us with this truth.

A Jewish humanism uses this truth in assisting the modern Jew to be authentic. By affirming that Jewish identity is non-ideological and familial, it never forces the individual to compromise his integrity with the demand that he ought to believe what he doesn’t believe. By insisting that Jewishness is independent of any kind of moral supremacy, it frees the person from pretending to be what he knows he isn’t. By equating group membership with family feeling instead of cultural uniqueness, it can confront the reality of our status without refusing to accept the nature of our assimilation. Jews and Jewishness may be both pro-social and anti-social, beautiful and ugly, wise and foolish. They may display behavior patterns which are sometimes admirable and sometimes disgusting, but perfectly normal and eminently human. Like all large families, Jews have their fair share of saints and beasts as well as their fair quota of mystics and rationalists. Of course, none of these alternatives has anything to do with the state of being a Jew.

As a member of an old tribe with many memories the Jew is inevitably drawn to family anniversaries. These are called holidays and are as appropriate to the Jewish people as birthdays and wedding reminders are suitable to smaller clans. The realistic pleasures of Rosh Hashana, Hanukka, and Passover are usually familial, and have little or nothing to do with theological commitment. The old Haggada may be intellectually intolerable, but the Seder remains a vital group experience. Days of Judgment may be amusing leftovers of bygone societies, but Rosh Hashana survives as a meaningful affirmation of group identity. The fall holiday season more realistically celebrates the birth of the Jewish people than the birth of the world.

The Jewish calendar is a family calendar. While it ought to be enhanced and supplemented by celebrations that affirm our human identity, it gives us historic roots and invites us to enjoy our birthright without confusing it with questionable dogma and ludicrous pretension.

Child education for Jewish humanists has two dimensions. One is information about man and his past which will enable the child to understand his intimate connection with all men; the other is an objective and scientific understanding of his Jewish family, which will provide him with suitable insight into his involuntary status as a Jew. Since the secular schools already provide most of the “human” information, it is the primary role of the temple school to afford the Jewish data. Of course, Jewish history must always be presented within the humanist assumption that human identity is primary and that Jews are as historically guilty of resisting this commitment as any other group. Teachers who view religious education as a defense and apology for historic Jewish beliefs and behavior are responsible for the hysterical character of current curricula. Self-flattery is a symptom of self-h ate; honesty is a sign of self-esteem.

If you ask reasonably: why bother with Jewish holidays and Jewish history; why bother to perpetuate old “family” identities that have neither philosophic nor ethical uniqueness, the humanist answer emerges from unpleasant fact and realistic hope. The unpleasant fact is chronic antisemitism. It would be nice to live in a world where Jewish identity would not arouse the paranoiac fears of countless millions and would not be of great social importance to masses of people. But reality defies desire. Humanists who are Jews early discover that their humanism is of less significance to the public than their Jewishness. As long as external hostility exists (no m atter how dramatically diminished), the Jewish family will exist. The only options open to the members of that family will be relaxed acceptance or futile resistance.

The realistic hope is a practical variation on a utopian d re a m of “one world.” Since the greatest obstacle to human unity is the organized power of state nationalism , any existing group of strong internal loyalty which transcends state boundaries and unites people on an international scale is a welcome ally in a good cause. Whatever the allegiance be, class, professional, or familial, if it enables people to feel a part of a society broader than their nation, it is a step in the right direction. The Jews have been accused by their enemies of being both rootless and cosmopolitan. It is a hidden compliment that ought to be exploited.

Familial ties are never trivial. From the view of childhood conditioning, they make theological propositions and moral slogans look powerless. The question is: are they beneficial? If they become fearful obsessions with family survival, defensive apologies for group superiority, they do great harm. If, on the contrary, they sponsor a happy wedding of sentiment and individual integrity, they can be vehicles of immense social good.

The Philosophy of Humanistic Judaism: Part I

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

The Philosophy of Humanistic Judaism: Part I Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine – Summer 1968

The first need of American Jewry is survival; it is honesty. Before we can plan what we should be, we have to know what we are. Before we can discuss the conditions of group endurance, we have to confront the reality that endures. Pious statements of non-existent belief will do us no good. It is ludicrous to praise bibles we don’t read and gods we don’t worship. It is futile to announce commitments we have long since abandoned and attachments we have clearly discarded. Self-deception is a common human art, which finds its most comfortable home in modern religious institutions.

Most definitions of contemporary Judaism are the product of academic fantasies. Scholars and clergymen imagine what they would like Jews to believe and they proceed to equate that desire with what Jews believe. There are countless books available for popular reading which propose to reveal the commitments of modern Jewry. Waxing eloquent on matters theological, their authors discuss the deep God devotion and intense worship practices of the American Jewish community. The naive Gentile reader would assume that his local Jews were “chips off the Old Testament,” pious Bible lovers who can hardly wait for their next installment of Midrashic commentary. Long discourses on the covenant between God and Israel are followed by impassioned references to the centrality of Torah in Jewish life. Modern Jewry turns out to be only an adjusted extension of good old Hillel and Akiba. Having carefully studied these documents of illusions, the realistic observer can only ask, “If there are so many Jews like the ones described, where are they?”

But the illusion is understandable. It is difficult for most people to confront what they really are and what they really believe. There are many factors, psychic and social, which inhibit our insight and prevent us from seeing the obvious. If intellectual integrity were the only human need, honesty would be easy.

In fact, we tend to determine what we believe by what we say rather than by what we do. Imprinted from childhood with certain ritual phrases of belief, we repeat them endlessly as a convenient way of describing what we have never bothered to investigate. Too often so -called sociological surveys of Jewish belief depend on the direct questioning of individuals who lack any form of self-insight. The people interviewed parrot back phrases learned in Sunday School which bear absolutely no relationship to their behavior. After all, what a man is truly committed to, he is willing to act on. If a person claims to love prayer, but rarely prays; if an individual lauds the meaningfulness of God, but never invokes God for the solution of his daily problems; if a man describes the Torah as the greatest of all possible books, but never reads it: he is either lying or self-deceived. For what a man does is the only adequate test of a man’s beliefs.

The pressure of society is another inhibiting cause of honesty. We live in a culture where theological belief is respectable. In modern suburbia, belonging to a church or synagogue and sending the children to Sunday School are more than fashionable, they are social requirements. Affiliation with a religious institution never has to be justified; non-affiliation always has to be explained. As long as one is willing to say that he believes in God (in some way or other), he is socially safe and free from, the pain of neighborly disapproval. For Jews, who are a vulnerable ethnic minority addicted to rapid social climbing and who bear the neurotic scars of two thousand years of relentless persecution, caution is preferable to honesty. After fear has dictated our conformity, we rationalize our action by imagining that we believe what our behavior denies.

And then there is guilt. No cause of self-deception is more powerful. Since our religion is inextricably bound up with the family into which we are born, we cannot easily separate our religious practices from our family loyalties. To attempt to make this distinction is to expose ourselves to the painful disapproval of those we love. Intellectual honesty appears, in the moment of stress, a trivial obstacle to parental pressure. The challenge need not be overt. We have only to imagine the pleading faces of our venerable ancestors, who sacrificed their lives to defend what we no longer believe. It is psychically necessary for many to think that what they are saying and doing meets the expectations of their forefathers. The desperate attempt of the Reform movement to demonstrate some vital connection between its modern rationalism and the fanatic temperament of the ancient prophets is a case in point. Only guilt would have the power to drive men to such an absurd conclusion.

In order to understand the realities of what we believe we have to pay serious attention to what we do or don’t do. We have to observe what really excites Jews as opposed to what they say excites them. In other words, sociologists can give us better insight into the nature of Judaism than theologians.

For example. Although the synagogue is often hailed as the Jewish house of learning, it can more accurately be described in America as a permanent shelter for puberty rites. Without Bar mitsva and confirmation its school system would lose its very reason for existence and would abandon the temple to the dreary function of remembering the dead. Not that Jews have given up learning. In fact, Jew s today constitute a major part of our domestic intellectual elite. They are even accused of controlling American letters and exercising massive control over academic studies. If they are better educated than ever before, it is hardly because of the synagogue. The secular university has become the new shrine for Jewish studies. Its disciplines of psychology, sociology, medicine, and law have long ago replaced the study of the Bible and rendered Talmud learning exotic even for Jews. If an objective observer desires to understand the motivating beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Jews under forty, he should devote his time to analyzing the fundamental principles of scientific and university inquiry. An intimate reading of Rabbi Akiba will do him no good. It may, at best turn out to be a delightful exploration of what Jews used to believe.

Modern Judaism has much more to do with the methods of the secular university than with the techniques of the Talmudic rabbis. Empiricism, pragmatism, and free inquiry are far more characteristic of the truth procedures of contemporary Jews than attachment to prophetic revelation . One may approve or deplore this situation, but neither sentiment will reverse the change. One may summon all Jews back from their “sinful heresies,” denounce their disloyalty, invoke the suffering faces of ancient martyrs, and bemoan the changes with tired contempt; but the new reality will not be altered. An ironic transformation has come to pass. Orthodoxy, by virtue of the secular revolution, has ceased to be Jewish, Like the Sabbath day in America, it is something for Seventh Day Adventists–and not for Jews.

Nor will the Bible game survive much scrutiny. Reform rabbis may arrange countless interfaith banquets where the Torah devotion of their congregants is announced and applauded. They may do dramatic readings of the psalms and clever reinterpretations of Bible verses. They may even expose the world to the unknown Talmudic wonders of Jewish history. But to no avail. An objective survey of present Jewish reading reveals that most Jews rarely open the Bible and never study the Talmud. Despite the nostalgic novels of Potok, Agnon, and Singer, the Jews have found new and more exciting study materials. After they have paid their customary tribute to the glories of ancient Jewish literature, they read something else.

As for the life of prayer and worship, it functions as a very dim memory in the psyche of the suburban Jew. While it is periodically indulged at Bar mitzvas and Yahrzeits, it is a somewhat vicarious experience, in which the rabbi, cantor, or choir perform for a passive audience. The reason for this laxity is clear. To the skeptical, analytic, and humorful mind, worship is difficult; and to the devotee who has redefined God as a natural impersonal force, prayer is silly. Without the imagined presence of an awesome, all-powerful father figure the whole structure of Jewish worship collapses. The recent Reform proposals to revise the Union Prayer Book seem a bit anachronistic. Why bother to improve prayers for people who don’t want to pray? Perhaps more drastic alternatives are needed.

If one objectively surveys the Jewish activity of adult Jews in an America metropolitan community, he immediately notices that most of this activity has nothing whatever to do with what is usually called religious practice. Outside ghetto socializing, the only uniquely Jewish cause which excites Jews is uninvolved with either theology or worship. This cause is the state of Israel. The June war revealed to many blasé sophisticates the reality of their Jewish involvement. Their excitement sometimes puzzled and disturbed them — but it was real and could not be denied. The Israeli attachment is the very reverse of the theological commitment. In America we tend, for reasons of social safety, to overstate the genuineness of a theological conviction we have gradually abandoned and to understate the depth of an ethnic attachment our behavior clearly reveals.

The reality of what Jews actually do is the best evidence of the character of modern Judaism. Existing Jewish practice gives no indication that there persists in the American community the kind of religious conviction that motivates people to live by the classic standards of either the Bible or the Talmud. Contemporary Jewish culture is university oriented and scientifically indoctrinated. Present day middleclass Jews have found ways other than theology to deal with their anxieties. The rabbis may cleverly poke fun at the reigning psychiatrist; but they still have to come up with a more effective alternative. Preferring Moses to Freud is irrelevant in an environment where nobody reads Moses.

An honest Judaism does not describe what Jews used to believe; it clarifies and articulates what Jews do believe. Since Jewish identity is defined by society (and even by Orthodoxy) as an ethnic identity, Judaism changes from century to century. In Solomon’s day it was polytheistic; in Hillel’s day it was monotheistic; in our time it has, by any behavior standard, become humanistic. As long as a Jewish people persists, whatever beliefs the overwhelming majority of that people subscribes to is justifiably called Judaism. Our task is, therefore, to discard pretense, to check our actions, and to discover what we truly believe. Without honest self-insight, we are condemned to the futile task of improving illusions.

Can There Be a Religion in Which the Concept of God is Irrelevant?

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

Can There Be a Religion in Which the Concept of God is Irrelevant?

A HUMANISTIC RABBI’S VIEWPOINT RABBI

SHERWIN T. WINE

Humanistic Judaism Magazine June 1967

The crisis of religion today is a crisis of belief. In a scientific age when the empirical method dominates the pursuit of truth, the belief frame works that sustained conventional religious activity have collapsed. What a man believes about himself, and his universe determines how he behaves; and, therefore, a change in belief is no trivial matter.

The decline of prayer and worship among thousands of the educated middle class (who, unlike the urban proletariat, have no economic ax to grind with church hierarchy) is a direct consequence of altered belief. No man can be motivated to pray when he has lost the possibility of a personal God; and no individual can be persuaded to worship when he views all persons, objects, feelings, and forces as ideal items for analysis and measurement. If, indeed, religion is dependent on the notions of a personal deity and sacred mystery, then it will be sustained in twentieth-century America not by individual conviction, but by social inertia.

In our contemporary culture the institutions that most effectively “imitate” the historic functions of organized religion are no longer the churches and synagogues. In the areas of pageantry, pilgrimage, and wisdom prestige, the secular schools and universities have become our modern shrines. While the clergy of urban America are peripheral powers, (whose weakness is hidden by immense respectability), the academic leadership in the social, physical, and biological sciences has become the new priesthood (whose strength is disguised by the novelty of power). Much of the social reverence that used to be directed toward priestly hierarchies and church establishments is now directed toward academic institutions. The major reason for this significant shift of respect is the new belief that the university, and not the church, is the source of extraordinary power in our present society.

In fact, the issue of “extraordinary power” is the issue of religion; for all historic religions have been structured attempts to deal with those powers and forces that contemporary wisdom viewed as significant. Whatever persons or things, celestial or earthly, possessed an immense potential to implement or frustrate human happiness and survival have been of religious interest. The emotions of adoration and awesome fear are normal human reactions to confrontation with great power. Gods are not religiously interesting because they are gods; they are religiously interesting because they are powerful. Both the Epicureans and the primitive Buddhists believed in the existence of gods; and both found divinities religiously irrelevant, since the deities they believed in were helpless to influence human salvation.

Modern man is still concerned with the age-old religious question; “How do I discover and use the extraordinary powers of my universe in order to achieve my happiness?” The programs of salvation outlined by Jews, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, Confucianists, and hosts of other groups normally identified as religious, are all related to this question. It is false to assert that historic religion has been God-centered in terms of goal; it has always been man-centered and a function of human need and desire (for how else would you motivate man to follow the program?) From the point of view of most historic religions, God is a means to an end. He is overwhelmingly significant not because he is God, but because it is believed that his power and presence are indispensable to human happiness. If, on the contrary, one believes that God is powerless to influence human welfare, he is justifiably ignored as religiously irrelevant.

Moreover, the meaninglessness of life does not arise out of man’s lack of purpose or goal. All men consciously desire happiness (a favorable balance of satisfaction over frustration). The meaninglessness of life arises out of the belief that in this universe happiness is not achievable, that man’s “destiny” is frustration. Religion has historically been identified with the quest for meaning, not because it has provided man with the goal of life, but because it has affirmed that the established goal was achievable and outlined the procedures necessary for such achievement.

A viable modern religion must enable man to understand and use the significant forces within and without him that make life meaningful. The decline of traditional religion is due to the ever-increasing belief that the old religion is unrelated to the social and physical forces that count. An effective contemporary viewpoint must acknowledge this problem and must clearly direct human attention to those forces that do count. A useful religion is always open to new information and revises its schedule of significant powers on the basis of new evidence.

Under these circumstances, it is obvious that theology, as a source of information about available powers, is an anachronism. In the middle ages theology was the “queen of the sciences”; no other discipline was more important. It was universally believed that without proper knowledge of God’s desire and God’s power human salvation was not possible. Therefore, any disclosure about God was crucial. To ignore theology would be to ignore happiness; it would be a deliberate act of masochism.

But the modern world has effected a dramatic change. The contemporary university, the center of wisdom authority, is devoid of theological interest. Hosts of students pass through its discipline, vitally absorbed with the powers that influence and control their destiny, and yet with total indifference to the issue of God. Theology has become an academic irrelevance. In the practical religion of faculty and students, God has ceased to be a significant power and is, therefore, “religiously” uninteresting. He survives in most intellectual circles as a nostalgic word and as a nod to social respectability.

The “death” of theology is not something to be deplored; it was inevitable in an age which applauds the procedures of science. What is deplorable is the inability of organized religion to dispense with a study which inhibits its religious effectiveness. The repeated theological furors of the post-war years are no sign of renewed vitality; they are the noisy friction between religious vested interests and the university culture which resists them.

There are four good reasons why theology stands in the way of an effective religion.

(1) Religion should be identified with the most effective procedure for the achievement of informational truth available today. That procedure is the empirical or scientific method. The virtue of this method is that it is responsible to the structured evidence of public experience and not to the whim of personal feeling and intuition. Its additional virtue is that it is self- correcting. Since truth is a function of the evidence of sense-experience, and new experience is always forthcoming, there can be no fixed statements about the world. How man views the power structure of the universe is continually alterable. Specific conclusions can be revised without the necessity of rejecting the method that sponsored them.

While Biblical theology relied on a naive empiricism , citing unusual events, voices, apparitions, and personal conversations with God as evidence for divine reality, the classical theology that emerged in the middle ages denied the relevance of sense-experience to the demonstration of theological truth. Since God was metaphysical (beyond space-time), observable events in space-time could neither demonstrate nor refute the nature or power of God. Personal intuition and inner certainty became the sophisticated alternatives to testing by experience; and no real discussion or revision of beliefs was possible in an age when acts of faith were elevated to absolute truth. Fixed conclusions turned disagreement into heresy.

Mere freedom of expression is no corrective to the abuses of the past, because freedom without responsibility is a waste of time. Since even modern, “sophisticated”, liberal theologians resist the idea that the existence, nature, and power of God are empirical questions, theology is profitably dispensed with. A “science” that has no adequate technique for distinguishing between reality and creative fiction beyond the presence of inner certainty may provide short-run therapy but hardly long-run usefulness.

(2) The derivative powers of modern education are the result of intellectual fearlessness. Jewish anti-idolatry carried to its logical conclusion means that there is no word, idea, hypothesis, or value which a man should be afraid to reject. It also means that there is no person, place, thing, or force which a man should be afraid to investigate or measure.

However, traditional religion thrived on the category of sacredness. Sacred persons, objects, or ideas are “taboo,” dangerous to investigate and absolutely non-rejectable. The appropriate response to sacredness is not measured probing; it is the act of worship. Worship is an awesome adoration which precludes sober investigation. When a worshipper lacks information about the object of his reverence, he generally replies, “It’s a mystery,” (with all its implications of the dangerous unknown). When a scientist lacks information about the object of his research, he usually re plies, “I don’t know,” (with all its aura of pedestrian sobriety).

In an age when man has replaced worship with the techniques of analysis and free inquiry, the category of the sacred is inappropriate. Scientific man, on the basis of research, may respect persons, values, and ideas, but he cannot adore them.

The problem with theology and the whole notion of God is that the object of investigation is simultaneously an object of worship. How can one ever secure accurate and useful information about man’s relationship to a supposed deity if the object of study requires the mood of reverence and the attitude of “ga-ga.” Theology, by its very nature, violates the conditions under which investigation is valid. “God” as a kind of personified sacredness is not divorceable from worship. It, therefore, reveals no information about the power structure of the universe; it merely inhibits proper inquiry and rom anticizes ignorance.

(3) One of the many justifications proposed for a theistic religion is that without God as the authority source of m orality, there can be no valid or effective basis for traditional social ethics. If kindness, truth-telling, loyalty, and love are only cultural conventions or human options, then, in the absence of state coercion, what possible motivation exists for the compelling nature of m oral behavior. Without God to lend sanction to ethical precepts, there can be neither ethics nor precepts.

The fallacy in this reasoning is obvious. Firstly, it is an “odd” sociological fact that the “divine” commandments of a culture seem to correspond to the prevailing m oral standards and alter as the culture alters. If divine sanction has been attached to what we presently regard as m orally commendable, it has more frequently been attached to what is morally reprehensible. The problem with so much historic antisemitism , race hatred, blood warfare, and deprivation of liberty is that it has been tied up with “God’s will.” Divine sanction, as a m orals enforcer, has historically caused as much social harm as social good, and aggravated the problem by making objectionable behavior sacred. The enemies of the prophets, as well as the prophets, loved to cite the untestable approval of the Deity.

Secondly, the ethical “authority” of God derived from his supposed power and intention. To assert that God commands a particular behavioral procedure is in itself to provide no motivation for doing the action. For one may reasonably ask, “Why ought I to obey God?” The traditional reply was twofold; God rewards obedience and punishes disobedience; and God is both supremely wise and benevolent. The form er reply finds its ultimate authority in man’s desire for happiness and the consequent wish to avoid punishment; the second reply assumes that if the observer is able to describe God as desiring good, he already knows what “good” is before he so describes God. If, in a rational age, it is no longer possible to believe in a celestial policeman, the “ethical” authority of God is nil.

And, thirdly, what is conducive to human happiness is not a function of cultural whim and human option. It is an empirical question that depends on the accurate observation of human nature and environment. The correctness of an ethical procedure is testable by its consequence on human satisfaction and frustration. If the psychological and social sciences have been morally weak guides up to now, it is largely due to the prevailing “religious” myth that values are distinct from the informational sciences. Too many people confuse the difficulty of empirically handling value questions with the impossibility of doing so.

(4) The prevailing attitude in educated circles toward matters theological is vast indifference. The mystic fondness and the atheist hatred are absent; an “I could care less” reaction dominates. While many people are aroused by the “God is Dead” controversy, they are more attracted by the social non-conformity than the theological shock. If we assume that this indifference is the result of spiritual insensitivity to vital information, we will misunderstand. The truth of the matter is that the indifferent are not quite sure that theologians are giving them any information at all.

This problem highlights the whole question of truth. Before a statement can be evaluated as true or false, the assertion must be meaningful; it must make sense. If I utter, “Scubbish-mubbish,” and ask you to tell me whether it is true or false, you would reply, “Impossible, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Now most ordinary conversations about “God” are meaningful. They concern a heavenly father-figure with a distinct personality who is capable of the full range of human sensation and emotion and who possesses immense power to execute his desire. While one may not presently be able to directly verify his existence, one can imagine the conditions (in this life or the next) under which such an encounter would be possible. Although a rational age has made such a God an impossible attachment to admit to, the assertion of his existence has at least one virtue – it may be false, but at least it is meaningful. The fundamentalist may utter naive absurdities, yet he never suffers from the “sophisticated” disease of preferring vagueness to clarity. An anthropomorphic God has the delightful advantage over most other varieties of simply being conceivable.

In an age when all scientific disciplines from physics to psychology seek to make their concepts and language more precise, the theologian alone reverses the procedure. While in Biblical times statements about God were fairly clear and specific, today analytic precision in theological matters is regarded as childish. While all other sources of useful power are subjected to increasing human measurement, divine power recedes into a protective realm “beyond space and time” where mortal hands can never defile it. In classical theology the most profound concepts are always the most nebulous and vague; to have any specific image of God is to hold a primitive notion.

Medieval and modern “liberal” theologians are the most guilty of providing noninformation. To define God as “ultimate reality,” “necessary existence,” or “ground of being” is to utter pretty phrases but to do no more than that. In order for a statement to be meaningful, one must be able to conceive the evidence which would prove it true and the evidence which would prove it false. If it is not possible to imagine any situation which would prove it false (i.e., if it is protected by definition from all possible refutation) it is either trivial or nonsensical. The three definitions cited above exemplify this fault; they border on “Scubbish-mubbish.”

For those theologians who discard the ordinary meaning of the word “God” and identify it with some natural object, feeling, or value, their problem is providing pseudo-information about the world. Certainly “God is Love” provides no more information than “Love is Love”; nor does “God is Nature” say any more than “Nature is Nature.” To equate an historic person-word with perfectly adequate thing-words is to abuse language and invite confusion.

All that the theological naturalist ends up doing is absurdly talking to “Love” and talking to “Nature.” These awkward definitions prompt a question: Why should perfectly rational human beings, who have at their disposal a host of English words more adequate than “God” to describe the natural events they are interested in, feel emotionally compelled to rip a three- letter word out of its historic context in order to save it for their belief vocabulary?

The reality of the theological situation for hosts of com m on-sensical people is that God “died” a long time ago. It is the word “God” with all its overtones of social respectability and ancestral approval that survives for graduates of the “university religion.

If, then, man is to appropriately answer the age-old religious question: “How do I adequately relate to the extraordinary powers of the universe in order to achieve my salvation?”, he must discard the colossal wasteland of theology and turn to a study of those realistic powers that most dramatically affect his future. It seem s to me that the most significant religious discipline of modern times would be anthropology, the study of man in his totality. For it is empirically obvious that the most effective and available powers for human happiness are man’s reason and man’s love. To understand their origin, nature, and possibility is the primary task of modern religion.

Ayfo Oree

Posted on August 30, 2022March 20, 2023 by Sherwin Wine

Meditation Services for Humanistic Judaism (1976)

AY-FO O-REE? O-REE BEE.

AY-FO TIK-VA-TEE? TIK-VA-TEE BEE.

AY-FO KO-KHEE? KO-KHEE BEE.

V’-GAM BAKH.

Where is my light? My light is in me.

Where is my hope? My hope is in me.

Where is my strength? My strength is in me.

And in you.

Secular Humanistic Judaism Shabbat Service

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Judaism, Spring 1994 (vol. 22 no. 2, p32-35)

OPENING SONG

V’shuv Itkhem

Again with you, let us go out to see the light.

— Ehud Manor

TWO TRADITIONS

There are two Jewish traditions.

The first is the religious one. It finds supernatural power, prayer, and worship important. It believes in divine revelation, eternal laws, and sacred rituals. It sees nature as less interesting than the world beyond. In Jewish history, it found political power and became the stablishment.

The second is a secular and humanistic tradition. It affirms people, human intelligence, and human dignity. It affirms reason, science, and human community. It finds no need to look beyond the wonders of nature. In Jewish history, it never found political power. It survived in the underground of ordinary Jewish life.

The second tradition is as important as the first one. The second tradition is our tradition. We are Secular and Humanistic Jews.

SONG

Sahaki

I believe in man.

— Shaul Tchernikhovsky

CULTURE

Judaism is far more than many people allow it to be.

Some people view it very narrowly, only seeing its religious side. Others perceive it broadly, emphasizing its ethical outreach.

But Judaism is more than theology and moral rules. It is more than parochial faith and universal sentiments. It is the living culture of a living people.

Judaism is family, love, and nurturing. Judaism is memory, roots, and pride. Judaism is music, dance, and humor. Everything that Jewish people, throughout the ages, did and yearned to do is Judaism.

SONG

Zemer Lakh

A song for you, my native land.

— Avraham Ben-Zvi

PEOPLE

We did not begin as a religious denomination. We began as a nation. We began as a collection of families, clans, and tribes. We began as an ethnic group, with our own language, on our own territory.

We became a dispersed nation. We left our land. We traveled the surface of our globe. We lived among many nations. We learned many languages.

We changed into a world people. We became the citizens of many states. We recovered our homeland. It became our new center.

Each of us is part of an extended international family. Family is no trivial connection. It is our first connection. It gives us life and identity.

SONG

Am Yisrael Hie

The Jewish people lives.

— Folk Song

CHANGE

The power of people is the power of change. Circumstances never stay the same. People never stay the same. Culture never stays the same.

Judaism did not fall from heaven. It was invented by a divine spokesperson. It was created by the Jewish people. It was molded by Jewish experience. It was flavored by Jewish sadness and by Jewish joy.

Holidays are responses to human events. Ceremonies are celebrations of human development. Music and literature are the expressions of human needs.

Life is an evolution, a continuous flow of transformations. And so is culture. When circumstances change, people change, their laws and customs change.

A healthy people welcomes change. It understands its history. It knows its own power. It leads the past into the future.

SONG

B ’ele Hayadayim

With these hands, I have not yet built a city.

— Naomi Shemer

REASON

Human intelligence is the key to human survival. Jewish intelligence is the key to Jewish survival.

Blind faith is often so dramatic and so noisy that it diverts our attention from the quiet power of practical day-to-day decisions. Most people live by common sense. They test the truth of advice by its consequences. The ordinary people who learn to grow food, to build houses, to make friends, to fight disaster may easily be forgotten. But their undramatic efforts have more to do with human survival than priestly proclamations.

Jewish survival has a similar origin. We are so obsessed with the literature of prophets and rabbis that we ignore the unrecorded heroes of Jewish life, the people who day by day solved their problems and improved their world by adapting old advice to new situations.

Peasants and merchants, workers and bankers, doctors and engineers — all of these are heroes of the unacknowledged tradition of Jewish reason.

When, two hundred years ago, the Enlightenment officially came to Jewish life, it was not entirely new. Science is only the refinement of the practical common sense of centuries of survivors.

SONG

Mi Hakham

Who is wise?

— Sherwin T. Wine

DIGNITY

Secular Humanistic Jews affirm the power of people. They affirm the power of common sense and human reason. But, above all, they strive for human dignity.

Pious people see themselves as weak and dependent. They see the world as a mystery too deep to fathom. They abhor change and search for everlasting guarantees. Divine power and divine guidance give them a sense of safety. For them, obedience is a small price to pay for eternal security.

People of dignity believe that they have the right to be strong and independent. They see the world as an orderly place to investigate. They welcome necessary change and are goodhumored enough to know that nothing is permanent. Human power and human guidance give them a sense of safety. But they are willing — even desire — to live with risk. They avoid childlike obedience. They cultivate respectful equality.

Human dignity is Jewish dignity. Jewish dignity is our dignity.

SONG

Ayfo Ori?

Where is my light? My light is in me.

— Sherwin T. Wine

MEMORIAL

Our past is a guide to our future. It is no sacred temple requiring reverence. It is no sacred book with immutable decrees. It is no sacred song with only one melody. It is a treasury of memories from which we can draw. It is a storehouse of wisdom from which we can borrow. It is a drama of endless creativity which we can imitate.

We are always the bridge between the past and the future. We are always the continuity between the old and the new. We do not betray the past by rejecting our roots. We do not betray the future by ignoring our needs. We pay tribute to both. We use the past to dream of our future.

CLOSING SONG

Y’hi Shalom

Let there be peace.

— Siddur (adapted)

The Significance of Shabbat: Past and Present

Posted on August 28, 2022September 1, 2022 by Sherwin Wine

Humanistic Judaism, Spring 1994 (vol. 22 no. 2, p4-6)

Shabbat is no ordinary holiday, though some people may take it for granted. The fact that it comes once a week does not make it an ordinary holiday — it is the only holiday that is weekly.

This holyday is as old as humanity. In fact, the priestly authors of the Torah traced it back to the beginning of the world. When God created the universe, the Bible tells us, he created the Shabbat. Its observance ranks with phallic circumcision as one of the two chief signs of membership in the Jewish people and in the cult of Yahveh. Unlike any other sacred rite, it is commanded specifically in the Ten Commandments. In biblical law the person who violates the Shabbat is worthy of death.

In the early moon calendar of the shepherds, the Shabbat was identified with the day of the full moon. In the septemial calendar of the farmers (based on dividing time by the sacred number seven, it fell on the seventh day of the week. The original thrust of the Shabbat was negative. It was a day on which all activity ceased. It was a sacred day when any movement was dangerous, when the safest thing to do was to stay home and do nothing. Sacred days were danger days. Supernatural power was abroad. Like radiation, it could harm as well as heal.

In time this abstinence from movement took on the positive connotation of rest. In the Ten Commandments (created in the seventh century B.C.), the abstinence from work and movement applies to freemen, slaves, and domestic animals and is viewed as a benefit. But to describe the evolving Shabbat as a day of rest is not exactly accurate. Sitting in your house without light and without the opportunity to tend to your comfort is hardly restful, especially if it is accompanied by fear of dreadful consequences for careless indulgence in any prohibited activity.

With the fall of the royal house of David, the emergence of priestly rule, and the triumph of the Yahveh cult in Jerusalem, the seventh-day Shabbat reigned supreme. It was reinforced by mythology, by the imitatio dei, the image of the divine creator of the world resting on the seventh day after the beginning of creation. It also was reinforced by the design of an elaborate calendar, in which the seventh year and the seven-times-seventh-year-plus-one became times of abstinence, too. Above all, the Shabbat was universal, attached only to the story of Yahveh and not to any event in Jewish history.

The rabbis, who followed the priests, retained the importance of the Shabbat but softened its severity. They allowed lights to be kindled before the Shabbat to relieve the darkness; enabled Jews to leave their houses by creating the legal fiction of the eruv, which treated an entire town as a private dwelling; and provided for communal activities in the synagogue, the public reading and explanation of the Torah. But the theme of prayer and study was overridden by the theme of abstinence, the long list of prohibited activities which a stern God wanted the Jews to avoid. Even the later mystic love affair with the Shabbat as “the Sabbath bride” or “the Sabbath queen” could not resolve the uncomfortable mixture of rest, family solidarity, and fear embodied in the Shabbat.

The coming of the Enlightenment and the Emancipation of the Jews of Western Europe — and later of Eastern Europe and North America — provided a four-pronged challenge to the rabbinic Sabbath.

There was the scientific challenge. The story of divine creation was no longer believable, especially a six-day creation with a resting deity. There was the utilitarian challenge. What did all the complicated and repressive prohibitions have to do with rest? There was the intellectual challenge. Why would a universal and ethical God choose the Sabbath and phallic circumcision as his primary symbols? There was the social challenge. Jews lived in a Christian world in which Saturday was a work day and Sunday was a day of rest.

The consequence of all these challenges was the widespread abandonment of the Sabbath by Western Jews. A free and affluent environment undermined what no amount of persecution was able to destroy. While fear and guilt lingered, the lifestyle of the Jew was radically transformed. Most Western Jews worked on Saturday. And for those who did not have to work, Saturday became part of the weekend, when one could freely indulge in rest and recreation without the annoying intrusion of anxiety-producing prohibitions.

The response of the rabbis was divided. Conservative and Orthodox rabbis demanded that the traditional Sabbath be observed in the traditional way — no work, no riding, no driving, no carrying, no kindling, no gaming, no amusement. The emerging liberal rabbis tried to find a new way to preserve the Sabbath that would be consistent with the Enlightenment and the Emancipation. Some liberal rabbis invented the Friday night service, which allowed Jews who worked on Shabbat to attend a major Sabbath celebration outside of working hours. (But the Friday night service was in direct competition with the Shabbat family dinner.) Some liberals took the radical step of creating a Sunday morning service, which enabled Jews to indulge in once-a-week worship on the only day when they did not work. Still other liberals turned Friday night into family time, with gefilte fish, chicken soup, candles, and secular conversation.

However, no Reform rabbi directly confronted the fact that, for most Jews, Shabbat had ceased to be a day of Jewish rest. If there was rest, it had no Jewish content and no Jewish connection. Working Jews going to evening services and resting Jews going to the beach were not exactly what the historic rabbis and priests had imagined for Shabbat. In the vocabulary of the Reform prayer book and the Reform movement’s official pronouncements, the illusion of the day of rest was preserved, even though the small number of Reform Jews who chose to attend Shabbat worship generally worked or shopped on Saturday. Reform derives its legitimacy from the Torah, and Reform was reluctant to abandon one of the major symbols of Torah Judaism. The fact that the meaning of Shabbat was universal and not rooted in ethnicity reinforced this decision. The propaganda and the reality were miles apart.

In the face of the Enlightenment and the Emancipation and the inadequate response of Reform Judaism to the changing character of the Shabbat, what is the significance of the Sabbath to Humanistic Jews? Do we pretend that it is something it is not because we want to be connected to the legitimizing power of the Torah? Do we respect its original meaning by discarding it as no longer significant? (Many secular Jews have done exactly that. In their minds, the Shabbat is too tied up with God and worship and crazy restrictions to be redeemable. If they choose real rest and recreation, it may not be convenient to do it always on Saturday.) Or is there some creative way of preserving the Shabbat that has humanistic integrity and is faithful to its historic character?

Pretense is unethical. Rejection is premature, especially given the power of the Shabbat symbol. Creativity is in order.

A creative approach to Shabbat does not start with Torah. Shabbat existed even before the Torah was composed. A creative approach begins with the meaning of the Shabbat in the lives of liberal Jews who are drawn to it in a big or small way.

Most contemporary Jews outside of Israel are not drawn to the Shabbat as a rest day. Given the dramatic changes in work scheduling in an affluent technological culture, it is highly unlikely that a single day of rest for everybody will be very useful in the twenty-first century. Individual, rather than mass, scheduling will become increasingly popular.

Most contemporary Jews are drawn to the Shabbat because it is Jewish, because it is a frequent way to reaffirm and strengthen Jewish identity. It is the time in the week when Jews can feel most Jewish. The Shabbat did not start out with that agenda. But that is the agenda the modern Jewish experience has given it.

The Shabbat is important to us as Humanistic Jews because it is a weekly time to affirm the importance of our Jewish identity. Whether we choose to work or rest — whether we are alone, with our family, or with our Jewish community — taking time off to celebrate our Jewishness is the heart of the Shabbat day to us.

Celebrating Judaism and Jewishness can be done in many ways. We may hold a family dinner with Jewish symbols. We may participate in a Shabbat service at our community house. We may celebrate a Jewish life cycle event: birth, bar or bat mitsva, or wedding. We may read a Jewish book. We may attend a study seminar on Jewish history or Jewish culture. We may hold a discussion session with Jewish friends. No matter what Jewish activity we choose to do, we know that we are united with Jews throughout the world on this day — that we are expressing our solidarity with the Jewish people, with the Jewish past and present.

Once we recover from the necessity to pretend that the Shabbat is a rest day, once we transcend the need to preserve the irrelevant vocabulary of the Shabbat of abstinence, we become free to make it as Jewish as we want, in whatever way we want, and for however long we want. There is no joyous Jewish experience we cannot promote.

Humanistic Judaism needs the Shabbat, not for the same reasons as priests and Pharisaic rabbis did, but for Jewish reasons that accompany the evolution of the holiday. To most liberal Jews today, Shabbat is a day of Jewish identity and Jewish solidarity. Moving from that reality to creative awareness is the important task before us.

United States

The Americas

Africa

Asia

Europe

Middle East

Author: Sherwin Wine

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