What Can Jews Do When They Don’t Believe in God?
On ‘Judaism Beyond God’ by Sherwin T. Wine
Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine founded the Society for Humanistic Judaism in 1969. In 1985, he published Judaism Beyond God. It was revised in 1995. This book is “for those Jews who are not traditional, [and] who want to integrate their Jewish identity with their personal convictions.”
Who is a Jew?: On Jewish Identity
“Jewish identity is a kinship identity,” he writes. “Race, nation, and religion” don’t quite fit the bill on their own, but it’s something like that.
Jews worry over and drag out the question of “Who is a Jew?” mostly to avoid settling on an uncomfortable answer that would demand that they change their ways and instead to allow themselves to continue behaving in ways that feel convenient. Some might unconsciously hope that Jewish community will dissatisfy them so they’ll have a more concrete reason to stop showing up.
Some Jews resent being Jewish. If they need to intellectualize their resentment, they often say they choose universalism over any group identity or label. “The preservation of Jewish identity becomes a moral offense [to them] because it maintains unnecessary barriers between people,” Wine explains.
