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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.
Nonetheless, most Jews value their identity and
would be reluctant to give it up, even if they could. Their ambivalence is a union of discomfort and attachment. They feel guilty about the discomfort and vaguely noble about the attachment. They would like to do something constructive with their Jewish identity. They would like to make it a comfortable part of their life. They would like to attach their deepest convictions and strongest values to it. They would even like the approval of their ancestors for what they choose to do with their existence. But they do not know quite what to do.
Zionism complicates the question. “If Jewish identity is tied to language and territory,” he asks, “what is the status of secular Jews who do not speak Hebrew and who do not live in Israel?” The Zionist argument then naturally slides into the claim that Israeli Jews can be secular (because living in Israel makes them Jewish enough already) but that Diaspora Jews must be…
