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Jewish secularism refers to secularism in a Jewish context, denoting the definition of Jewish identity with little or no attention given to its religious aspects. [1] [a] The concept of Jewish secularism first arose in the late 19th century, with its influence peaking during the interwar period.
- Jewish Secularism vs. Secular Jewishness
- A Secular Renaissance?
- Secularism itself?
- Acceptance of Political Secularism
- Metaphysical Secularism
- Final Form of Secularism–Humanism
- Is Secular Judaism Coherent?
- An Outline For Secular Judaism
So let’s distinguish, first of all, between Jewish secularism and what I’m going to call “secular Jewishness”, although it’s usually referred to, more sonorously if also more paradoxically, as “secular Judaism” (or sometimes “cultural Judaism”). Jewish secularism is a matter of sociology, of garnering and expounding upon such statistics as the foll...
This normative component emerges in all statements of secular Jewishness. It is, after all, what lifts secular Jewishness out of mere sociology. So, for example, in a piece in Contemplate: The International Journal of Cultural Jewish Thought (Issue Four, 2007), entitled “The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Secular Judaism,” Brandeis professor of Jewish-...
But surely, secular Jewishness can’t be grounding its distinctive normativity, its insistence on the perpetuation of Jews qua Jews, on that flagrantly non-secular claim of normative Judaism. But on what then? Can it be grounded on the claims of secularism itself? This last question, of course, leads me to the question of what, precisely, secularism...
But be that as it may, political secularism is today widely accepted, not only in the West, but in such non-Christian lands as Japan and India and Turkey (though the latter is having an interesting debate on the subject since the election of Prime Minister Erdogan) and has gained momentum in fact almost everywhere except the Islamic Middle East. An...
Not so with the next form of secularism, this one metaphysical, involving another sort of rejection of the transcendent, namely as existing. If a political secularist rejects appeals to transcendence in devising a workable state, a metaphysical secularist rejects appeals to transcendence period. He’s committed to making sense out of the world witho...
This last form of secularism concerns such questions as these: what is it to live a good human life, to regard oneself as living well? We all, to different degrees, reflect on such questions; to never even consider this manner of question is to pursue a life that is almost unrecognizable as a human life (for example, I wouldn’t know how to go about...
Can an attitude of this sort be reconciled with normative secularism, or is secular Judaism helping itself to a norm it isn’t entitled to, one that can only be justified by an appeal to the transcendent narrative of traditional Judaism, a narrative that employs such phrases as “a light unto the nations” in its descriptions of the Jews? In other wor...
But perhaps to offer such a Humean response is to give up the game too soon. Perhaps more can be said to render secular Judaism coherent in the universalist terms that are appropriate to normative secularism. Here’s the broad outline of such an attempt: Human diversity promotes human flourishing. It’s a diminishment for all when a people, a languag...
Discover the concept of Judaism & what it means to be a secular Jew through the eyes of one of our Atlanta Birthright Israel participants.
Mar 15, 2022 · In this course, we will explore secular Judaism and examine the ideas, concepts and practices that inspired it. We will look at classical Biblical and Rabbinic sources, as well as Medieval, Modern, Zionist, and contemporary Jewish thought and art.
- Primary
- March 15, 2022
Secular Jews believe in the holy–that is, inviolable–nature of certain things: the value of human life, the integrity of the human personality, the primacy of human dignity, the equality of men and women everywhere, the right of children to unfettered development.
- Yehuda Bauer
Sep 23, 2017 · On what it means to be a secular Jew. There's this bizarre, sometimes hostile ambivalence about the religion and the culture from which we spring.
This book by Dr. Yitzhak Brand, with introductory material by Prof. Yedidia Stern, explores the halakhic status of the secular Jew, while examining the various categories used to describe secular Jews in the halakhic lexicon.
