Judaism in a Very Secular Age

Although religion flourishes in parts of the world and in sectors of American society, we live in the most secular age ever. Apart from fundamentalists, Americans, Europeans, and probably many Asians appear to be increasingly detached from organized religion and tone-deaf to traditional religiosity. Thus, according to our pollsters, large numbers of young Jews say they are “just Jews” and observe and believe “whatever.”

In a recent and much discussed book by David Biale, Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought, the author argues that “the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself.” Biale’s title alludes to an ancient midrash in which a group of prominent rabbis refuse to obey the decision of a heavenly voice in a dispute concerning an issue in Jewish religious law – and quote the Torah to justify confidence in their own reasoning. God was said to have laughed and remarked that “My children have defeated me.” To be sure, the secularization of Jews for some time has had somewhat different results than, say, the secularization of other religions because Jews who do not think of themselves as religious may nevertheless retain a strong sense of Jewish ethnicity and communalism. Moreover, Judaism is a set of ideas and values: a worldview about the meaning of history, a good society, living an ethical life, and the intrinsic worth of the human soul.

Although David Biale points to secularizing aspects of biblical thought and medieval Jewish philosophy, he draws mainly on the writings of Jews beginning with the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch (later Benedict) Spinosa and on to Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, David Ben Gurion, and a host of others. Biale argues that they “subverted” religious ideas from within, creating a distinctively Jewish “counter-tradition.” In effect Biale creates a fresh and quite brilliant “genealogy” of secular Judaism, focusing on three areas of Jewish cultural history – Jewish idea(s) of God, Jewish conception(s) of revelation, and the nature of Jewish peoplehood.

During the last century, several notable intellectuals of Jewish extraction were labeled “non-Jewish Jews” by their biographers because they are said to be “universalistic in a distinctively Jewish way.”

Our 2011-2012 Wednesday series will discuss Biale’s book together with essays looking at secularism and Judaism from other points of view. Our overall theme is how “religion” and the “secular” have each been revised and transformed over the course of history. Acknowledging what has been gained through the spread of secularism, is a religious dimension still needed to provide a viable future for Jewish human beings who want to be more than “just Jews”?

You are invited to join us. We usually meet the first and third Wednesdays of the month from
7:30 p.m. to about 9:00 p.m. Rabbi Robert Seltzer serves as the conductor of an orchestra made up of lively (and opinionated) members of Temple Beth Shalom.

Teacher : Rabbi Robert Seltzer
Time: First and third Wednesday of each month. 7:30-9:00 p.m.
First Meeting: October 5
Place: Red Room