Jewish Secularism
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Jewish Secularism refers to the largest section of the Jewish people who are secular as well as the body of work produced by secular Jews over the past 250 years. Statistics in America and throughout the world now reveal that almost half of all Jews define themselves as secular. The American Jewish Identification Survey (AJIS 2001) placed the figure at 49% in America.
These people build up communities where Jewish holidays are celebrated as historical and nature festivals, and where life-cycle events are marked in a secular manner.
Throughout modern history, Jewish thinkers have challenged traditional Judaism. As early as the nineteenth century, members of the Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews (Verein fur Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden) viewed Judaism as a culture, not a religion. These secularists, building on foundations of the Enlightenment, Haskalah, were keen to integrate humanistic culture and education with a Jewish culture not linked to rabbinical dictates, or the existence of a personal God.
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[edit] Figures in Jewish Secularism
Secular Judaism has roots even before the Haskalah. From the time of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) and his “agnostic morality”, came the belief of the human sense of morality through education and family life, not religious morality.
Secular Jewish art and culture flourished between 1870 and the Second World War with 18,000 titles in Yiddish and thousands more in Hebrew and European languages, along with hundreds of plays and theater productions, movies, and other art forms. Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust rank among the creators of these works for their contribution to western culture.
Sigmund Freud was one of the greatest Modern Jewish thinkers but he is not alone among prominent secular Jews whose work and lives reflected their Jewishness. The list is long and includes Marc Chagall, and Henri Bergson, Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Theodor Herzl, M.Y. Berdichevsky and Hayim Nahman Bialik (to name but a few) who charted out alternatives to traditional Judaism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ahad Ha’am contributed to the secular movement with his ideas on Jewish national identity, religion and religious practice. He saw Jewish religious cultural tradition as integral for the education of secular Jews.
[edit] The State of Israel
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 is often seen as secular Judaism’s greatest achievement, with Hebrew as a spoken language rather than a language of prayer, and the majority of the population living secular Jewish lives. Some 2000 secular Israeli schools exist, where children study Jewish history and literature and celebrate the holidays without prayer or religion.
Institutes for higher education in Israel have not lagged behind. Oranim College and Meitar College for Judaism as Culture are some of the colleges established to further the study of secular Jewish culture.
