Jewish secularism
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Jewish secularism comprises those Jewish people who are secular and the body of work produced by secular Jews. Among secular Jews, traditional Jewish holidays may be celebrated as historical and nature festivals, while life-cycle events such as births, marriages, and deaths, may be marked in a secular manner.
Throughout modern history, Jewish thinkers have challenged traditional Judaism. 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.
During the nineteenth century, members of the Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews (Verein fur Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden) viewed the Jewish people as a cultural group rather than a religious one. These secularists, building on foundations of the Enlightenment or 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.
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.
Figures
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.
Many prominent Jews have been secular, including Sigmund Freud, Marc Chagall, Henri Bergson, Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Theodor Herzl, Louis Brandeis, Micha Josef Berdyczewski and Hayim Nahman Bialik.
State of Israel
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 is often seen as secular Jews' 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 2,000 secular Israeli schools exist, where children study Jewish history and literature and celebrate the holidays without prayer or religion.