After all, I loved my Jewish upbringing, I loved reading about Judaism every night and I loved the chagim Jewish holidays most of all. When I told my Jewish friends and family that I was an atheist, it spurred some interesting conversations, but no one seemed particularly bothered. Belief in God has never been a litmus test for my involvement in Jewish spaces.
Questioning and doubting were encouraged by my Jewish day school. And so I joined a proud tradition of Jewish atheists. Becoming an atheist never curtailed my Jewish practice. Church and synagogues are gateways to community, because religions provide an elegant structure to our lives.
This structure is at its best when we are at our most helpless. When a close family member dies, Judaism lays out a period of mourning; the seven-day shiva , followed by thirty days of shloshim , followed by a full year.
The whole community knows how to act and how to help; everyone is working from the same protocol to support the grievers. Still, my Jewish practice is not what it used to be. I want to celebrate the chagim because they give me an excuse to be with my family and talk and debate about Jewish issues and their contemporary meanings.
In a more recent discussion, Howard Wettstein, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside has gone even further than Fromm has.
Working off of this notion, Wettstein claims that at the heart of the Jewish religious sensibility is a distinctive attitude toward life, a major component of which is awe.
Various aspects of Jewish religious practice—prayer, Torah study, the rhythms of the Jewish calendar—are meant to facilitate this attitude. Wettstein acknowledges that the object of this awe is God. He does, however, propose that this awe—and the meaningful life it helps to create—is also available to a naturalist who rejects a supernatural God.
Such a person does not believe that the creation story in Genesis reflects actual events. This, however, does not negate the meaning of the story. Wettstein argues that a similar approach is available to one who wishes to avoid supernaturalism altogether.
Rather, he accepts the imagery of the Jewish God as it is, using this imagery to cultivate meaning, to find fellowship in community, and to connect to past generations. In contrast, the Secular Humanistic movement, a small denomination started by Sherwin Wine in , caters to those Jews who wish to identify Jewishly but are opposed to God imagery. Secular Humanistic Jews go as far as saying that believing in God devalues humans, as it suggests that the source of human value lies outside of human beings themselves.
Nevertheless, on an official level, most Jews are uncomfortable with the idea of a Judaism without God. This is true for the liberal movements as much as it is for more traditional Jews.
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Secularism and Nonreligion 10 1 : 7. Secularism and Nonreligion 10, no. Speed, Dand M Brewster. Secularism and Nonreligion , vol. Start Submission Become a Reviewer. Abstract Atheists are among the most disliked groups in America, which has been explained in a variety of ways, one of which is that atheists are hostile towards religion and that anti-atheist prejudice is therefore reactive.
How to Cite: Speed, D. Published on 17 Jun
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