by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - October 8, 2008
Tomorrow, Oct. 9, 2008, marks the most solemn of the Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur. A Humanistic Jew, I do celebrate our holidays, but in ways rather different from how the theistic Jewish denominations do. This essay is about how I and we go about doing that.
First you might ask, what is a “Humanistic Jew?” Humanistic Judaism is one of the five recognized Jewish denominations: ourselves, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox. Especially within the latter, there are a variety of sub-sets of each. The members of the several denominations and sub-denominations form themselves into congregations, have services, both on the Sabbath and on the High Holidays, and engage in many other activities, from Jewish education to social action endeavors. Our denomination is also part of a larger grouping, called Secular Humanistic Judaism, which is both religious and the cultural. The cultural societies that are part of Secular Humanistic Judaism tend to focus on the preservation and promotion of Yiddish language and culture. I belong to The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, located in New York City.
Humanistic Judaism is the smallest Jewish denomination, but it is perhaps the most rapidly growing, in percentage terms at least, world-wide. It is an international movement, with adherents in about 40 countries, including Israel. Humanistic rabbis are trained both in Israel and the United States. There are an estimated 50,000 persons in the world who identify themselves as Humanistic Jews. According to the website of our national organization in the US, the Society for Humanistic Judaism: “It combines attachment to Jewish identity and culture with a human centered approach to life. It defines Judaism as the historical and cultural experience of the Jewish people. Humanistic Judaism affirms that people are independent of supernatural authority and responsible for themselves and their behavior.”
Further, “Humanistic Judaism embraces a human-centered philosophy that combines the celebration of Jewish culture and identity with an adherence to humanistic values and ideas.” Non-theistic (that is, there is no supernatural, conscious, controlling power outside of humanity), it is a religion in the sense that our members share a set of beliefs concerning ethics, morality, and the place of the Jews in the world and its history that serve to guide us in our everyday lives just the way the beliefs of the theistic religions guide their adherents. According to the SHJ, “Humanistic Judaism is also a religion in its structure, its congregational model, schools for children, adult education, and provider of life cycle ceremonies [that] all follow the [traditional] religious model.”
Finally, in quoting further from the SHJ website: “Humanistic Jews Affirm That: A Jew is someone who identifies with the history, culture and future of the Jewish people. Jewish identity is best preserved in a free, pluralistic environment. Jewish history is a human saga, a testament to the significance of human power and human responsibility. Judaism is the historic culture of the Jewish people. We possess the power and responsibility to shape our own lives independent of supernatural authority. Ethics and morality should serve human needs. The freedom and dignity of the Jewish people must go hand in hand with the freedom and dignity of every human being.”
Of course, sharing the center of Humanistic Judaism with ”judaism” is “humanism.” In sum “humanism” means that it is human beings who bear all the responsibility for whatever goes on and has gone on in the world, whether for good or for bad, however one would define those terms. There are no outside forces, just us. There is no one or “other being” on which we can call for help when we feel we need it. Nor is there any “other being” to which we must give credit when things go well, or upon whom we can heap blame when they don’t. We’re it, folks, for better or for worse. No excuses. No pleas for outside help when times are tough. And we, just us, take the credit when credit is due, for either individual or societal achievements.
I have been a secular Jew all of my life. That is from childhood I have had a strong Jewish identity, with the history, the values, the progressive political tradition here and in Europe, and with parts of the culture. (Unfortunately my family has been in the United States too long, so I did not have the benefit of “Yiddishkeit,” one of those untranslatable Yiddish words that means more or less the sum of Central European Jewish thought, philosophy, culture, art, music, politics, values, concept-of-family, all centered on the Yiddish language.) But as a secular Jew, I never had a place to go to celebrate my Jewishness with like-minded Jews in an organized way, especially around the holidays. But now I do. Discovering The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism about eight years ago marked a turning point in my life. I found a “Jewish home” in which, given my humanistic belief system, I could be thoroughly comfortable.
And so tomorrow I will be celebrating Yom Kippur with my congregation. Yom Kippur in theistic Judaism is the Day of Atonement, in which adherents make their peace with God for “sins” they have committed in the past year. In SHJ there is of course no concept of “sin,” because the latter necessarily invokes the existence of a deity. But there is the central concept of self-responsibility, for both individuals and the group. And so for us Yom Kippur is a day for contemplation, for renewal, for re-energizing. Where have we been in the past year? What have we done? What mistakes have we made? What have we learned from those experiences? What would we like to do differently or better? What successes have we had? What good have we done? Where do we want to go from here and how should we go about getting there?
As our liturgy says (and yes, we do have a liturgy which we use for our Humanistic services, CCHJ Rabbi Peter Schweitzer, principal author, 2002; used with permission, pp. 2, 7): “Humanistic Jews see Rosh HaShanah [the Jewish New Year] and Yom Kippur as an affirmation of human power and human dignity. The High Holidays are a time to consider the possibilities for change, for improvement, for happiness that we human beings can create for ourselves. Acknowledging human courage and independence, we achieve human dignity. . . . If human judgment replaces divine judgment and if human power becomes the alternative to divine power, then Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur become perfect vehicles for celebrating a humanistic philosophy of life. It is appropriate for Jews to reflect on the moral quality of their behavior and to make decisions to improve it. . . . Introspection and goal-setting are traditional. They are also humanistic. . . . Yom Kippur . . . provides the occasion to re-state our belief in personal, human responsibility for our lives, behavior and destiny.” For me it is also a time to reflect on the responsibility of our species for itself, and also, directly and indirectly, for many of the other species presently alive on the Earth.
There is no God. It’s just us, folks. There is no being to which we must give credit when things go well, nor blame when they don’t. There are chance and luck, of course. Both bad and good things may happen to ourselves, our families and our friends, as the result of turns of chance. But no one is guiding them and their consequences in reference to ourselves. Both bad and good things just happen. It’s how we respond to chance events, how we use “lucky breaks” to our advantage and how we deal with “bad breaks” in order to minimize the damage that is what counts.
As our liturgy says (p. 8): “Our ancestors declared the dreaded power of this day. Are we any less mindful of its important purpose? They stood in judgment, their fates weighed in the balance. Do we not stand in self-evaluation, our choices equally measured? They implored and beseeched, and asked for atonement. We introspect and reflect and seek self-awareness. They confessed before another. We chastise before ourselves. Like them, we strand poised before an ever-unfolding book of life. We believe it is written by our deeds and by the events that befall us. We strive to take responsibility for our lives and write the pages ourselves. And accept, with courage and dignity, the pages over which we have no control.” Not in so many words, I have had this belief system and these values all of my life. In my later years to find a home where I can share them with other Jews outside of my family and close friends has just been so meaningful for me.
There are a number of songs that we sing in our services. For me the one that best summarizes what we believe in and what we stand for has a very brief lyric, written by the founder of Secular Humanistic Judaism, the late, great Rabbi Sherwin Wine: “Where is my light? My light is in me. Where is my hope? My hope is in me. Where is my strength? My strength is in me. And in you. And in you.”
L’shanah tovah tikatevu: May your name (dear reader) be inscribed in the Book of Life. Happy New Year. 