Let me talk about someone who is Jewish for a change.
I think it is important to mark the passing of Rabbi Sherwin Theodore Wine. He was killed recently in Morocco in a car accident, he was 79. He was from Detroit and was rabbi at the Birmingham Temple, in a suburb of Detroit.
I knew of him but didn’t really know a lot about him. What fascinated me about him was that he was a Jewish Rabbi and ran a Jewish Temple and yet he was an atheist; a Jewish atheist to be exact to distinguish him from lets say a Christian atheist.
You don’t see too many Christian atheists running a church or having a congregation to take care of; this was different.
I have mentioned on many occasions that it seems to me that people like the “idea” of religion; being in a community of like minded people with the same belief system. Rabbi Wine also saw that. He realized that half the Jews in the United States considered themselves “secular” although definitely Jewish and that these people felt alone because they did not have an organization of like minded people to join.
He thought, why not celebrate Jewishness but without a God. He emphasized secular Jewish culture and Jewish history rather than a belief in the Jewish God as sources of Jewish identity.
He eventually called his movement “Humanistic Judaism” and became part of the larger secular humanistic movement in the U.S. and around the world.
His standard answer about his Godless religion, so to speak, was “since it was not possible empirically to prove or disprove the existence of God, the concept of God was meaningless”. He referred to this stance as “ignosticism” instead of atheism.
He held services and observed all the Jewish holidays but took God out of all that.
He composed new poems and passages for his services:
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.
Or how about a prayer for Shabbat:
How wonderful is the light of the world.
How radiant are the candles of peace.
How beautiful are the lights of Shabbat.
He used Jewish history as proof for the lack of God. Look what the Jews have endured and only people can solve human problems of survival because there sure was no supernatural force helping his “chosen” people out.
Obviously I have only touched on what this man stood for and what he taught but I sure do respect his intellect and power of reason and above all his courage to stand up for what he believed and to take his message to the people. Yeah!
I think it is important to mark the passing of Rabbi Sherwin Theodore Wine. He was killed recently in Morocco in a car accident, he was 79. He was from Detroit and was rabbi at the Birmingham Temple, in a suburb of Detroit.
I knew of him but didn’t really know a lot about him. What fascinated me about him was that he was a Jewish Rabbi and ran a Jewish Temple and yet he was an atheist; a Jewish atheist to be exact to distinguish him from lets say a Christian atheist.
You don’t see too many Christian atheists running a church or having a congregation to take care of; this was different.
I have mentioned on many occasions that it seems to me that people like the “idea” of religion; being in a community of like minded people with the same belief system. Rabbi Wine also saw that. He realized that half the Jews in the United States considered themselves “secular” although definitely Jewish and that these people felt alone because they did not have an organization of like minded people to join.
He thought, why not celebrate Jewishness but without a God. He emphasized secular Jewish culture and Jewish history rather than a belief in the Jewish God as sources of Jewish identity.
He eventually called his movement “Humanistic Judaism” and became part of the larger secular humanistic movement in the U.S. and around the world.
His standard answer about his Godless religion, so to speak, was “since it was not possible empirically to prove or disprove the existence of God, the concept of God was meaningless”. He referred to this stance as “ignosticism” instead of atheism.
He held services and observed all the Jewish holidays but took God out of all that.
He composed new poems and passages for his services:
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.
Or how about a prayer for Shabbat:
How wonderful is the light of the world.
How radiant are the candles of peace.
How beautiful are the lights of Shabbat.
He used Jewish history as proof for the lack of God. Look what the Jews have endured and only people can solve human problems of survival because there sure was no supernatural force helping his “chosen” people out.
Obviously I have only touched on what this man stood for and what he taught but I sure do respect his intellect and power of reason and above all his courage to stand up for what he believed and to take his message to the people. Yeah!
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