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Jews Without Judaism: Conversations With an Unconventional Rabbi

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Concise and simple, yet penetrating enough to explain Humanistic Judaism. Provides a helpful discussion of the historical roots of the change in Judaism and the roles of Napoleon and of the establishment of the USA in changing the historical status of Jewish people as a minority. Most interesting is the impact of of anti-Semitism on the religion. The last 3 pages are very useful regarding the understanding of the change in the Jewish identity. The book stands against the common wisdom of most of the Jewish writers who stresse demise of the Jewish identity to assert that the current situation and events will only carry a better future for the Jews. Jews today are freer than any other time in their history.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am neither a Jew nor a Judaist, and so my interest in the topics discussed in this slender (yet surprisingly pricey) volume is primarily intellectual.

The basic premise of this book is that Jews are a cultural, ethnic, and/or national group, that Judaism is the religion that this group has historically practiced, and that the two have been distinct and not necessarily overlapping categories since the time of Napoleon. In fact, Rabbi Friedman repeatedly asserts, most contemporary American Jews (the "culturally Jewish") are "Jews without Judaism," those who value certain aspects of their Jewish heritage without feeling compelled to believe in the G-d of Abraham or follow the guidelines outlined in the Torah. Instead of condemning these folks for abandoning their religion, this unconventional rabbi applauds them for their courage to admit to their irreligion as he introduces them to what he calls "Humanistic Judaism."

I've often heard contemporary liberal Judaism described as "ethical monotheism," but in this collection of fictional dialogues Rabbi Friedman openly derides monotheism (and theism in general) as untenable and without empirically verifiable foundation. (It is definitely odd to read a rabbi openly admit to being an atheist, and in the dialogues he explains how he feels his role as rabbi is not compromised by this lack of faith.) As well, he repeatedly critiques the idea of "Jewish ethics" or "Jewish values" (such as justice, compassion, and education), seeing them instead as the same liberal, secular values shared by other beneficiaries of the Enlightenment:

"There is nothing distinctly Jewish about values. This was the contradiction inherent within Reform Judaism. Values are universals: if they are valid, they are valid for everyone...For nonreligious Jews, the fiction that there are 'Jewish values' that they are upholding gives them the illusion that they are still maintaining Judaism. In fact, they are starting with the values of their Western, liberal, secular culture and then 'finding' them in traditional texts...The irony is that truly religious Jews---Halachic Jews---often advocate contrary values [based upon the written and oral Torah]." (pp.42-3)

In a similar fashion, Rabbi Friedman points out that many of the traditions found in contemporary Judaism are rooted in the need to maintain a Jewish identity rather than through the desire to obey G-d and His commandments.

This lack of faith in Judaism is not wrong, but is instead cause for rejoicing, Rabbi Friedman asserts, for two reasons. The first is that "one of the great benefits of Jewish experience, and of being Jewish, is that we are free from belief restrictions. The essence of being Jewish is the freedom to believe whatever truth your mind reveals to you" (p.57). (Ironically this assertion doesn't ring true for the same reasons that there aren't uniquely "Jewish values"---freedom to question and the primacy of reason belong to the ethos of the Enlightenment in general and not to one particular ethnic group.) The second reason is his contention that contemporary American Jews no longer face the ostracism and prejudice that forced them to establish an identity based on separation and difference from the dominant culture, and so the maintenance of this separation through heartfelt participation in the daily religious life is an outmoded behavior for most American Jews.

This book will probably help many cultural Jews feel good about their ability to remain Jewish without being Judaists, but it also feels a bit shallow. If there is no real difference between being Jewish and being non-Jewish in terms of faith or ethics, and if there is no need to maintain a sense of separate identity in a pluralistic secular society, then why continue to identify as Jews at all? Why not be Unitarian Universalists or even better, "humanists" (since that appellation is less of a mouthful)? Rabbi Friedman finally gets around to describing Humanistic Judaism on page 92 as "a nontheistic religion that combines a humanistic philosophy of life with the holidays, symbols, and ceremonies of Jewish culture," yet he concludes that this "religion" affirms the same old Enlightenment values as most of the culture at large. Are decontextualized holidays and symbols enough? Are they even necessary? Rabbi Friedman's conclusion seems to be that they are not:

"Once the two-millennia-old consciousness of difference---based upon exclusion---has disappeared, whether future generations of Jews will choose even to draw together into communities of fellow Jews is doubtful. That they will need or wish to formalize and express their Jewishness by means of holidays, ceremonies, and rituals is unlikely. Jewishness will be more a fading memory of ethnic ancestry than an experienced reality." (p. 102)

This disappearance need not be cause for alarm, he asserts, because the sense of separation between Jews and non-Jews was initially engendered by millennia of intolerance and persecution. Assimilation, to Friedman, seems a small price to pay for an end to those social conditions.

This was an intriguing and, frankly, disquieting book. Beginning with the premise that Judaism and Jewishness are distinct and non-overlapping categories, the author concludes that the former has all but disappeared, and that its demise ultimately portends the disappearance of the Jews as a people. That this is seen as a good thing might have been expected from a white supremacist or fundamentalist Christian writing on Armageddon, but it is definitely odd, to say the least, coming from a rabbi.

Concise and simple, yet penetrating enough to explain Humanistic Judaism. Provides a helpful discussion of the historical roots of the change in Judaism and the roles of Napoleon and of the establishment of the USA in changing the historical status of Jewish people as a minority. Most interesting is the role of anti-Semitism on the religion. The last 3 pages are very useful about the understanding of the change in Jewish identity. The book stands against the common wisdom of most of the Jewish writers of the demise of the Jewish identity to assert that the current situation and the future will only become better for the future of the Jews. Jews today are freer than any other time in their history.

Daniel Friedman is, along with Sherwin T. Wine (see his Judaism Beyond God: A Radical New Way to Be Jewish) one of the founders of "Humanistic Judaism. He served for 35 years as rabbi of the Congregation Beth Or in Illinois, and is currently (as of when this book was published) Rabbinic Adviser to Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in north suburban Chicago.

He writes in the Introduction to this 2002 book, "Many Jews wonder whether they are really Jewish after all. Having been taught that being Jewish means being part of a religious community, they ask themselves if they truly qualify. Can one be Jewish without God? Without religion? Without Judaism? Such are the questions to be considered in the following pages."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"It is my contention that Judaism, the religion, came to an end two hundred years ago; that subsequent 'Judaisms' (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Humanistic, and to some extent, even Orthodox) are, in fact, not religious but secularized modifications of Judaism; and that, aside from a relatively small number of sincerely committed believers and practitioners of Halachic Judaism, Jews have, in effect, said farewell to Judaism." (Pg. 13)
"My brand, as you put it, is natural spirituality, which acknowledges that we are more than our material selves. We are more than highly developed computers. We cannot be reduced to bundles of synapses and electrical charges... we may rationally believe that there is something called 'the human spirit' that is quite real, yet beyond scientific analyses." (Pg. 62)
"I am unaware of distinctive 'Jewish values.' The values I cherish---such as individual freedom and the right to live one's life without interference from political or religious authority---are the legacy of the Enlightenment, rather than the Torah. We Jews are among the most fortunate beneficiaries of that legacy." (PG. 103)

This book speaks to profound truths about human beings and nature. Rabbi Dan Friedman, one of the first Humanistic Rabbis, certainly addresses Humanistic Judaism. But anyone interested in Humanism will want to read this book. Philosophy professors should consider adopting this book as part of their curriculum.

1000 words, huh?
The author thinks that Judaism is a dead thing with most Jews. Now, he's correct in that, but then he infers from that that we should allow it to be a dead thing and fashion Jewish life on that basis. At this point, however, now that he has seemingly pronounced Judaism as long dead, he substitutes only the most nebulous of definitions of what is a Jew. All he can come up is a thoroughly exsanguinated one in Conversation One: "It has to do with a sense of being part of a long history; of being part of ...the Jewish people, that is like an extended family with `branches' all over the world and reaching back many centuries into the past..." It doesn't seem to mean having any religious beliefs. The circularity of the definition is striking: Being a Jew is being a part of the Jewish people. And how then how do we define the Jewish people? As Jews? The author doesn't help us get past this.
He doesn't wait long to introduce us to his complete atheism. Without God, Judaism disintegrates like a molecule of tooth enamel deprived of its -OH radical by an acid. The author claims that Jews who pray don't really believe in the existence of God. So now he looks for why they shouldn't.
And we find that in Conversation Three, where the author sets forth the basis for his atheism. "How could the universe have been `created'? Out of what? If there was `something' in existence before the universe was created, what was that `something'? Whatever it was, if it existed, what created it? And out of what?... And if you say, `The universe was created out of nothing,' what exactly does that mean? How can nothing exist? Only something can exist. It's impossible for there to have been `something' before the universe existed; and it's impossible for there to have been `nothing' before the universe existed. So, to say `The universe was created' is meaningless."
He is trying to make us dizzy with semantic trickery. It's the old "Nothing is something" game. A fundamental principle of logic is that you don't switch the sense of a word during an argument. If we stick with the usual sense of "nothing" to mean the absence of anything at all, then what we mean, by saying that the universe was created out of nothing, is that before the universe existed there was the absolute absence of anything at all. We don't mean that God used some substance called "nothing" and went ahead to create His universe with it. "Nothing" is a concept, not a substance; "something" can be either.
The author's error doesn't stop here. Shortly he asserts that the universe always existed. Few astronomers will agree with him. The accepted theory of the Big Bang has it that there was a single, possibly ephemeral, moment when all the matter of the universe came into existence in a single, infinitely unstable mass that had to explode the instant it came into existence.
The author's discussion of morality is shallow. He asserts that the commandments about killing and stealing, for example, would be true independently of God. That is to miss the whole idea of Jewish belief. God makes murder wrong by building the concept of its wrongness into the act. The Greeks couldn't understand any of this either. Jewish teaching is that God created morality. To have discovered the rightness of morality is, in Jewish teaching, to have beheld the workings of God. The author does nothing to damage this teaching, contrary to what he believes.
He is superficial in his understanding of Torah. He cites the example of what was done with a man gathering sticks on the sabbath. There is more to the story than appears in the Bible. Oral Jewish tradition has it that the man who was gathering the sticks on the second sabbath observed by the Jews did so in order to be the example of what would happen because of the violation, so that no one else would experience the same fate. The rabbis also noted that from two appearances of the word "found," capital punishment needed the testimony of two witnesses.
This is a book written by a man who needs better training to be a rabbi than what he got. It is full of misinformation and bad guidance. Jewish readers can find much better sources for their religious questions: for instance, Herman Wouk; or, on the Internet, the Chabad Lubavich website.