Jewish atheism

An Atheist Jew is a member of the Jewish community who does not believe in God. Because Jewishness encompasses ethnic as well as religious components, it should be noted that the term "Atheist Jew" does not necessarily imply any kind of contradiction, unlike, for example "Atheist Methodist" or "Atheist Baptist". So is the case of cultural Mormons, for example. Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept as fully Jewish an atheist with a Jewish mother.

Jewish atheism can take both organized and unorganized forms. On the one hand, there is a long tradition of atheistic and secular Jewish organizations, from the Jewish socialist Bund in early twentieth-century Poland to the modern Society for Humanistic Judaism in the United States. Many Jewish atheists feel comfortable within any of the four major Jewish denominations (Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist). Again, this presents less of a contradiction than might first seem apparent given even traditional Judaism's emphasis on practice over belief. Much recent Jewish theology makes few if any metaphysical claims and is thus compatible with atheism on an ontological level. The founder of the Reconstructionist movement, Mordechai Kaplan, espoused a naturalistic definition of God, while some post-Holocaust theology has also eschewed a personal God.

Other Jewish atheists remain deeply uncomfortable with the use of theistic language, however defined. However, for such Jews traditional practice and symbolism can still retain powerful meaning. For example, to an Atheist Jew, the Menorah might represent the infinite power of the Jewish spirit. No mention of a divine force in Jewish history would be accepted literally; the Torah may be viewed as a common mythology of the Jewish people, not a faith document or correct history.

Many Jewish atheists would reject even this level of ritualized and symbolic identification, instead embracing a thoroughgoing secularism and basing their Jewishness entirely in ethnicity and secular Jewish culture. Judaism is arguably the paradigm example of the evolution of a culture and tradition that one can embrace without religious faith.

There are a number of people who, although they have Jewish ancestry, are atheists and do not consider themselves Jews. Some Jewish groups have expressed the view that Judaism is a religion, not a race, stating that non-practicing Jews should be called simply "atheists" not "atheist Jews".

See also

• Who is a Jew?
• Schisms among the Jews
• Jews in apostacy
• Conversion to Judaism
• Judaism and Christianity
• Haskalah
• Humanistic Judaism
• Secular Jew