Jewish atheism

Introduction

A Jewish atheist or atheist Jew is a person of Jewish ethnicity who is an atheist, meaning they do not believe in God, yet still belong to the Jewish nation. Because Jewishness encompasses ethnic as well as religious components, the term "Jewish atheist" does not necessarily imply any kind of contradiction, unlike, for example "Christian atheist". 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 and Organized Jewish Life

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). This presents less of a contradiction than might first seem apparent given Judaism's emphasis on practice over belief, with even mainstream guides to Judaism suggesting that belief in God is not a necessary prerequisite to Jewish observance. However, although all four branches of Judaism count atheists among their members, the presence of entire congregations espousing atheism remains problematic outside of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. The Reform movement, for example, has rejected efforts at affiliation by atheistic temples.

Jewish Atheism and Jewish Theology

Much recent Jewish theology makes few if any metaphysical claims and is thus compatible with atheism on an ontological level. The founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Mordechai Kaplan, espoused a naturalistic definition of God, while some post-Holocaust theology has also eschewed a personal God. The Jewish philosopher Howard Wettstein has suggested that Jewish atheists can fully engage with traditional Jewish ritual and notions of God with little or no contradiction, in part due to the centrality of practice rather than belief in Jewish religious life. Harold Schulweis, a Conservative Jewish rabbi trained in the Reconstructionist tradition, has argued that Jewish theology should move from a focus on God to an emphasis on "godliness." This "predicate theology", while continuing to use theistic language, again makes few metaphysical claims that non-believers would find objectionable.

However, some Jewish atheists remain deeply uncomfortable with the use of any kind of theistic language. For such Jews traditional practice and symbolism can still retain powerful meaning. They may continue to engage in Jewish rituals such as the lighting of Shabbat candles and find meaning in many aspects of Jewish culture and religion. 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.

Jewish Atheists and Secular Jewish Culture

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. This might include an identification with Jewish history and the fate of the Jewish people, an attraction to Jewish literature (including such non-religious Jewish authors as Philip Roth and Amos Oz), the consumption of Jewish food or an attachment to Jewish languages such as Yiddish, Hebrew or Ladino. A high percentage of Israelis identify themselves as secular, rejecting the practice of the Jewish religion (see Religion in Israel). Other non-believers of Jewish ancestry do not consider themselves Jews, preferring to define themselves solely as atheists. Judaism is arguably the paradigm example of the evolution of a culture and tradition that one can embrace without religious faith.

Famous Jewish Atheists

A number of well-known Jews throughout history have rejected a belief in God. Karl Marx was born to a Jewish family and rejected all religious belief. Sigmund Freud penned The Future of an Illusion, in which he both rejected religious belief and outlined its origins and prospects. At the same time he urged a Jewish colleague to raise his son within the Jewish religion, arguing that "If you do not let your son grow up as a Jew, you will deprive him of those sources of energy which cannot be replaced by anything else." The anarchist Emma Goldman was born to an Orthodox Jewish family and rejected belief in God, while the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, when asked if she believed in God, answered "I believe in the Jewish people, and the Jewish people believe in God." More recently, the French Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida stated somewhat cryptically, "I rightly pass for an atheist". And, in the world of entertainment, Woody Allen has made a career out of the tension between his Jewishness and religious doubt ("How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?").

Other Jews have rejected belief in a traditional God in a manner compatible with atheism, while continuing to use theistic language. In 1656 the seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Sephardic synagogue after advancing a determinist pantheist notion of God that, on the ontological level, is compatible with atheism. Albert Einstein used theistic language and identified strongly as a Jew, while rejecting the notion of a personal deity.

See also

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