DUIN: For ‘cultural’ Jews, focus not on God

Last Sunday, my daughter and I visited a gathering of Jews who don’t believe in God, where the rabbi identifies himself as a bisexual atheist and the first 45 minutes are spent doing Israeli folk dances.

Folks at Machar, the Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism, believe they’re on the cutting edge of a religion in which half of all marriages are to Gentiles and 35 percent — 1.8 million people — identify themselves as nonreligious or “cultural” Jews.

These are folks who identify with the 14 percent of the American population that is unaffiliated with any religious group.

“The big challenge is how we reach these people,” Rabbi Binyamin Biber told a group of us gathered in the library of the Jewish Primary Day School in Northwest. “They don’t join organizations. It’s like herding cats.”

Machar, which means “tomorrow” in Hebrew, wants to touch these fall-through-the-cracks people who fit into no discernable category, like the woman behind me who was married to a Muslim or the man in front of me who was turned off to how synagogues operate or the woman to my left whose militantly atheistic husband wanted no mention of God in their home.

When the Almighty is a nonentity, the focus is on social justice or personal morality. Instead of the word “Bible,” talk is of “Jewish tradition.” If there is a liturgy, it’s rebranded as celebration language that acknowledges life cycle events. Instead of circumcision, adherents can select a naming ceremony. Rituals point to self or community, never God.

Thus, the ritual of lighting Sabbath candles is transformed from “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the Sabbath candles,” to “Let us bless the light as we gather together to kindle Sabbath candles. With light, let us bless life.”

Machar is an affiliate of the 10,000-member Detroit-based Society for Humanistic Judaism, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. It was founded by Sherwin Wine, a gay Reformed rabbi; hence the society’s openness to clergy from a variety of sexual orientations.

It’s built on the idea of an evolving religion. Instead of being based on eternal truths, Judaism is, I was told, “whatever Jews do.”

“Judaism has never been static,” Bonnie Cousens, the society’s executive director, told me. “If it were, we’d still be offering sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem.”

Mr. Biber firmly believes the cultural, nonreligious Jew is the Jew of the future. The devout, he insists, need to realize where the numbers really are.

“Why should the Orthodox, a minority in the Jewish world, set all the standards?” he asked. And so his society has invented a humanistic Judaism that is nontheological and focused on what can be experienced in this world. The Unitarian-Universalists have pioneered this for the Christian world, he added, so why not something for Jews?

Maybe Jews can subsist without the Torah for a generation, I told him, but sooner or later, won’t they be lost to the faith forever? How can the branches lop themselves off from the tree?

“The vast majority of Jews function without the Torah,” he said. “They use small portions because it reflects values. They know stories from the Torah and certain historical elements. But I don’t think we’re less Jewish than anyone else.”

So they operate on the far edges of Judaism, attracting those people who can’t bear to say goodbye to their heritage just yet.

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