JUDAISMO HUMANISTA
O Judaismo Humanista é a pratica da liberdade e dignidade humana
WHAT DO SECULAR JEWS BELIEVE? By Prof. Yaakov Malkin
WHAT DO SECULAR JEWS BELIEVE?
By Prof. Yaakov Malkin
(TAU), Academic Director, College of Pluralistic Judaism, Jerusalem
Why is it so hard to put what we believe in clearly into words? Why did my What Do Secular Jews Believe? have to go through six rewrites before it reached publishable form (and came out at last in February, 2000)? After all, as the son and grandson of confirmed atheists, I have lived and learnt this belief-system for as long as I can remember.
Perhaps it is because Judaism — the three-thousand-year-old civilization and culture of the Jewish people — has never made a habit of formulating its credo (as Catholicism, for instance, has). Jewish beliefs — secular and religious — tend to be realized in action, in lifestyles, in relation to the halachic commandments and to non-Jewish civilizations, and in the laws and ethical norms we observe.
Secular Jews, that is Jews who have liberated themselves from the yoke of mitzva observance, are believing Jews as much as any Jew, showing what they believe in the way they live their lives, in the education they choose for their children, in the way they celebrate the national and personal festivals, in their perception of Judaism as a culture and not as a religion.
Secular Jews believe in humankind, that men and women have created our moral values, have created God Himself, together with all the laws and commandments which the religious ascribe to Him.
Secular Jews believe that their freedom demands loyalty to the values of humanism and that it is these values by which each human act, law or commandment must be judged and ranked. Hillel the Elder and Kant have encapsulated them in famous maxims: Do not unto others what you would hate done to you. No man may regard another as a means, only as an end in himself. An ethical principle is either of universal application or it is unethical. All moral values may be said to accord with or derive from these three cardinal tenets. Religious commandments and laws are not values but rulings which must be evaluated — and then rejected or accepted — as they stand or fall by the test of humanist values. It was on this scale of priorities that the Hebrew prophets ranked social justice over ritual impeccability and Hillel could epitomize “the whole of Torah” in that one transcendent perception.
Secular humanist Jews, like all humanists in the world, believe that men and women are not born humane but grow into their humanity, as they learn and absorb the humanist values which teach good from evil. (The God of Genesis, we are told, was resolved that human beings should not possess such knowledge. Thanks only to Eve’s successful rebellion — she ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — was humankind granted its morality-dependent humanity, the seed from which all human civilization and culture has since grown).
This process, whereby men and women grow into their humanity, invariably takes place within the context of the national culture they are brought up in. Indeed, this is its only possible context, for all cultures in the world are national cultures. (Humanity, however, will be the end result of the process only if upbringing and education immunize children against nationalism and racism.) Children cannot be brought up outside a national culture but this does not mean that they may not absorb more than one. This is what distinguishes Israeli Jews from Diaspora Jews. Diaspora Jews are usually brought up in the language and culture of the host country, to which what they assimilate from their Jewish communal context — if any — is an adjunct and complement. Israeli Jews, by contrast, grow up within a single unitary, Israeli-Jewish, culture and the Jewish national language is the vernacular of all activity, from the individual daily round to science and the arts. (The Israeli-Arab / Palestinian culture and the Israeli Druze culture constitute separate, if partially overlapping, national contexts.)
Judaism is the pluralist culture and civilization of the whole of Jewry, secular and religious. Over the three millennia of its existence it has evolved and changed, absorbing borrowings from so many neighbors, conquerors and hosts, from Sumerians, Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, and more. Around the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era the borrowings began travelling in the opposite direction and the influence of Judaism — mediated via Islam and Christianity — is now manifest on all western peoples. For the last thousand years the pattern of interaction and borrowings between Jewish and non-Jewish civilizations has been complex and multidirectional.
For this reason, secular Jews are convinced that education in Judaism must embrace Judaism’s interrelationships with other civilizations and form part of a broader education in the world’s national cultures. Only thus will Jews achieve their full potential humanity and universality.
None of these goals of secular Judaism will be realized if secular Jews are not active within ‘communities of culture’ and communities like these have indeed sprung up — in German-Jewish circles in Western Europe, in Yiddishist circles in Eastern Europe and America, in kibbutzim and community centers in Israel, and now, since the 1960s, in khavurot (groups meeting regularly for socio-cultural activity) and secular-humanist communities and synagogues in Western Europe and North America.
Socio-cultural activity of this kind enriches the life of the mind for people of all ages. First-hand experience of Jewry’s literature and art, of its national festivals and its celebrations of the life-cycle transitions, adds renewed dimensions — a spirituality and a feeling of connectedness to an age-long national tradition and legacy and to the dispersed Jewish people, wherever it may be in the world.
By Prof. Yaakov Malkin
(TAU), Academic Director, College of Pluralistic Judaism, Jerusalem
Why is it so hard to put what we believe in clearly into words? Why did my What Do Secular Jews Believe? have to go through six rewrites before it reached publishable form (and came out at last in February, 2000)? After all, as the son and grandson of confirmed atheists, I have lived and learnt this belief-system for as long as I can remember.
Perhaps it is because Judaism — the three-thousand-year-old civilization and culture of the Jewish people — has never made a habit of formulating its credo (as Catholicism, for instance, has). Jewish beliefs — secular and religious — tend to be realized in action, in lifestyles, in relation to the halachic commandments and to non-Jewish civilizations, and in the laws and ethical norms we observe.
Secular Jews, that is Jews who have liberated themselves from the yoke of mitzva observance, are believing Jews as much as any Jew, showing what they believe in the way they live their lives, in the education they choose for their children, in the way they celebrate the national and personal festivals, in their perception of Judaism as a culture and not as a religion.
Secular Jews believe in humankind, that men and women have created our moral values, have created God Himself, together with all the laws and commandments which the religious ascribe to Him.
Secular Jews believe that their freedom demands loyalty to the values of humanism and that it is these values by which each human act, law or commandment must be judged and ranked. Hillel the Elder and Kant have encapsulated them in famous maxims: Do not unto others what you would hate done to you. No man may regard another as a means, only as an end in himself. An ethical principle is either of universal application or it is unethical. All moral values may be said to accord with or derive from these three cardinal tenets. Religious commandments and laws are not values but rulings which must be evaluated — and then rejected or accepted — as they stand or fall by the test of humanist values. It was on this scale of priorities that the Hebrew prophets ranked social justice over ritual impeccability and Hillel could epitomize “the whole of Torah” in that one transcendent perception.
Secular humanist Jews, like all humanists in the world, believe that men and women are not born humane but grow into their humanity, as they learn and absorb the humanist values which teach good from evil. (The God of Genesis, we are told, was resolved that human beings should not possess such knowledge. Thanks only to Eve’s successful rebellion — she ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — was humankind granted its morality-dependent humanity, the seed from which all human civilization and culture has since grown).
This process, whereby men and women grow into their humanity, invariably takes place within the context of the national culture they are brought up in. Indeed, this is its only possible context, for all cultures in the world are national cultures. (Humanity, however, will be the end result of the process only if upbringing and education immunize children against nationalism and racism.) Children cannot be brought up outside a national culture but this does not mean that they may not absorb more than one. This is what distinguishes Israeli Jews from Diaspora Jews. Diaspora Jews are usually brought up in the language and culture of the host country, to which what they assimilate from their Jewish communal context — if any — is an adjunct and complement. Israeli Jews, by contrast, grow up within a single unitary, Israeli-Jewish, culture and the Jewish national language is the vernacular of all activity, from the individual daily round to science and the arts. (The Israeli-Arab / Palestinian culture and the Israeli Druze culture constitute separate, if partially overlapping, national contexts.)
Judaism is the pluralist culture and civilization of the whole of Jewry, secular and religious. Over the three millennia of its existence it has evolved and changed, absorbing borrowings from so many neighbors, conquerors and hosts, from Sumerians, Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, and more. Around the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era the borrowings began travelling in the opposite direction and the influence of Judaism — mediated via Islam and Christianity — is now manifest on all western peoples. For the last thousand years the pattern of interaction and borrowings between Jewish and non-Jewish civilizations has been complex and multidirectional.
For this reason, secular Jews are convinced that education in Judaism must embrace Judaism’s interrelationships with other civilizations and form part of a broader education in the world’s national cultures. Only thus will Jews achieve their full potential humanity and universality.
None of these goals of secular Judaism will be realized if secular Jews are not active within ‘communities of culture’ and communities like these have indeed sprung up — in German-Jewish circles in Western Europe, in Yiddishist circles in Eastern Europe and America, in kibbutzim and community centers in Israel, and now, since the 1960s, in khavurot (groups meeting regularly for socio-cultural activity) and secular-humanist communities and synagogues in Western Europe and North America.
Socio-cultural activity of this kind enriches the life of the mind for people of all ages. First-hand experience of Jewry’s literature and art, of its national festivals and its celebrations of the life-cycle transitions, adds renewed dimensions — a spirituality and a feeling of connectedness to an age-long national tradition and legacy and to the dispersed Jewish people, wherever it may be in the world.
Respostas a este tópico
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Permalink Responder até Jayme Fucs Bar em
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Envio a vcs esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin, uma das maiores autoridades academica sobre o tema judaismo secular humanista em Israel, na qual tive a oportunidade de me encontrar com ele hoje, junto com o Efraim Zadoff membro do nosso site.
Gostaria muito se alquem do nosso site que domina o idioma ingles possa traduzir esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin para o portugues, dando a oportunidade de abrangir o conteudo desse texto para aqueles que nao dominam o idioma ingles.
Um forte Abraco
jayme
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Permalink Responder até Daniel Fischer (Del) em
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Muito bom o texto!
Realmente a corrente de judaísmo secular-humanista deve ser mais ativa e divulgar sua posição, e não ser mais tratada como "aqueles que não cumprem mitzvot ou que não querem saber de nada".
FAÇA UM MOVIMENTO!
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Permalink Responder até ronen perlin em
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envia versão para o portugues, conforme solicitado por voce. Abs. Ronen.
Jayme Fucs Bar disse:Envio a vcs esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin, uma das maiores autoridades academica sobre o tema judaismo secular humanista em Israel, na qual tive a oportunidade de me encontrar com ele hoje, junto com o Efraim Zadoff membro do nosso site.
Gostaria muito se alquem do nosso site que domina o idioma ingles possa traduzir esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin para o portugues, dando a oportunidade de abrangir o conteudo desse texto para aqueles que nao dominam o idioma ingles.
Um forte Abraco
jayme - Anexos
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Ronen Ata Gadol!
Valeu mesmo amigo por essa traducao super rapida e super eficiente!
Obrigado em nome de todos desse nosso site
Com carinho do Jayme
ronen perlin disse:envia versão para o portugues, conforme solicitado por voce. Abs. Ronen.
Jayme Fucs Bar disse:Envio a vcs esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin, uma das maiores autoridades academica sobre o tema judaismo secular humanista em Israel, na qual tive a oportunidade de me encontrar com ele hoje, junto com o Efraim Zadoff membro do nosso site.
Gostaria muito se alquem do nosso site que domina o idioma ingles possa traduzir esse texto do professor Yaakov Malkin para o portugues, dando a oportunidade de abrangir o conteudo desse texto para aqueles que nao dominam o idioma ingles.
Um forte Abraco
jayme
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