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The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Secular Judaism The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Secular Judaism by jonathan sarna the term “secular judaism” sounds like an promotes three main principles: the improvement oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. How can of this life by material means; the use of science one simultaneously subscribe to Judaism and for human betterment (“science is the available be secular? One is reminded of the perhaps Providence of man”), and doing good. “The good apocryphal story of the Communists in late of the present life is good,” Holyoake wrote, with Tsarist terms who would often meet in the bes some circularity, “and it is good to seek that good.” medrash, the house of study. One day they were Above all else, Holyoake and his followers focused studying Karl Marx and they got into a heavy squarely on this world as opposed to the “world debate over the existence of God. They argued to come.” Indeed, the very term secular derives back and forth, as pro-Communist ex-Talmudists from a Latin form meaning “this world.”1 1 http://www. were wont to do, and finally put the question to a Secularism owed a great debt to the catholicity.com/ vote. On a close ballot, God lost. At that point the Enlightenment, and specifically to the Jewish encyclopedia/s/ secularism.html; shammas (beadle), who had been waiting patiently, thinker Baruch Spinoza, who was born in “Secularism,” The got up. “Raboysai (Gentlemen),” he said, “God Amsterdam in 1632. Spinoza’s views were seen as Compact Oxford English Dictionary or no God, it is time to daven maariv, time to say radical and highly dangerous in his day, and it is (Clarendon Press, the evening prayer.” According to the story they all not surprising that the leaders of the young 1991), 1696. hastened to comply. and highly insecure Jewish community of 2 Tractatus Theologico- This ambivalence toward secularism, and jokes Holland eventually excommunicated him. But Politicus, chapter 7:191 [(on p. 6 of surrounding its seeming contradictions, may stem his influence was enormous. “Since everyone Judaism in a Secular from its relative novelty in the world of ideas. The has a perfect right to think freely, even about Age: An Anthology of Secular Humanistic term itself is commonly attributed to George religion, and cannot conceivably surrender this Jewish Thought Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906), the ironically named right, everyone will also have a perfect right and (Ktav, 1995), Renee Englishman who literally wrote the early tracts on authority to judge freely about religion, and hence Kogel and Zev Katz 2 (eds.)]. the subject. According to Holyoake, secularism to explain and interpret it for himself,” he wrote. Spinoza’s emphasis on the right to “think Americans, including a former president of freely” eventually give rise to a movement known the Continental Congress, Elias Boudinot, as Free Thought, which in turn became popular in and a future president of the United States, Revolutionary-era America. Thomas Jefferson’s John Quincy Adams, became associated Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom with an organization designed to convert (1786) promised “that all men shall be free to Jews to Christianity (the so-called American profess, and by argument to maintain, their Society for Meliorating the Condition of opinion in matters of religion, and that the same the Jews, founded in 1820), a leading Free Thinker shall in nowise diminish, enlarge or affect their named George Houston joined Jews in working civil capacities.” Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, to oppose it. His pamphlet, Israel Vindicated, published nine years later, attacked all major written under a pseudonym, employed Free religions, including Judaism. “Every national Thought arguments in defense of Jewish rights church or religion has established itself by and liberties.4 pretending some special mission from God, Some Jews themselves became Free Thinkers 3 Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A communicated to certain individuals,” Paine and even avowed atheists. In 1834, a British-born History of American declared. “Each of those churches accuses New York Jewish chemist with the unusual name Secularism the other of unbelief; and for my own part, of Charles Cleomenes Coleman Cohen wrote in (Metropolitan Books, 2004), p. 42. I disbelieve them all.” 3 a newspaper called The Free Enquire that “I can 4 Sarna, Jonathan D. While Free Thinkers did not necessarily attach no idea to the word God and cannot “The Freethinker, view Judaism sympathetically—Jefferson was consequently believe in him.” That very day an the Jews, and the Missionaries: somewhat critical; Thomas Paine was highly explosion in his laboratory blew him to bits. This George Houston critical—Free Thought unquestionably advanced naturally made the headlines—some viewed his and the Mystery of religious liberty for Jews, by opposing all forms death as Divine punishment—but at the same time, Israel Vindicated,” AJS Review, 5 (1980), of religious coercion. Indeed, when leading a newspaper sympathetic to Cohen noted that pp. 101-114. there were in the United States some half a dozen longed to write “a complete history of the Jews”; other Jews—“most intelligent men…well-educated he associated and corresponded heavily with in the Jewish faith”—who had become “professed Jews; and he clearly thought a great deal about and fearless Atheists.” what being Jewish meant. In New York, a group Nor was atheism confined just to men. The of Jews unconnected with synagogues formed, pioneering 19th century Jewish feminist Ernestine in 1841, what they called the “New Israelite Rose, daughter of a Polish rabbi and one of the Sick-Benefit and Burial Society,” reputedly foremost women orators and human rights “the first overtly secular Jewish philanthropy activists of the middle decades of the nineteenth in the United States.” The society may have century, was also an avowed atheist. “Agitate, provided a “secular” alternative to synagogue- agitate” was her memorable slogan. Though she based burial rites, but as its name indicates, it was always known as a Jew and defended Jews was very much concerned with “Israelites” and who faced oppression, Ernestine Rose identified their needs.7 herself as an “infidel” and actually published Nationwide, this critical postulate of secular A Defence of Atheism.5 Judaism—the idea that the bonds of peoplehood, Most 19th century American Jews, of course, rather than faith, can preserve Jewish life—found were not atheists. The mid-19th century witnessed its most important institutional expression in the immigration of over 150,000 Jewish the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith immigrants from Central Europe, particularly (literally, “sons of the covenant”). Established Germany and Poland, and these Jews covered a in 1843 with the motto “Benevolence, Brotherly 5 Suhl, Yuri. Ernestine wide religious spectrum. As a contemporary poet Love, and Harmony,” the preamble to the order’s Rose and the Battle put it in 1848: “Some are reformed and wisdom original constitution carefully avoided any for Human Rights 6 (Reynal, 1959); boast/Some orthodox/indifferent most.” Indeed, mention of God, ritual commandments, Torah, Jacoby, Freethinkers, as many as half of all American Jews in 1850 or religious faith, but stressed instead the pp. 96-101; Ernestine L. Rose, belonged to no synagogue whatsoever. importance of Jewish unity. The organization was A Defence of These so-called “indifferent” Jews—large by no means anti-religious. Some of its members Atheism, Being a Lecture Delivered in number, far-removed from the synagogue, belonged to synagogues, and even played active in Mercantile Hall, and seemingly uninterested in the practice of roles within them. Yet the organization’s Boston, April 10, Judaism—continued, for the most part, to identify “emphatic” policy—codified in 1859—was neither 1861 (Boston 1881). as Jews, and at least some of them turn out upon “to interfere with nor to influence” religious 6 Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: close examination to have been anything but opinions. (And in fact, “questions of purely A History (Yale indifferent to the fate of the Jewish people. Joseph religious character” were officially banned University Press, 2004), p. 88. Lyons of Columbia, South Carolina, for example, from the order for fear that they would produce 7 Sarna, American stayed home on Yom Kippur and described “serious trouble and disastrous effects.”) While Judaism, pp. 88-89. himself in his diary as “almost an atheist.” Yet he synagogues divided Jews and alienated some of them altogether, B’nai B’rith argued that fraternal time, a traditional tree. Like most German Jews ties—the covenant (b’rith) that bound Jews one to of their type, they would have considered theirs another regardless of religious ideology—could a thoroughly secular Christmas: a Christmas bring about “union and harmony” in Jewish life. without Christ.9 A parallel organization called the “United Order What kept Brandeis Jewish was a deep of True Sisters” sought (with considerably less personal sense of Jewish identity, a wide network success) to organize Jewish women on the same of Jewish kin, and a late-burgeoning (in his fifties) secular communal basis.8 commitment to Zionism, which linked him to We can get a more intimate sense of this Jewish people worldwide as well as to Jewish world of secular Jews of Central European origin aspirations. And yet—significantly—he found this by examining the case of Louis Brandeis, one of hard to transmit to his children. His daughter, America’s best known and most distinguished Elizabeth, intermarried and ended up sharing Without ever entering a synagogue, secular East European Jews in America felt intensely Jewish. secular Jews. Brandeis was born in Louisville none of her father’s Jewish or Zionistic interests. around 150 years ago, in 1856. His grandfather and Elizabeth’s husband, Paul Rauschenbush, was great-grandfather in Prague had been leaders in the son of the well-known liberal Protestant an antinomian Jewish cult movement known as theologian, Walter Rauschenbush.
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