Humanistic Judaism

The atlas dates the origin of Humanistic Judaism to 1963.

Chosenness by divine election is rejected; Jewish distinctiveness is grounded in shared culture, history and peoplehood rather than in a doctrine of selection by God.

A covenant with a God is rejected along with the God. What is kept is the shared history and culture of a people, held to need no supernatural party to it.

A divine creation is rejected. The origin of the universe is treated as a question for natural science and not for religion.

Halakha as divinely binding law is rejected; Jewish practice is retained as cultural and historical heritage rather than as commandment.

A supernatural personal Messiah is rejected, consistent with this stream's founding rejection of belief in a supernatural God.

This stream is founded on a nontheistic philosophy, so an omnipotent God is rejected along with the rest of the supernatural claim.

Supernatural revelation is rejected. The prophets are read as human moral teachers whose demands stand on their own merit rather than on their source.

Redemption by divine act is rejected. What improvement the world receives is held to be the work of human beings and of nobody else.

Bodily resurrection is rejected as a supernatural claim inconsistent with this stream's humanistic philosophy.

Founded on a nontheistic, humanistic philosophy, this stream rejects supernatural revelation, holding that Jewish identity rests on culture, history and peoplehood rather than a divinely given text.

A sequence of petitions addressed to God has no place in a Judaism that does not address one.

Humanistic Judaism is nontheistic and keeps no order of spiritual beings in its teaching or its liturgy.

Humanistic Judaism keeps no angelic order in its liturgy or teaching, Gabriel included.

Humanistic Judaism is nontheistic and keeps no esoteric doctrine of the divine, so the Kabbalah has no place in its teaching.

Humanistic Judaism keeps no angelic order and no Kabbalistic hierarchy.

Humanistic Judaism is nontheistic and keeps the Jewish calendar, culture and ethics without supernatural beings, so no angelic order appears in its liturgy or its teaching.

Humanistic Judaism keeps Jewish culture and ethics without divine command, so a code of divinely given law carries no authority in it.

Humanistic Judaism observes no binding halakhah, so the standard code of Jewish law has no governing role in its practice.

Humanistic Judaism keeps no angelic order, so the four archangels of the traditional bedtime liturgy have no place in its practice.

Founded by Sherwin Wine, a Reform rabbi, on a liturgy from which references to God were removed.

Said for the dead in a form that names the memory of the person rather than the greatness of God, the movement keeping the practice and not the theology behind it.

Humanistic Judaism ordains rabbis who do not affirm God, as teachers of Jewish culture and celebrants of its life cycle. The training and the title are kept and the theology they classically carried is not.

Kept as the central declaration of belonging and reworded so that it does not assert what the movement does not hold.

Humanistic congregations read the Torah as a human document of Jewish history and culture. The scroll is kept and read, and what is claimed for it is different.

Humanistic Judaism honours Spinoza as a founding figure of a Judaism without supernatural belief and does not regard the ban as carrying authority over anyone.

Ethical action in the world is held to be the whole of what the tradition asks, there being no one to petition.

A coming of age ceremony is held in which the young person presents a piece of research on a Jewish subject of their own choosing.

Acts of loving kindness are retained in full. This stream drops the theology and keeps the ethics, and this is one of the duties it keeps.

Sherwin Wine's own 1985 founding statement of the movement, the first full published case for a Jewish identity grounded in peoplehood rather than theology, written after two decades of the same practice at Birmingham Temple.

Marriage is solemnised by this movement's own celebrants.

The Mishnah is studied as a historical and cultural document rather than as revealed authority.

The Sabbath is marked as a cultural and family institution.

The Seder is kept, from Haggadot this movement has written, in which the story is told as human liberation rather than as divine deliverance.

This movement holds no service of prayer to God. Its gatherings use readings, music and reflection drawn from Jewish history and literature, and the difference is stated rather than concealed.

The Talmud is studied as a historical and cultural document of the Jewish civilization rather than as revealed authority.

The Tanakh is read and taught as literature and history, part of Jewish cultural heritage rather than divine revelation.

Repair of the world is held as a human obligation, and it is the closest thing this stream has to a mission.

The Torah is read and taught as literature and history rather than as divine revelation or binding law.