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The story of the origins and development of a Jewish form of secularism Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.
Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.
Common discourse on Jewish identity in Israel is dominated by the view that Jewish Israelis can, and should, be either religious or secular. Moving away from this conventional framework, this book examines the role of secularism and religion in Jewish society and politics. With a focus on the ‘traditionists’ (masortim) who comprise over a third of the Jewish-Israeli population, the author examines issues of religion, tradition and secularism in Israel, giving a fresh approach to the widening theoretical discussion regarding the thesis of secularisation and modernity and exploring the wider implications of this identity. Yadgar’s conclusions have significant social, cultural and political implications, serving not only as a new contribution to the academic discourse on Jewish-Israeli identity, but as a platform upon which traditionist positions on central issues of Israeli politics can be heard. Offering a detailed investigation into a central and important Jewish-Israeli identity construct, the book is relevant not only to the study of Jewish identity in Israel but also within the wider social-theoretical issues of religion, tradition, modernity and secularization. The book will be of great interest to students of Israeli society and to anyone looking into the issues of Jewish identity, Israeli nationalism and ethnicity, religion and politics in Israel, and the sociology of religion.
From the social philosopher and New York Times–bestselling author of The Sane Society: An analysis of the Old Testament as a revolutionary humanist work. The Old Testament is one of the most carefully studied books in the world’s history. It is also one of the most misunderstood. This founding text of the world’s three largest religions is also, Erich Fromm argues, an impressive radical humanist text. He sees the stories of mankind’s transition from divided clans to united brotherhood as a tribute to the human power to overcome. Filled with hopeful symbolism, You Shall Be As Gods shows how the Old Testament and its tradition is an inspiring ode to human potential. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
A celebrated Israeli author explores the roots of the divide between religion and secularism in Israel today, and offers a path to bridging the divide "A thoughtful social, political, and philosophical examination of Judaism. . . . A cogent consideration of the place of religion in the modern world."--Kirkus Reviews Zionism began as a movement full of contradictions, between a pull to the past and a desire to forge a new future. Israel has become a place of fragmentation, between those who sanctify religious tradition and those who wish to escape its grasp. Now, a new middle ground is emerging between religious and secular Jews who want to engage with their heritage--without being restricted by it or losing it completely. In this incisive book, acclaimed author Micah Goodman explores Israeli Judaism and the conflict between religion and secularism, one of the major causes of political polarization throughout the world. Revisiting traditional religious sources and seminal works of secularism, he reveals that each contains an openness to learn from the other's messages. Goodman challenges both orthodoxies, proposing a new approach to bridge the divide between religion and secularism and pave a path toward healing a society torn asunder by extremism.
Are Jews today still the carriers of a single and identical collective identity and do they still constitute a single people? This two-fold question arises when one compares a Hassidi Habad from Brooklyn, a Jewish professor at a secular university in Brussels, a traditional Yemeni Jew still living in Sana’a, a Galilee kibbutznik, or a Russian Jew in Novossibirsk. Is there still today a significant relationship between these individuals who all subscribe to Judaism? The analysis shows that the Jewish identity is multiple and can be explained by considering all variants as “surface structures” of the three universal “deep structures” central to the notion of collective identity, namely, collective commitment, perceptions of the collective’s singularity, and positioning vis-à-vis “others.”
This book explores the culture, politics, and ideas of the nineteenth-century German secularist movements of Free Religion, Freethought, Ethical Culture, and Monism. In it, Todd H. Weir argues that although secularists challenged church establishment and conservative orthodoxy, they were subjected to the forces of religious competition.
This unique literary study of Yiddish children's periodicals casts new light on secular Yiddish schools in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Rejecting the traditional religious education of the Talmud Torahs and congregational schools, these Yiddish schools chose Yiddish itself as the primary conduit of Jewish identity and culture. Four Yiddish school networks emerged, which despite their political and ideological differences were all committed to propagating the Yiddish language, supporting social justice, and preparing their students for participation in both Jewish and American culture. Focusing on the Yiddish children's periodicals produced by the Labor Zionist Farband, the secular Sholem Aleichem schools, the socialist Workmen's Circle, and the Ordn schools of the Communist-aligned International Workers Order, Naomi Kadar shows how secular immigrant Jews sought to pass on their identity and values as they prepared their youth to become full-fledged Americans.
A myth exists that Jews can embrace the cultural components of Judaism without appreciating the legal aspects of the Jewish tradition. This myth suggests that law and culture are independent of one another. In reality, however, much of Jewish culture has a basis in Jewish law. Similarly, Jewish law produces Jewish culture. Roberta Rosenthal Kwall develops and applies a cultural analysis paradigm to the Jewish tradition that departs from the understanding of Jewish law solely as the embodiment of Divine command.
The question of Jewish sovereignty shapes Jewish identity in Israel, the status of non-Jews, and relations between Israeli and Diaspora Jews, yet its consequences remain enigmatic. In Sovereign Jews, Yaacov Yadgar highlights the shortcomings of mainstream discourse and offers a novel explanation of Zionist ideology and the Israeli polity. Yadgar argues that secularism's presumed binary pitting religion against politics is illusory. He shows that the key to understanding this alleged dichotomy is Israel's interest in maintaining its sovereignty as the nation-state of Jews. This creates a need to mark a majority of the population as Jews and to distinguish them from non-Jews. Coupled with the failure to formulate a viable alternative national identity (either "Hebrew" or "Israeli"), it leads the ostensibly secular state to apply a narrow interpretation of Jewish religion as a political tool for maintaining a Jewish majority.