Archive-name: judaism/reading-lists/humanistic Posting-Frequency: Monthly Selected Sources for Additional Reading on Judaism Part VII: Humanistic Judaism [Last Change: $Date: 1993/06/08 18:00:48 $ $Revision: 2.1 $] [Last Post: Sun May 9 11:00:36 1993] "Humanistic Jews need a literature that clearly and boldly states what they think and believe" [Win85] This message is intended to provide readers of soc.culture.jewish with a list of references to allow them to learn more about the current practices, past practices, beliefs, and history of the Humanistic Judaism Movement. Humanistic Judaism is less well known than Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. But, on a behavioral level, it claims to represent many more American Jews than any of these official ideologies. Rabbi Sherwin Wine, the founder of the movement, identifies three kinds of Jews who are neither honestly Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. He calls these types the involuntary, the ethnic, and the humanistic. Rabbi Wine defines the involuntary Jew is the individual of Jewish descent who finds no meaning either in his past or in the unique practices of his ancestral religion. He defines the ethnic Jew is the person of Jewish descent who bears a strong attachment to the Hebrew and Yiddish cultures out of which he emerged. Rabbi Wine feels that these affiliations are negative. He prefers the positive definition of Humanistic Jew: The Humanistic Jew is an individual, of either Jewish or non-Jewish descent, who believes in the ultimate value of self-respect and in the principles of humanism, community, autonomy, and rationality. He also finds meaning in the celebration of life as expressed through the historic Jewish calendar and seeks to interpret this calendar in a naturalistic way. He perceives that the power he possesses to determine and control his own life is the result of two billion years of evolutionary history. Therefore, his religious feeling re-enforces his sense of human dignity. Humanistic Judaism was organized by Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, who founded its first congregation in Farmington Michigan. In 1969, Rabbi Wine helped to found the Society of Humanistic Judaism, whose membership comprised ten temples and chapters as of 1978. Additional information on Humanistic Judaism, as well as publications on Humanistic Judaism, may be obtained from: Society for Humanistic Judaism 28611 W. Twelve Mile Road Farmington Hills MI 48018 313/478-7610 This list is organized as a digest; it may be successfully undigestified by programs such as "gnus". ------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Archival and Credits This reading list is based on a reading list developed during research at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles in January 1993. Other contributors include David A Guberman. Suggestions for additions or deletions are welcome, as are submissions of *brief* annotations of the entries. All portions of the FAQ and of the reading lists are archived on israel.nysernet.org [192.77.173.2] in the directory: ~ftp/israel/lists/scj-faq They are available in the rtfm.mit.edu archives in the directory: pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism The following files make up the reading lists and are in the "reading-lists" subdirectory: general, traditional, chasidism, reform, conservative, reconstructionist, humanistic, zionism, antisemitism, intermarriage, periodicals. The following files make up the FAQ and are in the "FAQ" subdirectory: 01-FAQ-intro, 02-Who-We-Are, 03-Torah-Halacha, 04-Observance, 05-Worship, 06-Jewish-Thought, 07-Jews-As-Nation, 08-Israel, 09-Antisemitism, 10-Miscellaneous. The files may also be obtained via Email by sending a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the following line in the body of the message: send usenet/news.answers/judaism/(portionname) Where (portionname) is replaced by the appropriate subdirectory and filenames; for example, to get the first part of the reading list, one would say: send usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lists/general ------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: VII.1. PHILOSOPHY OF MOVEMENT [Win78] Wine, Sherwin T. _Humanistic Judaism_. Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY, 1978. ISBN 0-87975-102-9 [Win85] Wine, Sherwin T. _Judaism Beyond G@d: A Radical New Way to be Jewish_. Society for Humanistic Judaism, Farmington Hills MI. ISBN 0-912645-08-3. 1985. ------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: VII.2. OTHER RELATED READING Humanistic Judaism, being such a young movement, does not yet have a large body of literature. However, there are a number of authors that are recommended reading by Rabbi Wine: o CLASSICS OF HUMANISM: Epicurus, Democritus, August Comte, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Jean Paul Sartre, George Santayana. o WRITINGS OF JEWS WHO WERE HUMANISTS: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Walter Kippman, and Walter Kaufman o LITERATURE OF SECULAR HISTORIANS: Spinoza, Julius Wellhausen, Emile Durkeim, Max Weber, Simon Dubnow, Salo Baron, and Theodore Gaster o WRITINGS OF JEWISH NATIONALISTS: I.L. Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, Chaim Zhitlowsky, Ahad Haam, Micah Berdichevsky, Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau, A.D. Gordon, Ber Borochov, Saul Tchernikhovsky, Vladmir Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion, and Haum Goldmann o JEWISH ESSAYISTS AND NOVELISTS WHO ARE ARDENT HUMANISTS: Saul Bellow, Albert Memmi, and George Steiner Other books on Humanism and Judaism include: [Eli88] Eliav, A.E. ("Lova"). _New Heart, New Spirit: Biblical Humanism for Modern Israel_. Jewish Publication Society. 1988. [Forward by Herman Wouk] ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Please mail additions or corrections to me at faigin@aero.org. End of Judaism Reading List Part VII (Humanistic) Digest ************************** ------- -- [W]:The Aerospace Corp. M1/055 * POB 92957 * LA, CA 90009-2957 * 310/336-8228 [Email]:faigin@aerospace.aero.org [Vmail]:310/336-5454 Box#13149 "And as they say, the rest is compost"