8 - Secular Judaism

Summary

AS A RESULT OF THE CHALLENGES to theistic belief in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—science versus Genesis, Marxism, Freud, biblical criticism, atheistic philosophy in general, and the Holo - caust and other terrible evils on an unprecedented scale—some Euro - pean Jews gave up Judaism entirely, preferring complete assimilation. These Jews were either indifferent to Jewish life or positively antag - onistic to it. Other Jews, however, though they had lost belief in the existence of God, had a feeling of attachment to Jewish behaviour patterns and refused to abandon what they called the Jewish way of life. There thus developed the notion of a secular Judaism, in which some of the religious practices such as bar mitzvah and circumcision were still maintained, and even occasional visits to the synagogue were thought admirable, but all was seen in terms of emotional satisfaction, much as some people might celebrate Christmas as a holiday period even though they reject Christian dogma. Of ‘secular Christians’ Chesterton argued, why not have the fun if you do not have the faith? Secular Jews would retort that the Jewish way is ‘fun’ which they see no reason at all to give up.

It ought to occasion no surprise that some people have held, and some still hold, that religion is possible without belief in God. In ancient times Theravadic Buddhism, which by any definition deserves to be con sidered as a religion, was atheistic or, at least, taught that the God idea was irrelevant to its aim of overcoming human suffering.

In the early nineteenth century, Auguste Comte founded the religion of Positivism, the religion of humanity and the full harmony of life, with its Bible and sacraments and a religious calendar, but with mankind in the place of God. More recently, Julian Huxley propagated a ‘religion without revelation’ in which man can express his sense of awe and wonder without invoking a personal God. Huxley writes:

For my own part, the sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the hypothesis of God as a supernatural being is enormous. I see no other way of bridging the gap between the religious and the scientific approach to reality. But if this rejection is once accomplished the abyss has disappeared in the twinkling of an eye, and yet all the vital realities of both sides are preserved.