Celebrations

Celebration is a human need. Celebrations dramatize our commitments to people and ideas. Community festivals reinforce group solidarity. Because ancient peoples deemed supernatural power essential to human welfare, prayer, worship, and divination accompanied traditional festivals. A festival with worship rituals was a holy day, or holiday.

Priestly and rabbinic Judaism promoted rituals, both for holy days and for daily living, that reinforced Jewish solidarity and sought to guarantee divine support for group survival. Humanistic Jews recognize the value of celebration as a vehicle for group togetherness, but they find no value in the fixed, repetitive behavior characteristic of historic worship and prayer. Humanistic celebrations dramatize the accomplishments of people and the importance of the community and the natural phenomena that exist to support it. Humanistic Jews observe Jewish holidays and life cycle events, drawing on the full spectrum of Jewish tradition and culture to create meaningful ceremonies that enrich our lives today and connect us to our history and our future as one people.

(Source: Congregation for Humanistic Judaism website)

Learn more about the history of Jewish holy days, and the ways in which Humanistic Jews celebrate them:

• Rosh Hashanah
• Yom Kippur
• Hanukkah
• Purim
• Passover
• Other Celebrations (Shavuot and Tu Bi'Shevat)
• Life Cycle Events
• Tu Bi'Shevat