An Interview with Rabbi Sherwin Wine (Part 2 of 3)

I am impressed by the candor of Jewish thinkers, who face all of the problems that you articulate, but they do it within the tradition and make it meaningful. They don't sweep under the rug the Holocaust and the problems this creates; they don't naively subscribe to the literal meaning or the descriptions in the Torah. They don't, as you do, just simply reject God.

I was raised as a Conservative Jew and trained as a Reform rabbi so I'm aware of what's going on. There is schizophrenia, but the message is usually humanistic. Most Reform rabbis, and certainly the Conservative rabbi when I was growing up, rarely talked about God. There was nothing to say. They didn't say, "Start praying, that's how you're going to solve your problems." We would spend two and a half hours talking to this deity, telling him how wonderful he was, how just he was. And then this rabbi would stand up to give his sermon and say, well, he isn't.

Why don't you reject Judaism outright?

I have a very strong and intense commitment to my Jewish history and experience and culture.

But not to God.

No. If you look at most of the significant Jews who have made some kind of a contribution to the world over the past two centuries with a positive vision of their Jewish identity, they have almost no connection to organized religion.

It's a little paradoxical of you to say that because you seem to be organizing a religion.

The reason I'm a Humanistic Jew is because I'm a Jew. I have a very, very deep identification with the historic experience of the Jewish people. The theistic vocabulary isn't the main element of identification. Thee is also the folk culture and the experience of the Jewish people. My general experience in my childhood was that Jews were wonderful in school because they were the professional skeptics. They were always the challengers, the questioners. The big question in Jewish life is, why do Jews feel compelled to use a vocabulary that no longer fits the belief system they have? Why are they struggling to fit square pegs into round holes? We used to spend a lot of time in the Reform movement trying to redefine God because people always use the ordinary meaning of it, and then you have to try to explain why you're reusing this word in a different way. I reject the idea that there exists a creator and manager of the universe.

What about a creator? Do you reject that idea?

Yes. If you ask the question, "Who made the world?" and your answer is "God," you can logically ask the question, "Who made God? Super-God?" And you can then logically ask, "Who made Super-God? Super-Super God?" There's an infinite regression. You might as well just stop with the world. The world is there. The point is, God isn't an answer. God is the avoidance of an answer.

Can you accept the fact that God is a mystery?

If it's a mystery, there is no information. So how is that useful? If I'm teaching a class and I have these kids in front of me and I say I have the most important thing to tell you in Jewish history and I say, "Who made the world?" and they say, "God," what's it going to do for them? I mean, it's useless. It's an avoidance of an answer. There's a whole body of modern Jewish literature that expresses all these doubts, all these humanistic feelings. Why don't we read them on Shabbat? Why, every year, am I reading this ridiculous chapter from Leviticus on leprosy? Why not substitute the poetry of Tchernichowsky? When I moved from trying to rescue all those traditional documents for Humanistic thinking to being able to say clearly what I think and feel and believe, it was a feeling of freedom and liberation second to none. There are lots of people out there who feel a strong connection to their Jewish past, but what they like about being Jewish are the talents and courage of the Jewish people. We appeal to those people.

Do you see your movement being as large as the Conservative or Reform movement?

No. In North America I would say close to 60 percent of all the Jews are Humanistic Jews. But two-thirds of them are attached to, and would feel guilty not using, traditional vocabulary. When somebody dies, they want to hear the Kaddish even though they may be atheists. One of the first principles is that we are determined not to say what we don't believe. The life of courage means I have the courage to say what I believe.

Isn't that what the Kaddish means? That I have the courage to go on in the face of this loss?

No, no. The Kaddish says, "wonderful, marvelous, wonderful, marvelous, marvelous, wonderful, magnified, great is God." That's what it says. If you want to say that, OK. But if you want to say that although life has been unfair, although my child has died at the age of 33 and it's unfair, I want you to know I will not surrender, I will affirm life, say that.

Can't you say that in the traditional way?

If your belief system is humanistic, you cannot rely on the kindness of the faiths. In the end, you have to depend on human power to create whatever modicum of justice exists in the world.

But human power is limited, isn't it?

Of course, it's limited. But that's reality. There is no substitute for God.

Do you recite the Shema?

No.

Do you say any traditional prayers?

Well, we take things out of the Bible that are obviously humanistic. The words of the Song of Songs are a celebration of human love. That's humanistic.

But you have that in Shakespeare's sonnets, too.

Everything in the Bible can be found in another culture.