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June 25, 2004
Following a Judaism without God
Secular Jews get their identity through culture, heritage and
family, rather than through religion, says Seid.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
What the heck is a secular rabbi? It's a question Rabbi Judith
Seid gets a lot. The Baltimore-based secular rabbi was in British
Columbia last week, visiting Vancouver's Peretz Centre for Secular
Jewish Culture and the capital city's Victoria Society for Secular
Judaism.
As a non-believer in God, Seid is used to the criticism that she
is a "bad Jew" or, at least, certainly not a rabbi. The
criticism rolls off her back.
"The Orthodox don't consider the Reform rabbis rabbis,"
said Seid. Litmus tests for Jewishness are as old as the tradition
itself, she said, but this is a time in history when anyone who
seeks to be affiliated with their Jewishness needs to be welcomed.
"We can't really afford to be losing people who want to be
Jews," she said. "What I'm trying to do is provide a place
for people who are looking for a way to be Jewish, who love being
Jewish, who want to be Jewish [but] who are not interested in talking
to God.
"Most Jews understand that it is the strength of our community
to make sure there's a place for everybody. If your choice is Orthodox
or nothing, you're going to get a whole lot more nothings than if
your choices are [diverse]."
Seid, who was ordained through the Illinois-based International
Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, relies on old interpretations
of a rabbi's role to define her calling.
"Being a rabbi has nothing to do with religion," she contends.
"Traditionally, rabbis don't even lead services. They are teachers
and judges."
As a teacher, she said, her role is to direct her members to the
sources and resources they need to inspire and educate themselves.
As a judge, she sees her role as leading people toward moral decisions.
"It's helping people make moral judgments," Seid said.
"Helping them clarify what the issues are, what their values
are, their hierarchy of values. Figuring out how to do the right
thing. People are looking for an excuse to do the right thing and
they need help figuring out how to do that."
Now leading a small congregation in Baltimore, Md., Seid was until
recently the leader of a congregation in Ann Arbor, Mich. She is
also a board member of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations:
Voice of Secular Jews. The umbrella group has slightly more than
two dozen member organizations (she's not certain of the exact current
number), including Vancouver's Peretz Centre, Toronto's United Jewish
People's Order and groups in Winnipeg and Montreal. Some groups
have several hundred families, others just a few. Seid's group in
Baltimore has 38 member-units.
Although the secular movement may be small if tenacious in North
America, it seems to be finding a resonance and is growing in some
parts of the world, like eastern Europe.
"There are cities in eastern Europe that now have secular Jewish
groups," she said, noting that changes since the fall of the
Soviet Union have presented opportunities for Jews to identify more
freely with their heritage.
The Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations is a clearinghouse
for ideas for secular groups, providing Jewish school curricula,
holiday resources like a secular Haggadah and ideas for lifecycle
events.
"When we do our lifecycle ceremonies, it's really, really different
from a religious one, because we don't have a formula," she
said. "Our bar and bat mitzvahs ... are so personal. The kids
do something that makes them feel connected. They find something
that interests them in Jewish life. Our weddings also [are special],
because our weddings are about the couple."
The secular group is the only Jewish denomination, Seid said, that
happily performs intermarriages.
"When we welcome intermarrieds, we don't do it grudgingly,"
she said. "We really welcome multicultural families.... We
try and make a wedding that is respectful of both traditions and
celebrates what the couple shares, not what divides them."
What about other identity-defining Jewish traditions like kashrut?
"We have a completely different take on it," said Seid,
noting that the concept of kashrut (which determines the fitness
of foods) is interpreted in her movement to incorporate the treatment
of workers in preparing food, the environmental consequences of
its production and the humanity of the slaughtering process.
"The fruit of exploited labor is not fit to eat," she
said.
Though many people might consider themselves secular Jews, Seid
jokes that she and her members are secular with a capital S.
"It's too bad that the word 'secular' came to mean 'nothing,'"
she said. Being a secular Jew can mean a rich association with the
long tradition of non-religious Judaism.
"We get our identity as Jews through our culture, our heritage
and our family, rather than through any specific religion,"
said the rabbi. "The thing about Judaism as a religion is it's
not a religion.... It has all sorts of different ideas in it, [from]
reincarnation to no afterlife and we've always been this way. We've
always had diverse religious ideas."
Defining Judaism as a religion is stultifying, said Seid, the author
of God-optional Judaism.
"Being Jewish is not like Protestant, Catholic, Jew. It's the
entirety of your connection with your heritage, your historical
consciousness and the other people who are like you," she said.
This distinction is something Seid thinks Canadians understand more
easily than do Americans, due to our differing views of multiculturalism
and the history of the 20th century.
"The secular movement in North America, between probably 1910
and 1950, was the main way that Jews affiliated, not through religion,"
she added. "More than half of Jews in North America were affiliated
with secularist organizations until 1950."
Secular Jews were among the most prevalent immigrants during the
height of North American migration in part, said the rabbi, because
they were fleeing the Orthodox hegemony of the Old World. But the
strength of the secular movements in North America declined in the
past half-century due to a confluence of events.
"We had the Red Scare," she said, noting that many secular
Jewish organizations were socialist or communist in orientation.
"And we had the Holocaust, which killed a lot of secular Jews.
Then we had America – we don't have the kind of multiculturalism
you have here; we have no corporate rights, we have individual rights
but no corporate rights. So to be Jewish in America got defined
as religious. That, combined with the political repression ... broke
apart three of the four secular networks. The only one that's still
around is Workmen's Circle."
Why, though, should people who have broken the figurative chains
of religious belief cling to the vestiges of tradition?
"People need an intermediate identity between their family
and humanity at large," Seid responded. "You have to speak
somebody's language. You have to sing somebody's songs. Every culture
in this world has something wonderful about it, why shouldn't we
offer what we have?"
More information about secular Judaism is available at www.csjo.org.
Pat Johnson is a Vancouver journalist and commentator.
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