c. 1999 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ No traditional Passover Seder is complete without the singing of”Dayenu,”a table-pounding melody recounting God’s blessings bestowed upon the Jewish nation _ from freedom from slavery in Egypt to construction of the ancient Jerusalem temple. The hymn’s origins have been traced to the ninth century.
Peter H. Schweitzer, a 46-year-old New York clinical social worker, will be among those who sings Dayenu this Passover, the Jewish festival celebrating the biblical Exodus from Egypt. But Schweitzer’s version of Dayenu _ Hebrew for”it would have been enough”_ makes no mention of God.
Nor does it contain the standard references to the parting of the Red Sea or the manna from heaven said to have fed the biblical Hebrews during their 40-year desert sojourn. Both are viewed by traditional Judaism as examples of God’s grace.
Instead, Schweitzer’s Dayenu _ which he wrote _ extols the Seder for giving Jews the chance to”see distant relatives”and to”use fancy dishes and crystal and spill wine all over your heirloom tablecloth.”It concludes with a verse praising Seders as opportunities for Jews to”re-enact through psychodrama and role play the experience of our people.” The Passover story minus the hand of God! Isn’t that like eating ham on matzah?
Not to Schweitzer and other members of the little-known Humanistic Judaism movement.”I’m Jewish, very Jewish, and very committed to the Jewish community,”said the onetime Reform rabbi.”It’s more than just a cultural connection of lox and bagels for me. It’s my whole orientation toward life. It’s just the God part I reject.” Humanistic Judaism was organized in the early 1960s by another former Reform rabbi, Sherwin Wine, who combined Jewish culture and history with a secularist philosophy at his Birmingham Temple in suburban Detroit.
With about 1,000 members, the Birmingham Temple is by far the largest of the 33 congregations scattered around the nation that today comprise the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Cities with member congregations include the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Ill., San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, Washington and New York. Total membership is about 12,000.
The society is affiliated with the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews, which includes groups in Israel, Canada, Australia, Russia, France, Argentina and elsewhere that have varying approaches toward expressing Jewish culture in non-theistic terms.
For Wine, breaking with Reform Judaism, among the religion’s most liberal movements, was a matter of intellectual integrity.”I was always told religion was supposed to make me more honest,”Wine said in a recent interview.”But I was using words I clearly did not believe in. Religion had made me less honest. For me, Humanistic Judaism was a form of liberation.” Wine considers Humanistic Judaism a”secular religion”because it offers a system of values _ secular humanism _ and defined rituals anchored in Jewish cultural practice for marking annual festivals and lifecycle events. Wine considers those elements the essence of any organized religion, whether or not belief in God is included.
Instead of belief in the personal God of the Hebrew Bible, Humanistic Judaism puts its faith in the ability of the individual to live a virtuous and courageous life, and to do so in a Jewish cultural context.
Humanistic Judaism’s membership may be small, but Wine thinks its viewpoint is shared by a great many of America’s nearly 6 million Jews _ even if they don’t know it.”The behavior of most American Jews, even many who belong to synagogues, is overwhelmingly secular,”he said.”My observation is that when it comes down to dealing with the issues of life, most Jews do not ask the question of, `How do I find the power of God to help me?'” Rabbi Lennard Thal, vice president of the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations, disagreed.”Certainly there are many Jews in our congregations, and not just Reform, who remain fuzzy in their ability to articulate a theology that is meaningful to them,”he said.”But that does not mean they actively espouse the notion that there is no God.”There may well be more people who fall under the humanistic umbrella than we know about. But a belief in God is part of the warp and woof of Judaism, even as there is room for a deep questioning and struggle over exactly what that means. From my point of view, that’s very religiously helpful.” Schweitzer first began thinking of himself as an atheist as a teenager, and like Wine, spoke of intellectual integrity when asked why he was attracted to Humanistic Judaism.
In the early 1980s, Schweitzer served as an assistant rabbi at the Reform Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. In that role he was often called upon to recite liturgies that articulated Reform Judaism’s professed belief in God.”First I tried to think of the liturgies as metaphor and symbolic language,”he said.”But I couldn’t make a bargain with the language. In Humanistic Judaism we can believe what we say and say what we believe.” Today, Schweitzer is a member of New York’s City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism. The 8-year-old congregation of some 100 adults and children meets regularly at a Greenwich Village school to mark Jewish holidays and the Sabbath and for classes about Jewish life.
It’s all done, notes the congregation’s literature,”in a way that is meaningful to its members’ secular lives and humanistic values.” For Passover _ which begins this year the evening of March 31 _ City Congregation will again sponsor its own ritual Seder meal. The event is set for the afternoon of April 3, a Saturday that falls two days after the second of the two traditional Seder nights.
Schweitzer’s Dayenu will be sung at that Seder, which will follow rituals and readings detailed in a”hagadah,”or Seder text, that he also wrote for the congregation.
City Congregation’s”Passover Hagadah for a Secular-Humanist Seder”is one of scores that have been developed by Humanist congregations since Wine wrote the first one in 1966.”There’s probably as many hagadahs as there are Humanistic congregations,”said M. Bonnie Cousens, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism based in Farmington Hills, Mich.”The texts vary, but the elements don’t. Most of the hagadahs borrow from each other.” Traditional hagadahs open with prayers said during the lighting of festival candles and the drinking of the first of the four cups of wine customarily consumed during the Seder. Those prayers contain the words”blessed are you, our eternal God, ruler of the worldâÂ?¦” City Congregation’s hagadah eliminates those references. Instead, the candles are lit while saying”radiant is the light of the world, radiant is the light in people, radiant is the light of Pesach (Passover).”The first cup of wine is drunk while saying,”We bless peace in the world. We bless peace among all peoples. We bless the peace and joy of the Passover.” Traditional hagadahs also restrict themselves to the biblical story of freedom from slavery in ancient Egypt. Schweitzer’s hagadah adds references to the freedom Jews found in America as they sought to escape”modern-day Pharaohs _ czars, tyrants, dictators all _ (who) drove our ancestors from land to land ….” It also alludes to the struggles of non-Jews and the”common campaign against bigotry”shared by the”children of immigrants, refugees, natives and slaves.” Instead of the traditional 10 plagues, the City Congregation hagadah lists 13 contemporary problems _ including crime, drugs, pollution, poverty, child abuse, homophobia and homelessness.”We’re a modern people so we’ve added the modern story while trying to retain the parts of the Passover story that have symbolic value,”said Schweitzer.
One piece of the traditional Seder that Schweitzer’s hagadah does retain is”The Four Questions,”a series of statements customarily recited by the youngest person at the Seder table capable of doing so. The questions _ one of the most familiar of the Seder’s set pieces _ are meant to stimulate discussion about the Exodus story.”The Four Questions are so familiar they practically mean Passover to many people,”said Schweitzer.”Besides, there’s no reference to God in the original, so it presents no problem.”
DEA END RIFKIN
