April 2025 Board Meeting – Mission Statement Reflection

            To me, Humanistic Judaism embodies the principles of integrity, peoplehood, truth, dignity, connection and the future. I’ll talk a bit about each one.

Humanistic Judaism is integrity. It represents the ability to “say what we mean and mean what we say.” It allows us to forgo the cognitive dissonance of traditional theistic Judaism and feel whole with our beliefs and with the expectations of our community. It honors the ability of the individual to live with dignity within a larger community of acceptance and intellectual rigor. It allows us to live as full participants in the modern world, using science and related disciplines to make sense of our universe, and our place in it.

Humanistic Judaism is peoplehood. It affirms that “a Jew is a person of Jewish descent or any person who declares themselves to be a Jew and who identifies with the history, ethical values, culture, civilization, community, and fate of the Jewish people.” It welcomes all sincere adoptees and fellow travelers into the Jewish fold. It is a movement of open doors and a big tent, a movement that recognizes the historic pluralism of the Jewish people, and the strength that pluralism will provide our people into the future.

Humanistic Judaism is the pursuit of truth. It recognizes that where scientific truth or modern ethics disagrees with traditional Jewish teaching, we as Jews have the right to change our minds and update our tradition. As many in our movement say, “tradition gets a vote, not a veto.” It also recognizes that where a higher power, whether mortal or mythological, would attempt to interfere with this pursuit of truth, that we have both the ability and obligation to disagree. We recognize that a society founded on lies is a house of cards, that cannot and will not withstand the tests of time.

Humanistic Judaism is dignity, affirming that all human beings have a right to be respected for their positive individual identities and belief systems, within the context of our larger human and Jewish communities. Dignity, seen as such an important ethical principle by Rabbi Sherwin Wine, assures that a person can be consistent to their inner truths and be honored for the same. No person can achieve their full potential without a sense of pride, self-esteem, and self-respect, and Humanistic Judaism sees its obligation as providing such an environment for full human self-actualization within the Jewish tradition.

Humanistic Judaism is connection, both to our fellow Jews and to the wider world, to the past and our ancestors, and to the future which we seek to build. It offers an opening, not always available in other Jewish times and places, for individuals to claim or reclaim their Jewish identity and still maintain fidelity to their modern lives and beliefs. It is a sign of human and Jewish progress, and I believe one of the keystones of a strong Jewish future. Jewish continuity is never assured, but its odds greatly increase with an embrace of pluralism, dynamism, and outreach.

Humanistic Judaism is the future. The times are changing, and people are moving away from the traditional belief and societal structures that defined humanity for quite some time. In addition, despite the recent alarming increase in antisemitism on both the right and left, it is overwhelmingly clear that the wider American society has accepted Jews, married us, cared about our issues, and linked their destiny to ours. How many of us have multicultural and multifaith families, and how many of us would have been able to fully participate in Jewish life only a few decades ago? While other liberal Jewish movements have bravely sought to close the gap, right historical wrongs, and heal some of the rifts of the past, Humanistic Judaism provided a solution right from the start and continues to lead the way. I strongly believe that while many continue to move away from traditional religion, many more are hungry to develop and strengthen their Jewish identity and pass it on to future generations. Unique among the liberal Jewish movements, Humanistic Judaism does not seek to obscure traditional practices with modern flourishes or distract from outdated norms by rebranding them as new truths. We are a movement that values integrity, peoplehood, truth, dignity, and connection. And we are a movement that affirms, in the words of Sherwin Wine, “the life of courage.”