Portrait of Sherwin Wine.

Rabbi Sherwin Theodore Wine ז"ל (b. January 25, 1928 in Detroit, Michigan d. July 21, 2007 in Essaouira, Morocco), founded the Birmingham Temple, the first congregation of Humanistic Judaism, which is now in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, in 1963. In 1969 he founded the Society for Humanistic Judaism and has since been the founder of other organizations that espouse and promote Humanistic Judaism, which is also called Secular Humanistic Judaism. Wine is also the founder of several Humanist organizations that are not specifically Jewish, such as the Humanist Institute and the International Association of Humanist Educators, Counselors, and Leaders. He was the co-founder of Americans for Religious Liberty, an advocacy organization that promotes separation of religion and government. He was the Provost of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism at the time of his death. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nickname: Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (Latin for, We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes) Location in Wayne County, Michigan Coordinates: , Country United States State Michigan County Wayne County Founded 1701 Incorporation 1806 Government  - Type Strong Mayor-Council  - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Area  - City  143. ... is the 202nd day of the year (203rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Location of Essaouira Essaouira (Arabic: ‎, eá¹£-á¹£auÄ«rah; formerly known as Mogador, its old Portuguese name) is a city and tourist resort in Morocco, on the Atlantic coast. ... The Birmingham Temple is the first Humanistic Jewish congregation. ... Farmington Hills is a city located in Oakland County, Michigan. ... Official language(s) None (English, de-facto) Capital Lansing Largest city Detroit Area  Ranked 11th  - Total 97,990 sq mi (253,793 km²)  - Width 239 miles (385 km)  - Length 491 miles (790 km)  - % water 41. ... Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes - this motto was adopted after the disastrous 1805 fire that devastated the city) Nickname: The Motor City and Motown Location in Wayne County, Michigan Founded Incorporated July 24, 1701 1815  County Wayne County Mayor... Movement of Humanistic Judaism founded by Rabbi Sherwin Wine. ... Humanistic Judaism is a movement within Judaism that emphasizes Jewish culture and history - rather than belief in God - as the sources of Jewish identity. ... Humanism[1] is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationality. ...

Wine earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in philosophy at the University of Michigan and was ordained as a rabbi by Reform Judaism’s Hebrew Union College. He has lectured on a wide array of topics since 1976 under the auspices of the Center for New Thinking, which he also founded. The American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year for 2003. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UM, U of M or U-M) is a coeducational public research university in the state of Michigan, and one of the foremost universities in the United States. ... Reform Judaism can refer to (1) the largest denomination of American Jews and its sibling movements in other countries, (2) a branch of Judaism in the United Kingdom, and (3) the historical predecessor of the American movement that originated in 19th-century Germany. ... Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (also known as HUC or HUC-JIR) is the oldest Jewish seminary in the New World and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism. ... The American Humanist Association (AHA) is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. ...

Wine is primarily known for his role in establishing and promoting the growth of Humanistic Judaism, a movement of secular and non-theistic Jews who assert that cultural expressions of Judaism, without prayer, are a viable approach to modern Jewish identity and that their movement should be accepted as one of the streams of Judaism, along with Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Judaism.

Life

Wine’s parents emigrated to the United States from the part of Russia that had previously been, and is now again, in Poland. His father, whose name was originally Herschel Wengrowski, joined family members in Detroit in 1906. Wine’s mother, Tieblei Israelski, emigrated to Detroit in 1914. Wine attended Detroit public schools with almost completely Jewish student bodies. His religious upbringing was in Conservative Judaism, at Shaaray Zedek synagogue. His parents kept a kosher home and observed the Sabbath faithfully.

Majoring in philosophy at the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, he was most sympathetic to empiricism and, in particular, to its then-current manifestation, logical positivism. At the same time, he was attracted to the humanistic outlook of some faculty members. He went on to earn his M.A. in philosophy, also from the University of Michigan. Despite his movement away from the theistic to the purely scientific worldview, he concluded that he was more suited to the clergy than to academe. As a result, in 1951 he enrolled in the rabbinic program at Reform Judaism’s Hebrew Union College. In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas. ... Logical positivism grew from the discussions of Moritz Schlicks Vienna Circle and Hans Reichenbachs Berlin Circle in the 1920s and 1930s. ...

He volunteered for service as a chaplain in the Army after his ordination as a rabbi and served as associate rabbi at a Reform Temple, Beth El, in Detroit for six months while awaiting induction. Wine began his service as an Army chaplain in January 1957 and was stationed in Korea. In November 1958, he returned to Temple Beth El in Detroit. In the fall of 1959, he joined a group in Windsor, Ontario, just across the Detroit River, in Canada, to organize a new Reform congregation, also called Beth El.

In 1963, a disaffected group from Temple Beth El in Detroit contacted Wine and asked him to meet with them about forming a new Reform congregation in the northwestern suburbs of Detroit, where the members now lived. He began leading services for the new group, initially eight families, in September 1963 in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Working with members of this small group to develop language which reflected their true beliefs, Wine eventually made the decision to eliminate the word “God” from the services and, instead, to use new liturgy that extolled Jewish history, culture, and ethical values. This decision was to lay the foundation for the development of Humanistic Judaism as separate from Reform or any other existing stream of Judaism.

A storm of controversy arose when it became known that Wine, who had by then left Temple Beth El in Windsor, was leading a congregation that did not recognize God. The Detroit Free Press ran an article in December 1964 with the headline: “Suburban Rabbi: ‘I Am an Atheist.’” This was followed by stories in Time magazine and the New York Times. Wine explained that his views were not precisely atheistic. Rather, reflecting his acceptance of the basic outlook of the logical positivists, he declared that it was not possible empirically to prove or disprove the existence of God and, therefore, the concept was meaningless. He termed this stance “ignosticism” rather than atheism.

The Masonic Temple in Birmingham, Michigan, in which the congregation was meeting at the time, expelled the group early in 1965 because it had rejected God. The congregation, now known as the Birmingham Temple, purchased land in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and moved into a newly constructed building in 1971. The Torah scroll was placed in the library rather than at the usual place of honor in the sanctuary. Instead, the sanctuary was adorned with a large sculpture spelling out, in Hebrew, the word “Adam,” meaning man or people. Sefer Torah being read during weekday service. ...

Wine served as the rabbi of the Birmingham Temple until his retirement in 2003, at which time he began devoting most of his efforts to his work as Dean for North America and Provost of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism as well as to lecturing on a wide range of topics under the auspices of the Center for New Thinking, which he had founded in 1976.

Organizational leadership

As the outlook and practices of the Birmingham Temple attracted people in other locations, Wine assumed the responsibility for founding several organizations designed to link these adherents together.

First, in 1969, the Society for Humanistic Judaism was formed by Wine’s Birmingham Temple, a previously Reform congregation in Illinois headed by Rabbi Daniel Friedman (who had led the congregation from Reform to Humanistic Judaism after learning about Wine’s work in Michigan), and a congregation in Westport, Connecticut which had been organized by a member of the Birmingham Temple who had moved to Connecticut. The Society for Humanistic Judaism now has over 30 constituent congregations in the United States and Canada as well as individual members unaffiliated with any of these congregations.

To fulfill the need of the Humanistic Judaism movement for trained leaders, Wine founded the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in 1985. This educational institution was sponsored jointly by the Society for Humanistic Judaism and the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations. The rabbinic program of this Institute has educated and ordained seven rabbis in North America in addition to over 50 leaders (called madrikhim or madrikhot in Hebrew or vegvayzer in Yiddish) who have less training than rabbis but are certified by the Institute to officiate at weddings and other life cycle events. The Institute also has an active rabbinical program in Israel from which eight rabbis have graduated and been ordained.

Wine has also founded several organizations that are not specifically Jewish. In 1981, he and others created the Voice of Reason for the purpose of responding to the upsurge of right-wing political activism by religious leaders such as Rev. Jerry Falwell. In 1982, The Voice of Reason merged with the Center for Moral Democracy, which had been started by Ethical Culture leader Edward L. Ericson and others, to form a new organization, Americans for Religious Liberty, which continues as an advocacy group for the separation of church and state.

In 1982, Wine founded the North American Committee for Humanism, a confederation of the six major humanist organizations in North America, and The Humanist Institute, a graduate school in New York for training humanist leaders. Wine served as President of both of these organizations from 1982 until 1993. The Humanist Institute is a training program for leaders, created by the North American Committee for Humanism. ...

In the Detroit area, Wine founded the Conference on Liberal Religion, an association of liberal religious professionals, in 1985 and an advocacy group called Clergy and Citizens United in 1995.

Views

While secular Jewish culture thrived in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, its principal manifestations, Yiddish-based schools and Zionism, were in decline by the beginning of the 1960's. Many nonreligious Jews were becoming unaffiliated with either religious or secular Jewish organizations. Recognizing that most Americans are members of thriving religious congregations, Wine concluded that a congregational format, emphasizing Jewish culture and history rather than a theistic outlook, could attract nonreligious Jews who were not served by other Jewish organizations. The goal was to provide members with a sense of community and all of the services that are provided by congregational life, but in a manner consistent with the nontheistic outlook of Wine and the others in his movement. Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews, or even those of religious Jews working in cultural areas not generally considered to be connected... Yiddish (ייִדיש, Jiddisch) is a Germanic language spoken by about four million Jews throughout the world. ... Zionism is a political movement that supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where Jewish nationhood is thought to have evolved somewhere between 1200 BCE and late Second Temple times,[1][2] and where Jewish kingdoms existed up to the 2nd century CE. Zionism is...

Wine emphasized intellectual integrity – keeping words consistent with beliefs. For him and his congregants, this meant that references to a deity had to be excluded from the liturgy. As a result, Wine discarded virtually all previous Jewish liturgical writings. A typical passage developed by Wine for the Sabbath (Shabbat) is, in transliterated Hebrew and in English: This article or section cites very few or no references or sources. ...

Na-eh ha-or ba-olam.
Na-eh ha-or ba-shalom.
Na-eh ha-or ba-shabbat.

How wonderful is the light of the world.
How radiant are the candles of peace.
How beautiful are the lights of shabbat.

Wine composed a poem that is considered to be the central expression of the outlook of Humanistic Judaism:

Ayfo oree? Oree bee.
Ayfo tikvatee? Tikvatee bee.
Ayfo kokhee? Kokhee bee v'gam bakh.

Where is my light? My light is in me.
Where is my hope? My hope is in me.
Where is my strength? My strength is in me – and in you.

Many of the Jewish holidays have been maintained within Wine’s Humanistic Judaism, but the interpretations of the meanings of these holidays has been amended for consistency with the outlook of this movement. For example, Rosh Hashanah is said, within Humanistic Judaism, to be a time for renewal and reflection, focusing on the affirmation of human power and human dignity. Yom Kippur is, according to Wine and his movement, a celebration of inner strength and a time of self-forgiveness. Prayers and references to God are excluded from the services even for these holidays. This article is about the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. ... Yom Kippur (IPA: ; Hebrew:יוֹם כִּפּוּר, IPA: ) is the Jewish holiday of the Day of Atonement. ...

The Torah and other traditional Jewish religious texts are, for Wine, important historical documents that need to be evaluated scientifically to determine their origins and degree of factuality. For him, writings of the Jews of the past 250 years have more philosophical and ethical validity than ancient writings because they are more likely to be infused with the values of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and the more general Western Enlightenment. “Tora” redirects here. ... Haskalah (Hebrew: השכלה; enlightenment, intellect, from sekhel, common sense), the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the late 18th century that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew, and Jewish history. ... The Age of Enlightenment (French: ; German: ) was an eighteenth-century movement in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. ...

Unlike other streams of Judaism, Humanistic Judaism does not condemn or discourage intermarriage, and its clergy are happy to officiate at weddings between Jews and non-Jews. Wine’s view has been that criticizing people for marrying whomever they choose is not only unethical but also counterproductive to efforts to ensure Jewish continuity. For Wine and Humanistic Judaism, Jewish identity is largely a matter of self-identification.

Wine has been closely affiliated with the non-Jewish Humanist movement. In responding to questions as to why a specifically Jewish organization should exist within Humanism, he has said that the history of the Jews is a clear demonstration that only people can solve human problems of survival and that there is no supernatural force that will come to our aid.

Wine has written numerous books and articles. His Judaism Beyond God is a description of the history and outlook of the Humanistic Judaism movement. Celebrations: A Ceremonial and Philosophic Guide for Humanists and Humanistic Jews is, as its name indicates, a compendium of Wine’s liturgical writings and “meditations,” intended for use at various holiday and life cycle ceremonies. Staying Sane in a Crazy World is a general self-help book, with advice on how reliance on reason can help us live meaningful and fulfilling lives.

Death

On July 21, 2007, Rabbi Wine and his partner, Richard McMains, were in a taxi headed to a hotel from dinner in Essaouira, Morocco, when their taxicab was hit by another vehicle. Both Rabbi Wine and the taxi driver were killed instantly. McMains survived the collision although he was seriously injured in the crash.

References

• Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, Harry T. Cook, and Marilyn Rowens, Eds., 2003. A Life of Courage: Sherwin Wine and Humanistic Judaism, The International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, Farmington Hills, MI.
• Cooley, John, September 5, 1965, “Religion: Must a Rabbi Believe in God?” New York Times.
• Detroit Free Press, December 5, 1964, “Atheist Rabbi Denounced: Orthodox Group ‘Aghast.’”
• New York Times, February 5, 1965, “Masons Reject Congregation Whose Rabbi Rejects God.”
• Spiegel, Irving, June 20, 1965, “Jewish ‘Ignostic’ Stirs Convention: Dropping of ‘God’ in Service Deplored and Condoned,” New York Times.
• Time, January 29, 1965, “The Atheist Rabbi.”
• Ward, Hiley, December 3, 1964, “Suburban Rabbi: ‘I Am an Atheist,” Detroit Free Press.
• Ward, Hiley H., December 7, 1964, “‘Godless’ Rabbi Raps Revered Jewish Hero,” Detroit Free Press.
• Wine, Sherwin T., 1978. Humanistic Judaism, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.
• Wine, Sherwin T., 1988. Celebration: A Ceremonial and Philosophic Guide for Humanists and Humanistic Jews, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.
• Wine, Sherwin T., 1995. Staying Sane in a Crazy World, The Center for New Thinking, Birmingham, MI.
• Wine, Sherwin T., 1996. Judaism Beyond God: A Radical New Way to Be Jewish, KTAV Publishing House, Society for Humanistic Judaism, and Milan Press.

External links

• The Birmingham Temple
• Society for Humanistic Judaism
• Center for New Thinking
• International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism
• International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in Israel
• International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews