Call myself a Humanistic Jew? Good God, no!

It's one of the immutable laws of Jewish gastro-physics: Free lox and bagels exert an irresistible gravitational pull on the Jewisphere.

And so it was that I, lured by the offer of some super Nova, showed up at the Albany Community Center one recent Sunday morning for an introduction to Humanistic Judaism, sponsored by its lone Bay Area outpost, Congregation Kol Hadash of Albany/El Cerrito.

Like all Humanistic congregations, Kol Hadash dispenses with much of what most synagogues take for granted: prayer, God and, what Kol Hadash Rabbi Jay Heyman calls "obsessive, anally retentive ritual observance."

Humanistic Judaism was founded in the 1960s by Rabbi Sherwin Wine, who remains active with the movement today. He and his followers maintain that reason, human intelligence and rational thinking are sufficient to solving the world's collective problems, and that supernatural superstition has no place in modern life. Nor in Judaism.

When I walked into the community center, I found the spread yummy and the several dozen people who showed up just as haimish as the mishpoche who gathered at my Uncle Marty's Sunday brunches when I was a kid. They may have rejected the notion of a supernatural God, but they're Jews and felt to me like family.

Once sufficiently loxed up, we took our seats to listen to Heyman and longtime Kol Hadash congregant Marcia Grossman give a talk about Humanistic Judaism.

Their message was simple. For Jews who don't believe in God, yet wish to retain some manner of Jewish fellowship and tradition, Humanistic Judaism may be the answer. "We rule out only one thing," said Heyman. "An absolute God."

"We don't pray," added Grossman, "but we do blessings, candle lighting and food -- always food!"

I've known Marcia for some time, having relied on her as a contact for j. stories. A nicer, sharper, more compassionate woman you will not find. I thought she and Heyman made a good tag team, pitching Humanistic Judaism in a forthright manner. It seemed to me there might have been more than a few takers among the crowd.

However, I cannot count myself among them.

That's not to say that I buy into the God concept of my Orthodox friends. I don't. I can't. I'm the man who knew too much. I know the earth is billions of years old, not 5767 years old (as my Jewish desk calendar suggests). I know that Methusala did not live 969 years because that is impossible.

Beyond those certainties, I have my share of uncertainties. I am uncertain whether there is an intelligent force guiding the universe. Moreover, I believe reason should overrule blind faith, that religious fundamentalism is potentially dangerous. On those scores, I could easily count myself a fellow traveler with Humanistic Judaism.

But one of my inalienable rights as a Jew is the right to wrestle with God. I like the struggle; I like feeling connected to Torah one day, then ferociously doubting it the next. Were I a Humanistic Jew, I'd have to dispense with my doubt and become a secular fundamentalist. That's not for me.

I'm glad Humanistic congregations are out there roping in Jewish outliers who might otherwise be lost to Jewish life. But I just don't see the point of doing Shabbat, High Holy Days, bar/bat mitzvahs or any other Jewish rituals if you utterly reject their source of origin. You might as well form a book club and call it a day.

It's too bad, really. The one congregation that is ridiculously easy walking distance from my home is the very shul least likely to require I walk to it on Shabbat.

If I had to come up with a metaphoric explanation for my stance, here's the story I'd tell.

In a 2002 documentary about European Jews who fled to Shanghai, China, to escape the Holocaust, one woman reminisced about her father, a former Jewish soldier fighting for the Kaiser in the German Army.

One night, in the trenches of World War I, he heard an enemy soldier creeping up on him. He stood and fired at his French foe. In the pitch blackness, he could hear his mortally wounded enemy utter his last words:

"Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu."

I don't always listen to Adonai Eloheinu. But I always want to be able to hear.




Dan Pine.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)">.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).