Holocaust Memorial Day – Primo Levi the unbeliever

Primo Levi (1919-1987) was one of the most famous Survivors of the Holocaust. Levi, born in Turin, Italy and trained as a chemist, was arrested during the as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz in 1944. His experience in the death camp and his subsequent travels through Eastern Europe were the subject of powerful memoirs, fiction and poetry.

Although he came from families who had been observant Jews up to a generation or so before, they were no longer so and Levi was a life-long atheist. His only recollection of ever having any religious feelings was a brief period when he studied for his bar mitzvah, and tried to seek contact with God, “but when he sought that contact, he’d found nothing.

International Day against Fascism and Anti-semitism

Today is the International Day against Fascism and Anti-semitism, an annual commemoration of the ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom – a joint campaign of anti-fascist, anti-racist, human rights and Jewish organisations.

After World War II the Europeans decided that they would never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. Anti-fascist, anti-racist, human rights, Roma and Jewish organisations both inside and outside the UNITED network commemorate the Kristallnacht, which took place on 9 November 1938.

This partly state-organised pogrom against German Jews symbolises the beginning of the Holocaust. The commemoration has taken on a new meaning as we remember not only the victims from 1938, but also campaign against the rise of neo-nazism and racism in Europe today, and show support for the recent victims of racist and fascist attacks.

Silent, moderate majority – both religious and secular – must be silent no more

Rabbi Tony Bayfield head of the Movement for Reform Judaism has written in a letter of support for charity Tolerance International UK that “the only salvation [from religious extemism] is for the silent majority, both religious and secular, to cease to be silent and for the moderates to demonstrate that moderation is not the same as acquiescence. ”

Is fundamentalism a revolt against secularism?

Interviewed  in the current edition of Islamica, famed theologian Karen Armstrong is asked “What has made Fundamentalism, seemingly, so predominant today?” She answers 

“The militant piety that we call “fundamentalism” erupted in every single major world faith in the course of the twentieth century. There is fundamentalist Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, as well as fundamentalist Islam. Of the three monotheistic religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam-Islam was the last to develop a fundamentalist strain during the 1960s. Fundamentalism represents a revolt against secular modern society, which separates religion and politics. Wherever a Western secularist government is established, a religious counterculturalist protest movement rises up alongside it in conscious rejection.

Freud recognised “the poetry and promise in religion.”

Mark Edmundson writes in the New York Times that while remaining an atheist, Sigmund Freud in his last completed book, ‘Moses and Monotheism’, “began to see the Jewish faith that he was born into as a source of cultural progress in the past and of personal inspiration in the present. Close to his own death, Freud starts to recognize the poetry and promise in religion.”

“He argues that Judaism helped free humanity from bondage to the immediate empirical world, opening up fresh possibilities for human thought and action. He also suggests that faith in God facilitated a turn toward the life within, helping to make a rich life of introspection possible.”

Humanist Jews stand by Muslim victims of hate crime

In Sarasota County, Florida, authorities are investigating an arson that destroyed a Muslim family’s home as a hate crime.

The blaze happened on July 6. The Sejfovics, who moved from Bosnia in 2001, were out of town on holday and returned to find their home completely destroyed and spray-painted with anti-Muslim graffiti.

Several agencies, including the FBI, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, are investigating the fire.

Members of the Unitarian-Universalist Church – the church that sponsored the family in 2001 – are standing by the family and vetting correspondence and phone calls. Others who have offfered theire suppport are a local rabbi and a Humanist Jewish Congregation, a couple of American-Islamist Groups, as well as many, many outraged individuals. Condolences and a reward have been offered; a fund is in the process of being set up.

Founder of Humanistic Judaism dies

Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, tragically died on Saturday, July 21, 2007 while vacationing in Morocco. Returning from dinner Saturday evening in Essaouira, his taxicab was hit by another driver. Both Rabbi Wine and the taxi driver were killed instantly. His partner Richard McMains survived the collision and currently is hospitalized in stable condition.

Wine was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 25, 1928. He was a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Hebrew Union College. In 1963 he founded the Birmingham Temple in suburban Detroit, the first congregation of Humanistic Judaism.

In 1969 he helped establish the Society for Humanistic Judaism to serve as the national outreach vehicle for the humanistic movement. In 1986 he helped to create the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews, a worldwide association of national organization. At the time of his death, Wine was the Dean of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in North America.

The American Humanist Association selected him Humanist of the Year for 2003. The Humanist of the Year award was established in 1953 to recognize a person of national or international reputation who, through the application of humanist values, has made a significant contribution to the improvement of the human condition. As Humanist of the Year, Rabbi Wine joined such notables as Stephen Jay Gould, Betty Friedan, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Margaret Sanger, among others.

Rabbi Wine is the author of Humanistic Judaism, Judaism Beyond God, Celebration and Staying Sane In A Crazy World. In addition, he was a principal contributor to Judaism in a Secular Age: An Anthology of Secular Humanistic Jewish Thought.

Chief Rabbi asks if believers and nonbelievers can join hands to become agents for peace

The Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes in the Times that the recent surge of atheist books are a protest against the failings of religion that cannot simply be ignored.

“Atheism does not come from nowhere. Agnosticism and indifference do; people drift, religion ceases to inspire, there are other things to do. Atheism is different. It is a form of protest. Something goes badly wrong in religious life, and people feel moved to write books saying, essentially, “Not in my name”. When that happens, mere apologetics is not enough….

Secularisation, the great movement of the European mind that began in the 17th century, did not begin because people stopped believing in God. The movement’s intellectual heroes, Newton and Descartes, believed in God very much indeed.

What they lost faith in was the ability of religious people to live peaceably together….

As then, so now. Sunni and Shia fight in the Middle East, as do Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir, Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, and Muslims and Jews in Israel. Two things have happened in our postmodern, post-Cold War constellation. Religion, often as the outer clothing of ethnicity, has returned to the political arena. And religions still do not know how to live together in peace.

…That’s when people start writing books about atheism and they become bestsellers. For the great strength of religion is that it creates communities, and its great weakness is that it divides communities. The two go hand in hand. For every “us” there is a “them”, and the stronger the togetherness within, the deeper the estrangement without. What binds also separates. It always did.

The real battle, and it applies to secular and religious alike, is: can we love, not hate, the people not like us? We are tribal animals. We are hardwired for conflict. Sociobiologists call this genetic coding, Christians, original sin, Jews, the evil inclination. The belief that unites us is that instinct is not the final word. Selfish genes can produce selfless people. Is that miracle or mere chance? Loving creator or blind watchmaker? That is an important question. But the urgent one is: can we, believer and nonbeliever, join hands to become agents for peace against those who seek to globalise war?”

Tony Blair’s interfaith foundation

After he stands down as Prime Minister on 27 June, word has it that Tony Blair (pictured) will be creating an interfaith foundation to promote understanding between er.. Muslims, Jews and Christians. As Stuart Jeffries points out in the Guardian it’s “a move that might irritate Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, who often join interfaith initiatives.” Not to mention the 5-700 million people across the globe who have no religion.

Can there be a productive conversation between believers and atheists?

Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham on the On Faith column ask “Atheism is enjoying a certain vogue right now. Why do you think that is? Can there be a productive conversation between believers and atheists, and if so over what kinds of issues?” Here are selection of positive responses:

“Even the most fervent atheists often have sacred things in their life: They see humanity or the natural world as inviolable, uniquely precious and mysterious…. It may be that the atheism that is taking hold is a rejection of a widespread idolatry which has forgotten that any conception of the divine is bound to be inadequate.”

Karen Armstrong

“I am confident that a dialogue with those who call themselves “atheists” would not only be good for the church but it would also allow deep and profound truth to emerge”

(ex-Bishop) John Shelby Spong

 

“…we have too much in common for us not to talk.”

Pastor Lyle Dukes

 

 

“The moderate voice has been a weak one, allowing both religious extremism and militant atheism to capture the headlines”

Baroness Rabbi Julia Neuberger

 

“I have also, all of my life, been baffled by the notion that you cannot have values, ethics, or morals unless you are religious. I find it appalling how atheists have been reviled, unaccepted, and held in contempt. Isn’t the most important thing how you live your life?”

Sally Quinn

 

“..can we public atheists have productive conversations with believers? Certainly. We can discuss every issue under the sun…respecting each other as citizens with honest disagreements about fundamental matters that can be subjected to reasonable, open inquiry and mutual persuasion… As long as those who are believers will acknowledge that their allegiance gives them no privilege, no direct line to the absolute truth, no advantage in moral insight, we should be able to get along just fine.”

Daniel C. Dennett

 “I would say to my friends who don’t believe in God: Those of us who do believe, know—and honor—more about your position that we or our institutions may say. We should do better. We should be clearer that we include doubt in the life of faith. And, we don’t expect to be free of your hard questions, ever. Yet we believe, and practice, and face life everyday as you do. There’s common ground here, plenty enough to have a productive conversation.”

Rev William Tully

“As to whether atheists and believers can have “a productive conversation,” I am quite sure that the answer is “yes.” But I am uncertain whether this conversation can bear fruit quickly enough to keep civilization from becoming fully engorged by Iron Age stupidity and horror”

Sam Harris

 

“..one’s underlying emotional stance is something that cannot really be changed, and therefore there cannot be a really productive, fruitful dialogue.  However, what sometimes happens is that people of different belief systems meet each other and somehow come to appreciate that the other is also a person. And that is a great achievement.”

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz 

 

“There are innumerable opportunities for believers and those who deny any belief to work for the betterment of other human beings as well as the earth and its non-human inhabitants.”

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

 

 

“Dialogue between atheists and believers is no different than dialogue between members of two different faith traditions. If both parties come to the table…with the conviction that conversation is not to destroy or even best the other’s thinking and rather to find common ground and exchange what is of consequence—then true, productive dialogue has a solid foundation.”

Donna Freitas 

“I could not care less whether any elected official believes in God: I care about what he or she does on earth. As an atheist, I believe precisely what the Bible says on this subject: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Susan Jacoby

 

“The dialogue between believers and atheists… needs to be as courteous, listening and careful as all other dialogues. I look forward to it…”

Bishop Nicholas Thomas Wright

 

“Atheists deserve respect and a respectful hearing. But the acoustics necessary for such a hearing are not to be found in an arena of argument, only in a context of conversation.”

Reverend William J. Byron