A little something I’ve been working on and socially putting together (this is a work ever in progress!):
“There is a fundamental intelligence that is present within the basic building blocks of this universe, and that pervades every aspect of this universe. It is not all knowing but, rather, ever experimenting and giving rise to new possible ways of physical expression. It is not demonstrably self-aware without the development of consciousness within the minds of creatures evolving in its expression of life. It is a universal size unconsciousness that is the universe in formative substance. Much like the unconscious is the formative substance for our consciousness as a physical being, all our thoughts and behaviors, and our briefly expressed throughout each day conscious awareness of our reality in this universe.”
What do you do if you are a Jew who is devoted to Jewish way-of-life, but understandably doubts the existence of a “God” in this scientifically enlightened age? One answer is, you join a secularist Jewish chavurah!
Kehilàt Khochmàh v’Yèdah (קהילת חוכמה וידע) is an explorative Jewish chavurah that is focused on expressing traditional Jewish way-of-life fully independent of theistic ethno-religious belief in an ancestral god-image. We achieve this by teaching and encouraging the practice of Jewish seasonal and life-cycle rituals with a spiritually enlightening focus on humanistic values and actions, reasoning by way of rational observation and scientific inquiry, and educating our Jewish family on the demonstrable and verifiable real history of the Jewish people (as revealed by archaeology, for example, as opposed to blind faith in our cherished literary myths) and the development of our culture and ritual way-of-life.
How we express Jewishness at קהילת חוכמה וידע …
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The Sounds Of A Traditional Secular Shabbat
A traditional but secular Shabbat – from candle lighting to spices! How we come together and make blessings in our home on the “taking-rest” day. Eastern and Western piyutim, modern and ancient Jewish brakhot. … Candle lighting, wine, bread, shema, songs, candle lighting, wine, spices. A complete version, to include a simple birkat ha’mazon (added as final piece).
Joseph Farkasdi, Published on Apr 9, 2019
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As the Community of Wisdom and Knowledge/Expertise, קהילת חוכמה וידע, we seek to embrace an ever growing rational understanding of this universe in balance with the need to metaphorically express our assumptions and questions about this universe in a way that derives meaning and purpose for us. We embrace the expressions made in religious perspectives and teachings within an embraced rational awareness of the world as it demonstrably is. We place no emphasis of rightness upon any single one belief but, rather, view it as but one attempted ever evolving expression to bring a sense of place and meaning to the natural world. We recognize that all religions are a human expression, all contain some measure of perceptive truth about this world and this universe, and all need to be explored for these perceptive truths. We recognize that the perceptive truths we gather from our religions need to be tested and modified as needed by comparison to the observable and testable world that is both us and around us. We embrace both science and spiritual mysticism whole heartedly together, knowing that a balanced human and a balanced society must have a naturally derived degree of both.
As humans, we have the ability to question ourselves, and this questioning we need to apply to both our religious/ideological beliefs and to our studies of this reality we find ourselves conscious within. We need to be cognizant and willing to question and choose. We need to be cautious of our inherent attempt to categorize this experience of life by non-existent absolutes. For, in doing so, we historically cause more harm than good to ourselves, other species, and to our planet. We must as humans recognize our responsibility to create, share, and enjoy our myths, but equally remind ourselves that they are just this – our myths that we must constantly update to match current rational observable and demonstrable understanding of our world. We are for responsible religious beliefs and teachings, that embrace their being tested, and that avoid discouraging questioning and critical analysis.
We read Torah with the understanding that it expresses the myths that we tell about our people and these myths are noticeably and demonstrably different from the actual history of our people. We teach both, our actual history, as updated and verified by archaeological finds, and the myths as written, focussing in on what they meant to writers of their days, questioning why they wrote the myths this way, and questioning how we can use these myths today to teach important ethno-religious truths we now believe as modern Jewish people.
We perform the yearly seasonal rituals of our Jewish heritage, focusing on and teaching the developmental history of these holiday festivals, how they were performed and what they meant to Jews at different historical times. We add fresh new expression to these rituals, based on modern interpretation and understanding of meaning and purpose we find we’re associating now to the historical purpose for these holidays. We use humanistic blessings, rather than religious liturgical ones, to express the Jewish ritual to bless and make sanctified moments of our lives.
When we embrace halakhah and perform mitzvot, we do this *not* because some mythical “G-d” image of our people commanded us to do so. Rather, we do these acts, these spiritual expressions of consciousness, because they are the right acts for us to do as individuals and as a people. We do not perform acts that we *know* does not actually sanctify life in our times, but rather only regresses us backwards in thinking and behaving to a time in which our understanding as a people still needed much work of understanding and development. We modernize what we can and reflect it in behavior humanistically, and only teach about the rest and their what and why.
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A Secular haTefila (or Amidah)!
Why “Secular Judaism” Is Not An Oxymoron! (A Meditative Tachanun/Nefilat Apayim)
It appears that some Jews do not understand why secular Jews choose to chant or even call themselves Jewish – since secular Jews reject the imagined “God” (or earlier gods/goddesses) of Jewish theism. This video is the explanation in both words and chant. Sh’ma (listen closely)! … (Lucky you, I have a better singing voice today. 🙂 )
תחנון “supplication”, נפילת אפים “falling on the face”
A Meditative Secular Tachanun/Nefilat Apayim
https://youtu.be/gYdo9c-_HKM
Joseph Farkasdi, Published on May 6, 2019
Not just a religion, not just an ethnicity.
Jews are more than a religion, and we are identified by a common connection to land, language, ritual, and a resistance towards idolatry. Jews, by migration throughout the world and religious assimilation into Judaism, come in all shapes and colors of human beings found on this Earth. We are not a stereotype, in look or behavior, and we approach Jewishness in many different ways.
More than a people, more than a single ideology.
Jews are a people with an ethno-centric religion of rituals. For secular Jews, the reason we still perform Jewish rituals – just without the theism involved – is because: It is the rituals that have sustained our people, because we Jews have sustained our rituals. Our rituals are what gives us identity as a people, and all Jews share a common ritual identity, even with all the differing beliefs and stories.
tachanun, nefilat apayim, at adamah, shema yisrael, aseret hadibrot, nesiat kapayim, birkat kohanim
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We believe that as Jews we have a historically obligated responsibility to care for all of humanity, regardless of other’s ethnic, cultural, religious, or personal backgrounds. We have a responsibility to care for our planet for the sake of future generations. We have a responsibility to embrace methods of science, free inquiry, and critical analysis to address the problems of human welfare and to evolve the many particularisms of our religious expressions. We have a responsibility to honestly address the history of our human expression upon this planet, learn from it, and adapt our ways to express ourselves more consciously and sustainably within this world we share with others (including the other conscious life forms we share this planet with). We have a responsibility to advocate for and insist upon democratic forms of human relationships, thus encouraging our human aspirations for equitable justice and sanctity in human societies. We have a responsibility to encourage and foster responsible human spirituality, one not based in absolute creeds but, rather, based in conscious awareness of the impact of our daily actions. We have a responsibility to encourage feelings and awareness of connection as human beings, with each other and with all life upon this planet.
קהילת חוכמה וידע
For more about our congregation – click here now!
Judaism from religious to secular! Missing in this snapshot is Sephardic and Mizrahi forms of Judaism, which falls basically within the umbrellas of Orthodox/Heredi Judaism.
The different forms of Ashkenazi Judaism. Note, Masorti/Conservative Judaism is not shown in this snapshot, but is included in this line-up.
2 Comments
Joseph T Farkasdi · May 2, 2019 at 6:55 pm
Why Jews Reject Christianity
May 1, 2019 | Joseph T Farkasdi | Say Something
Honestly, I understand the modern Christian frustration over Jews being so apprehensive, uncomfortable, or outright antagonistic about joining in on Christian rituals. I’d like to even say that I sympathize but, as a Jew, this would be dishonest. Instead, I wish to share – to help facilitate a better understanding of Jews for those who are not Jews. In the West, it has a lot to do with how Jews have had to form Jewish “spiritual” versions of Christian rituals and thought in order to preserve Jewishness, our rituals and identity. Though most Christians do not and cannot understand this, for Jews – whether religious or secular – to participate in Christian rituals is sacrilegious, as best, and ethnicity annihilating, at worst. Here’s why:
Christian identity is a religious identity only, and nothing more. It is based on a theology of individual humans having a “personal relationship” with a god-in-flesh idol. And every Jew born has been given the ultimate teaching of never showing reverence to the god of another people, especially an idol. It’s such a long standing tradition of ethnic transmission, that it is most probably encoded into our very genes at this point. So, let’s address the differences between Jewish religious tradition and the Christian religion, to help in fostering a better understanding between the two.
Jews are not just a religion, rather we are a people with a religion. A Christian is a Christian only because of his or her acceptance of “Jesus Christ” into his or her heart. By this “faith” acceptance, a Christian has an unscripted personal relationship with their JC idol, and Christians get together to express upon how “God” has done wonderful things for each Christian individual. Jews are Jews by either birth into a Jewish family or by acceptance into a Jewish community, whether religious or secular, with the intent on adding babies to the Jewish community and continuing the Jewish identity and our traditions. The Jewish religion, Judaism, is an ethno-centric nationalist religion, wherein salvation is for the people as a whole, rather than for individuals. The closest that Jews come to the Christian idea of a personal salvation is in our performing the ritual behaviors necessary to appeal every year for the Jewish “God”‘s grace in adding him or her into the Book of Life for the upcoming year.
The Jewish god and the Christian god are fundamentally different. Christianity is only partly based on Jewish tradition. Christianity, as it is known and experienced in this modern world, is a mixture of Jewish messianism, ethnic Iranian Zoroastrianism, and Roman deification of the human Jesus into a god incarnate in the 4th century CE/AD. The Jewish god is a national god that is utterly formless, “One”, and can only be “known” by behavioral attributes. The Jewish god is not a god that you have a personal relationship with, except within the intellectualism of Jewish mysticism, because this god is utterly beyond our direct knowledge and experience.
The Christian god is a god that is all knowing, all good, and all loving (benevolent). The Jewish god is both loving and wrathful, depending on whether “his” possession, Israel, is obeying the civil and ritual laws commanded of her. If Jews are individually and, by default, collectively observant and timely of the mitzvot, then the blessing is the Jewish god’s protection and preservation of the Jewish people, as a whole. If not, the Jewish people are punished with sufferings – specifically, loss of sovereignty and scattering among the nations that worship idols (false gods or lower deities).
Christianity is about personal devotion to the Christian idol, a god-in-flesh come to save the world from individual personal sins. Judaism is about a people who perform civil and religious rituals for a jealous national creator god that promises a national salvation for the Jewish people, if we maintain our observance individually and as a people. Christians practice individual prayer and supplication to their idol. Jews practice a very specifically prescribed set of utterances, in chanted form and in Hebrew, that is excerpted from the Jewish TaNaKh.
The Christian god demands that you acknowledge him as “God” in flesh, and that you proselytize the “good news” of his redeeming personal salvation, in order to bring more converts into the religion. The Jewish god demands exclusivity, that a Jew – whether religious or secular – will have no other god, formed or not, before the metaphorical face of the utterly formless Jewish national god.
The Christian religion claims to possess the divine absolute truths through their idol savior. The Jewish religion acknowledges that humans can never truly know the mind of god, and to do so is either being a false prophet or worshipping an idol, depending on the situation. Jews have died in the most gruesome of ways at the hands of Christians and Muslims to not violate this prime and most fundamental prohibition.
This leads me to my last point. Christianity and Islam are proselytizing religions – the two diametrically at odds and at war with one another – both claiming to be the only path and possessing the absolute truth. Jews, by our very refusal to accept the ways of Christianity and Islam – our refusal to give up our Judaism and/or Jewishness, our refusal to assimilate fully into the Christian/Muslim world – by our very presence in this world, invalidate the core theology of both religions. We are an ever present proof that there is another way of believing and thinking in this world. Unfortunately, this self-affirming stance creates contention.
This is the reason for the endless and repetitious, often violent and debasing, anti-Semitism present in this world. Christians believe they are the “new” Jews, that their new covenant replaces the Jewish “old” covenant with the Jewish god – a covenant that is still in full effect, according to all religious Jews. Muslims believe that Jews have no right to self-sovereignty within our ancestral homeland, for it challenges Islam’s possession of the Middle East for our autonomous presence to be there on such “sacred” desert land.
So, if you’re a lover of Israel, but not understanding why Jews are reserved, insular, stand-offish, and hesitant to participate in what will probably be or turn into your religious ritual … well, this is why. Jews have more in common with the Druze people than we actually have in common with Christianity. Now, they’ll be a lot of liberal/assimilated Jews that will cringe – maybe even take issue – with what I have shared here. Primarily, because the truth does not tend to facilitate good relations where believers in absolutes abound. But, equally, the truth is that, if Christians viewed their “Jesus Christ” fellow as a prophet and not a god incarnate – as Thomas Jefferson viewed Jesus – then it would not be uncomfortable for Jewish people to participate in Christian religious gatherings and rituals. It’s the idolatry part that drives us away, and rather instinctually, at this point. The idolatry has a real-world and consequential history connected to it, from our Jewish experience.
Allow me to say this, though: May we all experience peace within our lifetime, regardless of religion, and whether religious or not. … Also, for us secular Jews, the reason we still perform Jewish rituals – just without the theism involved – is because it is the rituals that have sustained our people, because we Jews have sustained our rituals. Our rituals are what gives us identity as a people, and all Jews share a common ritual identity, even with all the differing beliefs. … Also, no matter how much you dress like Jews, act like Jews, and talk the Jewish language, if you are practicing the worship of Jesus, then you are a Christian – and no Jewish community, secular or religious, can accept you because of your idol worship.
Jews are more than a religion, and we are identified by a common connection to land, language, ritual, and a resistance towards idolatry. Jews, by migration throughout the world and religious assimilation into Judaism, come in all shapes and colors of human beings found on this Earth. We are not a stereotype, in look or behavior. … Okay! With this, I think I’m done with this post. I hope it has enlightened you with compassionate understanding, and a closer sense of identity with Jewish people within this world.
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This here is Judaism! As uncomfortable as it is for liberal modern religious Jews to admit to, at times, and to address honestly as being the principle reason for the existence of Judaism. And, as foreign as it is to Christians who blindly and ignorantly believe that somehow Jews are just a religion and happen to believe and think like Christians. Read the quote below, then read the whole article:
“As noted above, the (problematic) laws (in Torah) remain on the books, and this includes their very unpleasant theoretical applications and philosophical underpinnings. For example, even though halakhic authorities are in agreement that nowadays we should not be killing heretics, this is only because of a (Rabbi-devised) legal loophole: in the best of worlds, so to speak, we should be doing just that. Are we really looking forward to the time when the shekhina (divine presence) will again be manifest so that we can allow them to die in pits? Do we hope for the reestablishment of the Sanhedrin so we can again stone Sabbath violators and wayward maidens to death? I imagine most of us would not be looking forward to such a world.
Moreover, if we affirm that the problematic verses and halakhot all come literally and directly from God to Moses, how does it help to say that we can devise sundry principles and midrashic reinterpretations to avoid having to actually carry them out. Does God want us to carry them out, at least in theory? Does God really want us to wiggle our way out of them?
Finally, we should note the limited practical effect of this kind of apologetic approach; it leaves open the possibility that one day somebody—a Baruch Goldstein or a Yigal Amir—will notice what is written, and will act upon its plain sense. Criticism will be muted, because the rabbis and yeshiva teachers themselves, have not confronted the morally problematic nature of texts and guided their students on how to handle them.”
Judaism is about fulfilling the Mitzvot, and the fulfillment of mitzvot is the showing of love and submission to the Jewish god of Israel. The god of Israel then, either, rewards or punishes the people as a whole for their performance of halakhic religious devotion.
Relating Truthfully to Morally Problematic Torah Texts
https://thetorah.com/relating-truthfully-to-morally-problematic-torah-texts/
The problem of unjust or immoral laws in the Torah and halacha is pervasive. This is true of any legal system that continues over time in radically different cultures. The Torah in particular contains quite a number of laws that are problematic for later readers.
Joseph T Farkasdi · February 19, 2021 at 5:19 pm
It is very unfortunate that I must share with my community here that the Society for Humanistic Judaism (SHJ) is not what it appears to be. And, I have the receipts to show for it! Along with the horrific personal experience of relating with them.
SHJ is not Humanistic (and don’t even understand the word!), they are strictly atheistic. They are not gay-friendly, unless you are a gay atheist who’s biting at the heels of theistic religion. They are not black and brown friendly, unless you are a “black/brown *Jew*” who is atheist in attitude, like them. SHJ is like the secular flipside of the Heredi -introduced coin in this world.
SHJ is just as insular and divisive as their Heredi ultra-religious counterparts are. I know, because I’ve dealt firsthand with both, now! And I see no real difference between the two. Both shun the world and each other – in true Western Rabbinical style!
And I want nothing more to do with Western white-presenting Judaism, because of these flipside experiences! Back to my Eastern island Jewish roots!