Hertz in Trouble

Next time I rent a car, I will try to rent it from Hertz to show my support.  The poor company is probably going to get sued soon for firing a couple of dozen Muslims for failure to clock their prayer time.  As reported in the Seattle Times, the 25 drivers, all Somalis, were among the 34 who were suspended for not clocking out before breaks.  Some of them reportedly took over 10 minutes, apparently to pray. I guess they have a lot to ask Allah for.  Had I been a Somali Muslim, I would certainly praise god daily for letting me come to America.

I remember the time I worked for a bank that had a client in Saudi Arabia. Being Jewish, I wasn't allowed to go there, so we sent a Brit and a Bahraini Arab.  In Riadh, they were stopped by Saudi police during one of the 5 required prayer times.  After the police checked their papers, the British citizen was set free (he was a Christian), whereas the poor Bahraini Muslim was forced to get down on his knees and pray.

The suspended workers have a few days to come to their senses and sign and agreement to clock out.

Jews Without Judaism

It's impossible to explained to an American, even to my own children, how one can be Jewish ethnically without professing Judaism.  Now that my family we have joined Humanistic Judaism, the question is moot at least for us, but it annoyingly keeps coming up.

Apparently, many Israeli Jews have been considering this question as well. I was, frankly, astonished when I found out that in Israel, one had to go to court to declare oneself an atheist.  Living in the US, we take a lot of rights for granted ("...self-evident, that all men are ... endowed ... with certain unalienable Rights"), including the freedom of conscience (although there is a dire need for a non-profit to take up this cause, since the government is not always up to the task).

Recently, the Israel Supreme Court ruled that the author Yoram Kaniuk has the right to change his official religious affiliation to "without religion" (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-court-grants-author-s-request-to-register-without-religion-1.387571):

In May Kaniuk asked the court to order the Interior Ministry to allow him "to be liberated from the Jewish religion" by changing his "religion" entry in the Population Registry from "Jewish" to "without religion." The ministry had refused his earlier request.

This apparently prompted many other Israelis to follow suit and officially declare themselves "without religion"
(http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/following-court-ruling-hundreds-of-israelis-to-declare-themselves-without-religion-1.388848).  I understand the Israeli government's need to keep track of how many Jews live in the "Jewish state", but there's got to be a better way to do this than to record religious affiliation.


It seems the Israeli government shares Josef Stalin's view that Jews are not a nation, which is kind of ironic and definitely sad.

A Place for Lone Wolves

“Even in paradise, it's not good to be alone.”

So goes a Yiddish proverb.  I learned it recently from Rabbi Frank Tamburello, who is the rabbi of my congregation, the Westchester Community for Humanistic Judaism. He recently wrote an essay, which appears on the congregation’s web site, that explains why it is important for one to belong to a community.

Westchester county is home to many Jews, a substantial portion of whom is non-theistic. Why then do so few join our congregation? It seems secular Jews tend to consider themselves “lone wolves” who don’t belong anywhere. After all, in the bad old days, you were excommunicated if you dared to question religious dogma, as evidenced by the examples of Baruch Spinoza and Uriel Acosta. Nowadays, I think it’s primarily the low penetration of the message that there is another option for such Jews: Humanistic Judaism. While it’s been around since the 60’s, pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about it was genuinely surprised to hear that such a thing exists.

While my wife and I only started looking for a non-theistic congregation when we realized we have to do something about our kids’ Jewish education (and it was much harder back then, because our congregation did not have a web site), I am glad we found WCHJ not only for our kids’ sake, but because we love belonging to a community whose members have similar values to ours. While our services don’t include prayers, it’s such an exhilarating feeling to read portions of the service out loud as part of a chorus of fellow congregants.

If you are a Jew who’s an atheist, and agnostic, a deist, or a variation of the above, give Humanistic Judaism a chance.  The Society for Humanistic Judaism website has a page that can help you find a community near you.

Freedom From Religion Foundation's 34th Annual Convention

Weekend of October 7-9, 2011
Marriott Hartford Downtown
200 Columbus Blvd
Hartford, Connecticut

The convention will open formally on Friday night with speeches and a celebratory des­­­­­­­­sert reception, continue through Saturday and conclude by noon Sunday morning after membership and Board of Director meetings. To tour the Twain house, plan your itinerary to make time on Friday afternoon.

Newest announced speakers:

Harvard's evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker, who will speak on Friday night. Pinker will be on hand to sign his newest book, out in time for the convention, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Declined. Pinker has previously won an Emperor Has No Clothes Award and is an honorary director of FFRF. Also just announced, Dylan Galos, a graduate student whose "I can be good without God" offering in FFRF's Out of the Closet billboard campaign in Columbus was censored twice before finding a safe home! Dylan will receive a $1,000 student activist award in the Saturday morning program.
Broadway composer Charles Strouse!! The man who wrote the music to the musicals Annie and Bye Bye Birdie and many other beloved songs will accept FFRF's "Emperor Has No Clothes" award. He is a life-long atheist who has not hesitated to "tell it like it is" regarding religion.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments For the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, will be named Freethought Heroine 2011. Her speech is titled “36 (Bad) Arguments For the Existence of God.”
Professor Jerry Coyne will accept FFRF’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award at the convention. Coyne, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, is author of the 2009 book, Why Evolution is True. His plain-spoken column, “Science and religion aren’t friends,” appeared in USA Today in October 2010.
Joseph Taylor, (known as "Ojo" Taylor is a songwriter, pianist and producer for the top-of-the-charts Christian rock group Undercover. He is the founder and general manager of Brainstorm Artists International / Innocent Media, a production company and record label distributed by Sony Music and Word Records and distributed all over the world. Joe has produced albums for Grammy and Dove award-winning groups. Now a professor of music at James Madison University, Joe will talk about his deconversion from Christian entertainer to nonbelieving educator.
Also receiving awards will be two FFRF activists. Steve Trunk, an FFRF Board and Lifetime Member, will receive the Atheist in Foxhole Award as plaintiff in a lawsuit in which the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in January declared the Mount Soledad cross in San Diego unconstitutional.
Mitch Kahle, founder of Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church, will be named Freethinker of the Year for persuading the Hawaii Senate in January to drop prayers to open legislative sessions. Kahle, a longtime FFRF supporter, was roughed up by Senate security for protesting prayers.

To register: http://www.ffrf.org/outreach/convention/convention-registration/ .

Shomrim's Cover-up?

Recently I read an interesting article in the Village Voice (it can be found online here), which tells about the apparently selective protection the Shomrim, Hasidic volunteer neighborhood patrol, afford their constituents.  While helping the police keep violent crime down (not a huge problem in a Hasidic neighborhood, I would imagine), they seem to be very reluctant to report child abuse and similar crimes to the police, instead reporting them (if at all) to a rabbi.  The article comes very close to accusing the Shomrim of a complicity in Leiby Kletzky's death (they took a long time to notify the police).

The Shmorim is publicly funded (they have received more than $100,000 from New York City for equipment and such), which makes it even more important to demand a reckoning.

Humanistic Jews Were Here First

The other day I got a call from a woman who wanted to know more about my congregation’s Rosh Hashana services (she correctly heard that they are free).  She was taken aback, though, when I explained what Humanistic Judaism is.  Unfortunately, the absence of prayers (we have no one to pray to) was too much for her.  Like many American Jews, she finds the idea that one can be a Jew and yet not pray to god incomprehensible (since I grew up in the Soviet Union, the idea has been very familiar to me—I didn’t know a single Jew who prayed).

It is particularly sad that most American Jews still view belief in the biblical god an essential requirement for being counted as one of the chosen people in view of recent research that seems to show that many of the first Jews to live in the new world were freethinkers, at best (or, perhaps, at worst) believing in the god of Spinoza. In fact, this is how Inquisition advised the faithful to determine who was Jewish in the New World:

If a person claims that there is no more to life than being born and dying, he is a Jew; if he says that there is no Heaven for those who are good, or Hell for those who are evil, he is a Jew; and one who declares that fornication is not a mortal sin is a Jew.

For more insight, please visit this web site.

SHJ Joins Supreme Court Amicus Brief Opposing Religious Employers' Right to Discriminatory Hiring Practices

The Society for Humanistic Judaism has joined with the American Humanist Association and other non-theistic organizations in filing an amicus brief in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which will be heard by the US Supreme Court during its fall term. This case raises the issue of whether religious employers should have a special right, a right that non-religious employers do not have, to ignore federal anti-discrimination laws and discriminate on the basis of race, gender, age, or disability if done in connection with an employee deemed "ministerial." The lower federal courts have created this "ministerial" exception to the anti-discrimination laws on the grounds that the First Amendment's Religion Clauses prevent the courts from intervening. The SHJ sided with the EEOC in arguing that religious employers should NOT be allowed to discriminate on these non-religious grounds.

The case concerns core humanist values regarding the equal, fair, and just application of our anti-discrimination laws to all employers, both secular and religious. As amici, we wish "to bolster the principle of religious neutrality: that government may not prefer religion over nonreligion" by asking that the lower court reject the ministerial exception and rule on the merits of the plaintiff's discrimination claim. The brief argues: "A decision of this Court recognizing the ministerial exception would have the constitutionally impermissible effect of denying equal protection of the laws to the employees of religious organizations and of advancing religion by creating special rights for religious defendants, and in so doing undermine the rule of law."