Early Modern European Roots of Secular Humanistic Judaism, The

By Abramovitz, David, Zev Katz, Susan Lerner, Karen Levy, Roz Usiskin, and Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine
Society for Humanistic Judaism, spiral bound, $24.00

This publication provides background information for studying the early modern European roots of Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Divided into four parts, it includes a historical survey, selected essays and texts from Yiddish literature in translation, a collection of Humanistic quotations, and an annotated bibliography. The historical survey starts with ancient times through the Middle Ages with most emphasis on the Emancipation and Haskalah, challenges to Orthodoxy and framers of Secular Humanistic Judaism, Socialist, Yiddishist and Zionism thinking. This volume best read as a follow-up to Eva Goldfinger’s The Basic Ideas of Secular Humanistic Judaism.