A Life Of Courage Explores the Life and Work of Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism

A Life of Courage: Sherwin Wine and Humanistic Judaism (ISBN 0-9673259-6-X), newly published by International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, explores the biography, pioneering achievements and personal influences of Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, on the occasion of his retirement as the senior rabbi of the Birmingham Temple in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

In 318 pages, authors Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Minister Harry Cook and Marilyn Rowens compiled two biographical essays and 24 tributes to Rabbi Wine and his trail-blazing work in establishing the world-wide secular humanistic movement as a recognized and fully formed branch of Judaism. A Life of Courage offers a glimpse into a contemporary philosopher through the words of friends, students, colleagues, and leaders in the Jewish life whom he has inspired.

Rabbi Cohn-Sherbok, a widely published editor and author, is professor of Judaism as the University of Wales. Minister Cook is a Detroit-area Episcopal minister and well-known lecturer, journalist and author. Rowens is the executive director of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, and served for 20 years as the ceremonial director of the Birmingham Temple – the birthplace of the secular humanistic Jewish movement.

Of that movement, Minister Cook writes in the principal biographical essay of A Life of Courage, it clears the ground “of all the clutter and underbrush of human attempts to sacralize life through imagination, wishful thinking and the crafting of irrational assumptions to explain what reason has not yet been able to explain. What one is left with is a world of ambiguity… with far more questions than answers, a world that draws one into an agnosticism, an openness to discover that one’s assumptions may be misinformed and mistaken. It is a world in which Sherwin Wine has flourished and in which he has been an unqualified success. His is certainly one of the longest running shows of its kind in contemporary religious theater…” (pp. 46-47).

Rabbi Cohn-Sherbok writes “Among all this, Sherwin stands as a beacon of rational intelligence…His ideas are firmly grounded in the proud tradition of Eastern European Jewish scholarship, but he is completely open to the ideas, influences, and discoveries of the modern world. Literally nothing is sacred.” (p.xii).

A Life of Courage is available at the Birmingham Temple, 28611 W. 12 Mile Road, Farmington Hills, through the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, at the same address or by phone at 248-476-9532, and the Center for Cultural Judaism, 212-564-6711 x303.

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