Secular Culture & Ideas Debuts on Jbooks.com in Collaboration with the Posen Foundation

Featured in June: The Yiddish Revival

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There are more secular Americans than ever before, and nowhere is the trend more pronounced than among Jewish Americans, nearly half of whom consider themselves secular or somewhat secular. So it may be the time to look back - and also forward - at the role of secularism in American-Jewish life.

A new online journal, Secular Culture & Ideas (www.secularjewishculture.org), does just that by taking a sharp look at secular Jewish life, culture, and ideas. Recent issues challenge conventional thinking about Jewish pop-culture, Yiddish, and the concept of “Diaspora,” plus an interview with Pulitzer prize-winning science reporter Natalie Angier, who heralds what might be called the “second wave” atheist movement. Next month, the journal will explore the renaissance in Yiddish language and culture.

Secular Culture & Ideas is accessible through Jbooks.com, an intelligent resource for Jewish book lovers. JBooks.com editor Ken Gordon comments, “Adding the secular component really makes JBooks.com a forum for diverse thinking. Readers who are interested in the complete spectrum of Jewish literature will want to check out Secular Culture & Ideas.”

According to Felix Posen of the Posen Foundation, which launched Secular Culture & Ideas, the journal will feature writers whose work explores secular themes and values. The partnership with JBooks.com will enable it to reach a broad audience. “JBooks is an excellent site,” Mr. Posen said recently. “We’re very pleased that secular Jews - for whom literature can be a powerful source of Jewish identification - now have an additional resource on the web.”

Like JBooks.com, Secular Culture & Ideas will hew to a broad definition of Jewish culture, with content driven by an enthusiasm for secular Jewish life. Yet it won’t shy away from the occasional debate. In New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora, by Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, the authors argue that the Jewish future lies outside of Israel, as a global Jewish experience. “We envision a new Jewish map, one with multiple homelands,” they write in their book, which was reviewed recently in Secular Culture & Ideas.

According to Myrna Baron of the Center for Cultural Judaism, which administers the Secular Culture & Ideas site, “our hope is that Secular Culture and Ideas will spark a discussion among non-religious Jews about the varieties of secular Jewish life and cultures.” To that end, the recent issue includes essays and excerpts by Susan Jacoby (Freethinkers) on secularism and its place in American political history; scholar Vanessa Ochs on Lilith and Miriam; and Douglas Rushkoff (Nothing Sacred) on re-embracing Judaism’s core ethical traditions.

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The Posen Foundation supports secular Jewish education through diverse projects primarily in North America and Israel. In the U.S. it is known for the Posen Project for the study of secular Jewish history and cultures, a grant-giving program that is in nearly 35 North American and Israeli institutions.

JBooks.com is the premier online destination for information about books containing Jewish interests and is produced by JFL Media (Jewish Family and Life!) in Newton, MA. The website enjoys more than 2 million page views a year with average visits ranging from 19 to 35 minutes. The site features five core channels: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s Books, Profiles, and First Chapters in addition to the new Secular Culture & Ideas.

According to Religion in a Free Market, a new book by the demographers Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, the number of Americans who profess “no religion” is greater than ever. The number of “secular” and “somewhat secular” Jews is also increasing: more than half of those surveyed fall into those two categories. (Paramount Market Publishing: Ithaca, NY. 2006 ISBN: 978-0-9766973-6-7)

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