The 'Bible' of Secular Humanistic Judaism: A Journey from Ancient through Modern Jewish Literature

Robert Alter as keynote speaker and Amos Oz at the closing session at the Tenth Biennial Conference of the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews



The beautiful city of San Francisco hosted this year’s conference from December 3-5, 2004, with the theme of “The ‘Bible’ of Secular Humanistic Judaism: A Journey from Ancient through Modern Jewish Literature.”



The keynote speaker was Robert Alter, distinguished literary critic and acclaimed author of The Art of Biblical Narrative, The Art of Biblical Poetry, the lyrical translation Genesis and most recently, his acclaimed The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary.



Amos Oz, an Israel Prize winning author whose books have been translated into over 30 languages, addressed the closing session of the conference on Sunday, December 5. Professor Oz, author of the new A Tale of Love and Darkness is the recipient of several international awards.



In addition to Professors Alter and Oz, the featured speakers included Naomi Seidman who spoke on Haskalah and Yiddish literature in her talk, Secular Midrash, Modern Yiddish Literature, and the Echoes of Tradition (Graduate Theological Union); Ruth Kartun-Blum, who spoke on poetry in her presentation entitled Motherhood, Mourning and Politics in Israeli Women's Poetry ( The Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi on modern literature, With Both Feet on the Ground: The Comic Muse Follows the Jews to America (Hebrew University and Duke University visiting professor); Azzan Yadin on a secular understanding of rabbinic literature (Rutgers University); and Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine on How do We Live the Literature? (founder of Humanistic Judaism, co-dean of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism).

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