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Celebrate the
High Holidays
with a
Humanistic
Community
Teen
& Young Adult News
Rabbi Sherwin Wine - Humanist Hero of the Year
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SHJ
Mission Statement
The Society for Humanistic Judaism mobilizes people to celebrate Jewish
identity and culture consistent with a humanistic philosophy of life.
As the central body for the Humanistic Jewish
Movement in North America, the Society assists in organizing and supporting
congregations and in providing a worldwide voice for its members.
Core
Principles
As members of the Society for Humanistic Judaism:
- We affirm our identity as members of the Jewish People. We draw
strength from the history, culture, and achievements of our people. We
see Jewish history as testimony to the continuing struggle for human
dignity and, like the history of other peoples, as a product of human
decisions and actions.
- We demonstrate our bond to the Jewish people through humanistic
celebrations of Jewish holidays and life-cycle events. We create and
use non-theistic Jewish rituals, services, and celebrations that
invoke the ethical core of Jewish history, literature, and culture.
Our aim is to foster a positive Jewish identity, intellectual
integrity, and ethical behavior among celebrants.
- We affirm the value of study and discussion of Jewish and universal
human issues. We rely on such sources as reason, observation,
experimentation, creativity, and artistic expression to address
questions about the world and in seeking to understand our
experiences.
- We seek solutions to human conflicts that respect the freedom,
dignity, and self-esteem of every human being. We make ethical
decisions based on our assessment of the consequences of our actions.
- We believe that it is human beings who have the responsibility for
solving human problems. We are committed, in the enduring Jewish
tradition of support for social action and social progress, to
community service and actions for social justice. We each take
responsibility for our own behavior, and all of us take collective
responsibility for the state of our world.
We are committed to passing these values on to present and future
generations through education and by our example.
- October 8, 1999
Resolutions
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