Beth Chai is a congregation of observant Jews. But not in the usual sense. Their rabbi wears a yarmulke and prayer shawl but doesn't preach about God. Their children learn Hebrew but don't read from the Torah at their coming-of-age rite. And an atheist would feel right at home in their formal gatherings.
"Our services do not consist of worship of a supreme being," said the Bethesda congregation's president, Sheldon Hofferman. "We all believe that it is human beings who have the power and duty to make the world a better place. We are not looking to someone else to help us."
Beth Chai is a Jewish humanist congregation, providing a home for Jews who want a quasi-religious setting to celebrate their cultural identity and heritage -- except for the part about God. It is one of two such congregations in the Washington area. The other is D.C.-based Machar, which espouses "secular humanistic Judaism" and sees "reason, rather than faith, as a guide to understanding," according to its Web site.
Both groups are part of a movement of Jewish humanist communities that is growing increasingly organized in a country where 60 percent of Jews are unaffiliated with a mainstream synagogue and relate to Judaism more as a culture than a religion.
Jewish humanism "plugs into the feeling of some Jews who want to be identified as Jews but who are turned off by the religious baggage," said Neil Gillman, professor of Jewish philosophy at the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
It also reflects a broader, multi-denominational trend of people seeking religious rituals without committing to any dogma, experts say. "We know that modern believers are very individualistic," Gillman said. "They feel they have the right to do it their own way. And this is one other way."
Both Beth Chai and Machar hold regular Shabbat services and celebrate Jewish high holy days in local churches of the Unitarian Universalist Association, another religious body that does not worship a supreme being. Both also have Jewish cultural schools, social action committees and newsletters. They welcome interfaith couples.
Some members of the congregations believe in God, but most are agnostic or atheists who say they like the sense of community and the fact that they are not required to do or say things during services that they do not believe.
"The service is a way to connect to your past and heritage without having to sit through dogma that for me has no meaning and also is boring," said Beth Chai member Jo-Ann Neuhaus, of Bethesda, an urban planner. "It offers people a chance to . . . experience themselves as Jews without being religiously observant."
Marlene Cohen, of Silver Spring, who runs Machar's school, said: "God is not an important issue to this movement. What we are trying to teach is the importance of taking responsibility for your own life and the community around you."
The idea of celebrating one's Jewishness as a congregation without worshiping God may seem incongruous. It was Judaism, after all, that introduced monotheism and the concept of a personal God to Western civilization. But like other faiths, Judaism has been affected by humanism, the philosophical outlook emphasizing rationalism, which is centered on people rather than a supreme being.
Jewish humanism has been around for more than 150 years as an intellectual tradition, but it became organized only in recent years, according to Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, who founded the Detroit-based Society for Humanistic Judaism in 1969.
The society has about 50 affiliated communities across the country, said Wine. Worldwide, the movement has about 35,000 members, he added.
Stephen P. Weldon, a historian of humanism at Cornell University, said that Jewish humanists reflect an emerging pattern of religious humanism as distinct from secular humanism.
"A lot of humanists have decided that religion is a natural human impulse and . . . that there needs to be some kind of ritual and socializing aspect and that going to church or going to temple can help us do that," Weldon said.
Machar, "tomorrow" in Hebrew, has about 108 families on its rolls and 68 children in its school, which meets Sunday mornings at the British School of Washington in the District. Yesterday, seven students marked their coming of age in the congregation's annual group b'nai mitzvah at Indian Spring Country Club in Silver Spring. None did the ritual Torah reading in Hebrew.
Beth Chai, which means House of Life, is a bit more traditional. B'nai mitzvah candidates may read a Torah excerpt. And the 80-family congregation uses some Hebrew songs and prayers to evoke its Jewish heritage.
Rabbi Arthur Blecher, 53, who was ordained in the Conservative movement and is a member of the Washington Board of Rabbis, has been Beth Chai's part-time rabbi since 1983. He describes himself as a deist because he does not believe in a personal God "who stands apart from the world."
Beth Chai's Rosh Hashana service last fall at River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda drew about 270 people, mostly in their thirties and forties. Only four men wore yarmulkes. A lighted menorah stood on a front table.
After a blast from the shofar, the ceremonial ram's horn, the congregation responded: "Our ancestors looked to a God to guide their way to a new and better year. Today we look for wisdom in ourselves, as well as in our tradition. We call upon our own knowledge, our own abilities, our own humanity."
On Yom Kippur, the holiest day, Beth Chai's congregation recites in Hebrew the Shema, Judaism's signature prayer testifying to the belief in one God: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."
But members do this "to carry on the tradition," not "to observe the letter of the meaning of it," said Beth Chai member Neuhaus. She compared it to when "people sing Handel's Messiah not as a religious act but as a piece of music."
Machar, which holds its holy day services at Bethesda's Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, does not recite the traditional Shema, but it sometimes offers a "Humanistic Shema," said member Michael Prival, a microbiologist. That Shema opens with "Hear O Israel, our people are one, humanity is one."
Prival believes that Jewish humanist congregations will continue to appeal to Jews in this modern age. "We provide a way for them to retain their Jewish identity," he said, "and their rational worldview."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company