Humanistic and secular Judaisms

Abstract The concept ‘secular Judaism’ has two meanings. It refers to the section of the Jewish people who do not feel bound by any observance of religious commandments, and also to the extensive body of culture and creative work produced by secular Jews over the past 250 years. In the early nineteenth century men such as Leopold Zunz and Heinrich Heine members of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Judensaw Judaism as a culture, and not only a religion. This perception of Judaism as culture prevails today among secular Jews, who view the Bible (rather than the Talmud) as the foundation of Judaism, as represented in works of all streams of Judaism throughout the ages, including the Talmud, the works of Philo and Josephus, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament, and Karaitic, Samaritan, and Hasidic literature, as well as contemporary Jewish art and literature.