Must Jews believe in God?

Traditionally, Jewish identity had been defined biologically. According to rabbinic Judaism, if one’s mother was Jewish, then one was Jewish, regardless of one’s actions or beliefs. Therefore, does a Jew really need to believe in God?

The common quip that “there were no atheists in antiquity” is more or less true. The existence of God (or gods) was taken for granted in the ancient and medieval world. Even the medieval philosophers–Jewish, Christian, and Muslim–who tried to prove God’s existence were concerned more with displaying the rationality of religion than demonstrating the existence of a deity.

Atheism and agnosticism only emerged as real options in the modern era, as consequences of secularization, the separation of church and state, and above all, the reliance on science for explanations of natural phenomena.

-MyJewishLearning.com

A belief in God was not a required tenant of Judaism until the Middle Ages, when Jewish philosophers began proposing official doctrines of Judaism.

The Evolution of God: Erich Fromm

• God becomes progressively less real (and relevant) in traditional Jewish literature.
  1. At the beginning of the Bible, God is an absolute ruler who can (and does) destroy the world when He is not happy with it.
  2. In the next stage, however, God relinquishes His absolute power by making a covenant with humankind. God’s power is limited because it is subject to the terms of the covenant.
  3. The third stage of God’s evolution (or devolution) comes in His revelation to Moses, in which he presents Himself as a nameless God. The evolution of God does not stop with the Bible. Ironically, Maimonides takes it even further by positing that nothing can be said about God. We can venture to say what God isn’t, but God’s positive attributes are unthinkable.
• • The next step, says Fromm, should have been a rejection of God completely, but even he–a self-declared non-theistic mystic–acknowledges that this is impossible for religious Jews. He does, however, recognize that because Judaism has not been primarily concerned with beliefs per se, one who does not believe in God can still come very close to living a life that is fully Jewish in spirit.

Belief in God was less central to Jews of the rabbinic era (the few centuries following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE) than it was to Jews in the Middle Ages, not because God was less important, but because belief itself was. Though Jews tended to believe in certain shared concepts–e.g. one God who led them out of Egypt, the eventual messianic redemption–official beliefs or dogmas were not formulated until the Middle Ages.

Pesikta D’Rav Kahana, a 5th- to 7th-century midrash, glosses:

“If only they had forsaken me and kept my Torah.”

For Maimonides, one was not Jewish–at least not fully Jewish–if one did not believe in God and in the other tenets of belief that he outlined. He stated that the following principles were essential to one's Jewish identity

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Awe rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew. In Biblical language, the religious man is not called ‘believer,’ as he is for example in Islam (mu’min) but yare hashem (one who stands in awe of God).”

Jewish philosopher Howard Wettstein

"Just as the non-literalist theist finds meaning in the narrative of creation without necessarily believing it to be “true,” so too the naturalist can find meaning in the story–and all of Judaism–without believing in the objective reality of a supernatural God."

Faith and Doubt, p. 32-33

If even for a fleeting moment, which may be worth all of eternity: by the realization that we may well be the objects of God’s Doubt. The fullness of faith can be attained when, instead of doubting God, we come to the sudden and terrible awareness that God may be doubting us; that our human existence has yet to be affirmed by God who may not be convinced of its worth. That God may have lost faith in us because we have betrayed him. That must be the focus of our concern.”

Robert Putnam

I don’t know whether it’s theologically kosher to be both a Jew and an atheist, but if it isn’t, half the Americans who call themselves Jews aren’t quite legit. Of self-identified Jews in the nationally representative surveys David Campbell and I did for our book American Grace, 50 percent say they have doubts about the existence of God. That figure is much higher among Jews than any other major religious group in America. (Among members of all other faiths, only 10-15 percent express any doubts at all about God’s existence.)

Robert Putnam is the author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community and the Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.

Marcia Falk

Without question, there always has been Judaism without God. For one thing, who decides whether what we do is Judaism or not? Is there some court on high that says, “This is Jewish, and this is not”? Clearly, a large population of Jews in America do not believe in God, though they may not say so. It’s very taboo in America to admit you’re an atheist. We can’t imagine a candidate for president who doesn’t go around God-blessing everything. It’s almost a century since Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote Judaism as a Civilization, and the idea that Judaism has evolved over time is hardly a new concept. Even asking the question, “Can there be Judaism without God?” seems odd. Lots of people who don’t believe in God are going along living and being Jewish, so obviously they exist.

Marcia Falk, a poet, translator and liturgist, is the author of The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival.

Adin Steinsaltz

The question “What is Judaism without belief in God” can best be answered through similes. The simplest simile would be that it is like humanity without life: a collection of dead bodies, cemeteries and memorials. Judaism without belief in God is just like that: a combination of obscure historical notions such as the Shoah, a faint attachment to Israel and wonderful material for Woody Allen movies.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is a winner of the Israel Prize and recently completed a translation of the Talmud into modern Hebrew.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God.

Mordecai Kaplan in The Many Faces of God: A Reader of Modern Jewish Theologies edited by Rifat Sonsino, pp. 22–23

In brief, God is the Power in the cosmos that gives human life the direction that enables the human being to reflect the image of God.

Martin Buber

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.

Eliezer Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, p. 64

The hiding God is present; though man is unaware of him, He is present in his hiddenness. Therefore, God can only hide in this world. But if this world were altogether and radically profane, there would be no place in it for Him to hide. He can only hide in history. Since history is man's responsibility, one would, in fact, expect him to hide, to be silent, while man goes about his God-given task. Responsibility requires freedom, but God's convincing presence would undermine the freedom of human decision. God hides in human responsibility and human freedom.