Can Jewish Life Flourish if God is on the Sidelines

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
By Simon Rocker

I once heard a rabbi say in his Shabbat morning sermon : “Without God, Judaism falls down like a pack of cards.” Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, a succession of Jewish movements have challenged the notion that religious belief is central to Jewish existence: Jewish socialism, for example, or secular Zionism, or secular-humanistic Judaism. You could find no livelier manifesto for Jewish secular culture than Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger’s recent book Jewish Words. In his book, This Is Not The Way, published last year, Rabbi David Goldberg called for accepting the reality that most Jews today are “cultural”, rather than religious.  Research lends statistical weight to the argument. [link]