ESSAY
Multi-secularism
By PAUL KURTZ
Why secular values matter today.

ESSAY
Exodus and Agitation: Moses the Organizer
By ELLIOT RATZMAN
Liberation doesn’t happen by accident.

ESSAY
God Has Seventy Faces
By RACHEL ELIOR
Elior explores God—the handiwork of man.

FOOD
You Eat What With Your Matzo?
By CLARA SILVERSTEIN
Food writer Clara Silverstein shares Passover's lesser-known culinary options.

ROUNDUP
Passover Reflections
Secular Jews reflect on holiday innovations and Judaism’s commitment to freedom.

ESSAY
Passover—An Evolving Holiday
By RABBI ADAM CHALOM
Adam Chalom considers the tradition of Passover innovation.

ESSAY
A Secular Passover
By MICHAEL FELSEN
Creating new traditions for meaningful holidays.

EXCERPT
Who Knows One?
By RABBI PETER H. SCHWEITZER
Irreverent lyrics to a "traditional" song.

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ESSAY
The True Story of Purim
By JUDITH SEID
Judith Seid on the origins of the holiday.

ESSAY
The Original Atheists With Attitude
By ROI BEN-YEHUDA
Part II: Karl Marx—religion and economics.

NON-FICTION
Beyond Reason
By JESSE TISCH
A review of The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.

ESSAY
Godless Jews: The Original Atheists with Attitude
By ROI BEN-YEHUDA
Ernestine Rose: Man made God in his own image—part I of a series.

POEM
Queen Esther
By VANESSA HIDARY
My Jewish Grandmother spoke Arabic.

ESSAY
Secularization in Mizrahi Jewish Life
By MICHEL ABITBOL
Mizrahi Jews “believed that just because something was done in the past did not make it sacred.”

INTERVIEW
Conversations with A.B. Yehoshua
By BERNARD HORN
Leading Israeli novelist Yehoshua discusses Jewish culture and identity, and the importance of Jewish texts.

ESSAY
Dario Moreno and Sephardic Cosmopolitanism
By PAMELA DORN SEZGIN
The life and legacy of Turkish singing legend Dario Moreno, the Mediterranean’s “Frank Sinatra.”

ESSAY
A Room With a View
By LUCETTE VALENSI
God let me down on a bright summer night…

ESSAY
Jews in the Ottoman Empire
By EYAL GINIO
Eyal Ginio explores secularization in the Ottoman Empire and its effect of the region’s Jews.

ESSAY
A Jewish Voice Left Silent: Articulating "The Levantine Option"
By DAVID SHASHA
Shasha reflects on the Sephardic legacy of coexistence.

ESSAY
Martin Buber’s Secular Religiosity
By RON MARGOLIN and SARAH PESSIN
In honor of the birthday of one humanitarian, we bring you the philosophy of another who influenced him.

ESSAY
Epicurus' Jewish Legacy
By YAAKOV MALKIN
Yaakov Malkin explores the ancient Jewish tradition of heresy.

ESSAY
Separating Myth and History
By YORAM MELTZER
An Israeli perspective on Hanukah.

ESSAY
Hanukah, sans Holy Oil
By JUDITH SEID
The historic roots of Hanukah.

ESSAY
The Jewish Shakespeare
By BETH KAPLAN
The tale of my great-grandfather, playwright Jacob Gordin.

ESSAY
Song of My Secular Self
By LAUREN SANDLER
Humor, intelligence and love of a good sale. Author Lauren Sandler explores her Jewish Identity.

ESSAY
Digging for Roots at Secular Summer Camp
By KATIE HALPER
A secular Jew finds her place in a non-traditional Jewish World.

ESSAY
Personal Reflections on My Jewish Identity
By ALAN DERSHOWITZ

ESSAY
What's Left of a Jew Who Has Abandoned Religion? (A lot.)
By EUGENE GOODHEART
An excerpt from Confessions of a Secular Jew.

ESSAY
Secular Jews and Pacifism
By BENNETT MURASKIN
As a secular Jewish youth, my heroes were hardly pacifists…

ESSAY
The Colombian Inquisition
By ILAN STAVANS
A skeptic’s lesson on the virtues of secularism.

DIALOGUE
Modern Love
By ILAN STAVANS with VERÓNICA ALBIN
Stavans discusses modern, secular concepts of Jewish love.

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ESSAY
The Roots of Secular Humanistic Judaism
By RABBI SHERWIN T. WINE
An eloquent essay on the historical formation of secular Humanistic Judaism.

VIDEO
Amos Oz on Modern Jewish Culture
For the Israel Prize-winning author, anarchism and humor are Jewish sensibilities. In this exclusive video he speaks on the depth, history, and importance of Jewish culture.

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Come back next month for more from Amos Oz.

ESSAY
Modern Encounters
By DAVID BIALE
A leading scholar reflects on the idea of modern Jewish cultures—plural.

ESSAY
New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora
By CARYN AVIV and DAVID SHNEER
Exploring global Judaisms and Jewish homelands.

ESSAY
Secular Jews and Jewish Ritual
By PETER H. SCHWEITZER
Opening doors to secular Jews through new secular rituals and celebrations.

ESSAY
Feminism as Tikkun Ha-Olam
By LEA SHAKDIEL
Secularism, humanism, and feminism embrace the social contract to repair the world.

ESSAY
The National Poetic Rebirth of the Jewish People
By HAIM ZHITLOVSKY
A classic essay by an architect of Jewish-American secularism.

View archived Secular Culture & Ideas articles

ESSAY
Yiddishkeit in America
By IRENA KLEPFISZ
A lesson in language and identity.

ESSAY
Albert Einstein and World Peace
By LAWRENCE WITTNER
A look at the politics and humanity of a great philosopher and scientist.

ESSAY
Cab Calloway: On the Yiddish Side of the Street
By HANKUS NETSKY
The Great Man knew how to sing, dance, and parse the phrase "Abi Gezunt."

REVIEW
Three Generations of Cultural Judaism
By JESSE TISCH
This collection of essays asks some smart questions about Jewish culture.

ESSAY
Some Totally Radical Women
By TONY MICHELS
The revolutionary use of Yiddish in the early 20^th century.

ESSAY
Still Outwitting History
By AARON LANSKY
A heimish look at the persistence of Yiddish.

ESSAY
The Touch of Leah's Hands
By NAOMI SEIDMAN
Kadya Molodowsky’s amazing modern poetry.

REVIEW
Singer Gets a Life
By MICHAEL WEX
The author of Born to Kvetch on the latest I.B. Singer biography.

ESSAY
And the Award Goes to... Queer Yiddishkeit
KATHLEEN PERATIS
Something queer's going on in the contemporary Yiddish scene.

POETRY
Klezmetrics
By RICHARD CHESS
Transposing Jewish music into the key of poetry.

ESSAY
Shira Gorshman: A Life in Three Acts
By FAITH JONES
Meet an author who wrote during some of the flashpoints of Jewish history.

NON-FICTION
God-Optional Judaism
By JUDITH SEID
Answers and alternatives for cultural Jews.

NON-FICTION
Poetry, Chutzpah, and American Freedom
By ALICIA OSTRIKER
Belonging to the canon and the country.

ESSAY
Beyond Belief
By JESSE TISCH
Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier on second-wave atheism, life after death, and Jewish stereotypes.

INTERVIEW
Three Decades of Jewish Feminism
By REBECCA PHILLIPS
Susan Weidman Schneider, founder of the magazine Lilith, discusses how she sees women continuing to change the world with words and deeds rather than flags.