Prophets traditionally don’t get much respect on their home turf, especially when they are starting a new religion. Jesus knew something about that, and so did Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons.
Like Malcolm X, they were martyred for their beliefs. Sherwin Wine escaped that fate, though he was certainly a pariah to most of Detroit’s Jewish community in the early years of his movement.
It took a lot of chutzpah for a young rabbi to proclaim he was an atheist in 1964, less than twenty years after the holocaust. It took even more brass to start first a new congregation, then a new branch of his faith – one that was based on not having faith.
Today the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews has congregations on every continent except Antarctica and Africa.
They train their own rabbis, and put on high-powered intellectual and theological colloquia every other year. The movement was written about in Time and the New York Times before the local paper, the Jewish News, reluctantly agreed to start covering Humanistic Judaism.
Incidentally, I am neither Jewish nor intellectually equipped to judge the merits of competing theologies. What I am, however, is a writer and a teacher, with a strong prejudice in favor of knowledge.
And it is as a teacher that I most admired Sherwin Wine. He spent a great deal of time giving lectures and organizing lecture series across southeastern Michigan. In fact, he started an organization to do just that, the Center for New Thinking. He reminded me of the days when learned men would travel the country, giving lecture series that were raptly attended by thousands of people hungry for knowledge.
Sherwin Wine was still doing that. I saw him as a throwback to the age of the enlightenment, where intellectuals held forth in salons on a variety of topics. I sometimes spoke at his invitation.
The people who came were mainly open-minded and curious. They were well-read. Many of them knew how to find information on their own. But they enjoyed coming together to learn with a teacher.
Wine wasn’t perfect. He did not suffer fools gladly. Actually, he barely tolerated them at all. But he was able to speak on topics from evolutionary biology to the modern theater. He did movie reviews and explained the great sweep of history. Not everybody loved him. Even those who admired him sometimes disagreed with him. One newspaper editor told me “You know he didn’t know everything, and he wasn’t always right.”
But, I said, he is trying to educate the public – and is your newspaper doing what newspapers did? Is it educating your community about itself and stimulating discussion of the major issues of the day? We both knew the answer was no.
The word rabbi means, literally, teacher, and Sherwin Wine was a one-man university, helping as many of us as he could to learn more about their world and themselves. I suspect it will be a long time before this community knows how much it lost in that car accident in Morocco.
Jack, A woman seated in from of me at Rabbi Wine's funeral mentioned with appreciation your comments on Rabbi Wine at a Unitarian Church service. I hope you made the funeral. Harry Cook's words were particularly accurate, funny and welcome. The future of the Temple remains a concern what with the big shoes left in the sand and the swimming feet. As in all walks of life, we need another courageous and imaginative leader with a big shoe size. It's quiet out there except for the flapping wings of nocturnal creatures with small "feet." Keep the torch burning. Marv Sharon
Posted by: Marv | July 28, 2007 at 09:26 AM
I don't find it the least bit strange that an aetheist yid should die being mechalel Shabbos.
Posted by: flashgordon11 | February 07, 2008 at 09:35 PM
I'm glad this site provided me with a comment section to say goodbye to a man I've never met.
I caught a 10-year-old Sherwin Wine lecture on a cable TV station last night. I enjoyed it immensely. I too thought about those wonderful days of knowledge for knowledge's sake. This morning I tried to track him down so I could somehow thank him for his wonderful work. I was saddened to find out he has already passed away. He must have been quite an extraordinary man, and I hope someone carries on the tradition.
Posted by: IrNel | September 27, 2008 at 03:38 PM