ABSTRACT
Jewish secular rituals were in the past, and still are in the present, set by the Kibbutzim in Israel, and by Jewish renewal organizations. They are seen by a few sociologists as a sign for the post-modern and post-secular features of Israeli society. As such, they are supposedly a withdrawal from a stubborn atheist rebellion against tradition. This chapter uses a theological perspective to present secular rituals in a different way. It examines Jewish secular funerals, Yom Kippur, Passover, and Shabbat ceremonies, as examples for rituals which manifest the main ideas of secularism. The examples will show how these rituals serve secular Jews in their critique of religious understandings of Jewish culture. The last part of the chapter suggests that the fact that God appears in these rituals does not make them less secular. It can be explained through a comparison of Jewish particularity with other religious constructions, and it can be understood through what I call a “secular theology”, inspired mainly by Emanuel Levinas and his differentiation between the ontological and the ethical.
