Godless Jews: The Original Atheists with Attitude

By ROI BEN-YEHUDA

Before the intellectual trinity of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins set the theological world ablaze with their atheistic best-selling books, there was the unique phenomenon of the Godless Jew.

For almost two centuries Jews have contributed a disproportionate creative role to the discourse of doubt, skepticism, and atheism. Jewish intellectuals, the likes of Emma Goldman, Ernestine Rose, Sigmund Freud, Woody Allen, and Ayn Rand have all brought to bear their considerable talents on the question of God’s non-existence.

It should come as no surprise that the same people that gave the world monotheism also played a significant role in its negation.

At the heart of Judaism there is a profound respect for questioning, dissent, and doubt—a tradition of theological chutzpah. Moreover, the experience of Jews as outsiders, with its consequence of “otherness,” has created a culture that is tragically familiar with the absurd and unjust.

The story of Jewish atheism begins with intellectual rebels like Uriel Da Costa (1585-1640) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), but it was not until the 19th century that Jews could be properly identified as atheists.

One the first great Jewish atheists of note was Ernestine Rose (1810-1892). Rose, who was born in Poland into a wealthy Orthodox family, rejected her religious education by the age of 14. After escaping an arranged marriage and living in Europe for a few years, Rose moved to the United States in 1836. It was in the United States that Rose became a prominent intellectual: Speaking to issues such as abolition, feminism, free speech, Anti-Semitism, and atheism. As a testimony to her influence, the great Feminist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), who kept a portrait of Rose in her study, called Rose “the most eloquent” speaker in the movement and adapted her slogan, “Agitate, agitate.”

In her writings and speeches, Rose provides an early feminist critique of religion. Since Rose believed that all religions were irrational and misogynistic, she controversially rejected her colleagues’ popular use of the Bible in support of their cause. “For my part, I see no need to appeal to any written authority, particularly when it is so obscure and indefinite as to admit of different interpretation,” Rose explained, “No! On Human Rights and Freedom, on a subject that is as self-evident as that two and two make four, there is no need of any written authority.”

Rose’s rejection of religion did not lead her to repudiate her Jewish identity. She in fact expressed a great deal of pride in being Jewish. During her stay in Berlin, Rose was asked to convert to Christianity in order to ease her entry into the city. Rose replied, “Shall I leave the tree to join a branch?” This memorable reply is of no small significance given the large number of desperate German Jews who choose the baptismal font as ticket into European society.

In 1861 Rose published an essay entitled: “In Defense of Atheism.” While her arguments were not wholly original, their force, wit, and eloquence were unmistakable. Using the internal logic of the bible against itself, Rose asks how could an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent deity have allowed for suffering to be introduced into the world. She writes:

But did God not know when he created the Serpent, that it would tempt the woman, and that she was made out of such frail materials, (the rib of Adam,) as not to be able to resist the temptation? If he did not know, then his knowledge was at fault; if he did, but could not prevent that calamity, then his power was at fault; if he knew and could, but would not, then his goodness was at fault. Choose which you please, and it remains alike fatal to the rest.

For Rose it was not enough to say that our conception of God was logically flawed, she went further asserting that the very idea of God had the fingerprints of man all over it. Turning to the biblical notion of God creating man in His own image, Rose proclaimed: 

It was a great mistake to say that God made man in his image. Man, in all ages, made his God in his own image; and we find that just in accordance with his civilization, his knowledge, his experience, his taste, his refinement, his sense of right, of justice, of freedom, and humanity, so has he made his God. But whether coarse or refined; cruel and vindictive, or kind and generous; an implacable tyrant, or a gentle and loving father; it still was the emanation of his own mind—the picture of himself.

Rose concludes her essay in classic 19^th-century naivety by pointing out that while the atheist does not have faith in the hereafter or in God, she does have faith in humankind. Whatever good the religious are willing to do in the name of God, the atheist is willing to do in the name of humankind. Yet, unlike the believer, the atheist will not persecute, torture, or kill in the name of his beliefs.

Rose thought that religious authority, by its very nature, always degenerated into authoritarianism and intellectually tyranny. The fight against religious power was the fight against all the forces that oppress the human spirit. Being among the first of a generation of Godless Jews, Rose was remarkable in both of her intellectual and moral courage; yet it would be left to the likes of Karl Marx, Emma Goldman, and Sigmund Freud to leave an indelible, loud, and original mark on the discourse of atheism. In a forthcoming article in this series, I will turn my attention to the thoughts and lives of these intellectual giants.