Rabbi Sherwin Wine

Rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928-2007) was a founding member of the Humanistic Judaism movement in the early 1960s. Humanistic Judaism is a non-theistic movement which emphasizes culture and history as key tenets of Jewishness, rather than the presence of God. Sherwin Wine founded the first Humanistic congregation and dedicated his life to activism and spiritual leadership. Of this movement, he wrote that “the secularization of America, the influence of the Enlightenment, the impact of Zionism, the questioning of Jewish tradition after World War II and the Holocaust: all led to a need in the Jewish world for a Jewish identity that could blend with a personal philosophy of life.”

Born in 1928, in Detroit, Wine was the son of Polish immigrants and was brought up in Conservative Judaism. The cultural influence of growing up in a Jewish area in the 1930s and 40s emphasized the importance of community and questioning structure. He attended the University of Michigan for both a bachelors and masters degree in Philosophy before deciding to reorient himself towards the clergy rather than academia. He was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College shortly after.

In the late 1950s, Wine worked as an army chaplain during the Korean War. He remembered his experience as giving him new insight into what spiritual guidance people sought out. “The boys came not to pray but to talk… I didn’t do the traditional thing, as you might expect. I did a kind of intellectually-based series of lectures on subjects of interest and concern to the troops. I think some of them became pretty interested in a chaplain who was caring about some of the not-necessarily-religious matters they were caring about.” The young soldiers needed community and conversation more than anything, and the cultural services that Wine organized connected them to their roots. This pivotal experience informed much of Wine’s future in the Humanistic movement.

In 1959, Wine founded a Reform congregation. By 1963, he and eight families from his congregation joined together to establish Birmingham Temple, a Humanistic Jewish institution and the first of its kind. It immediately prompted criticism and negative press. Time magazine called him “the atheist rabbi” and locally he and his congregation were ostracized, pushed out of their spaces. Wine had responses to anyone who criticized the movement. Orthodox Jews were by and large concerned that dismissing God was blasphemous, that it undermined Jewish spirituality. Secularists criticized it because they felt that secular culture shouldn’t blend with religiosity. To these points, Wine noted that nearly half of mid-century American Jews felt an, “‘incongruity between the words spoken and what people really believe’ - regardless of their formal affiliations. Humanistic or atheistic Judaism, he suggested, offered a place in the Jewish ‘extended family’ for Jews who rejected prayer, yet still sought spiritual answers. As such it represented a new ‘technique for survival’” in the constantly changing spiritual world of the 20th century.

Humanistic Judaism’s values aligned prominently and significantly with the experiences of LGBTQ+ communities, and this remains true today. It emphasizes the importance of a sense of self and dependence on personhood, self-determination, and independence. It asks its followers to pursue social justice and connection across lines. Radical inclusion is one of Humanistic Judaism’s central tenets; Wine, a gay man, noted that the movement was humanistic because it “[found ] the source of power for solving problems in human beings” in the face of injustice. This emphasis on justice and empowerment meant that queer activism has long since been a prominent element of Humanistic Judaism and secularism. Wine himself was a board member of the Triangle Foundation (now called Equality Michigan), a queer advocacy and human rights group and long standing anti-violence organization. The group provides outreach and support for LGBTQ+ individuals and families, following along the Humanistic understanding of justice. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, in spite of widespread homophobia, Wine “hosted a monthly gathering of closeted gay professionals called the First Sunday Group that provided discreet financial support to more public LGBTQ activism.” The compassion through which Wine’s activism took shape was influenced greatly by his spiritual life.

Humanistic Judaism took on new traditions as it grew. The Birmingham Temple kept their torah scroll in the library, not the sanctuary as is custom. They reinterpreted the High Holy Days and restructured their siddur to omit the Shema, the central Jewish prayer to God. As it grew, so did the pull for secular American Jews. Communities were drawn to Humanistic Judaism for a number of reasons— some, like Wine, felt the Holocaust was proof that God did not exist. Others appreciated the openness toward the custom of intermarriage, and still others looked for spaces that valued secular culture, humor, and Jewish history as paramount. In 1969 Wine helped to build the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and soon after founded the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. The Institute is the movement’s academic and intellectual headquarters, publishing scholarship and ordaining new Humanistic rabbis while creating a cultural home for the movement. He was an early signer of the Humanistic Manifesto and wrote a number of books on the subject, including Judaism Beyond God (1985).

Sherwin Wine died at the age of 79 in a taxi accident in Morocco. He was survived by Richard McMains, his partner of 25 years, and the legacy of the Humanistic Jewish movement. “The secularization of America, the influence of the Enlightenment, the impact of Zionism, the questioning of Jewish tradition after World War II and the Holocaust: all led to a need in the Jewish world for a Jewish identity that could blend with a personal philosophy of life,” Wine wrote of the blooming denomination. “The Jewish experience is the experience of change,” and so Wine’s activism and care for the world through his spiritual leadership and identities as a gay and Jewish man signified a changing Jewish world.

(This biographical statement written by Malena Glover from information found at: https://sherwinwine.com/biography/

Biography Date: June 2026

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