Judaism Without Theology?

Many years ago, when I was first beginning my doctoral work, among the students in the program were a few members of the Catholic clergy. As we were getting to know each other, one of them caught up with me during a break and said to me, “Tell me about your faith community.”

I remember being stunned by the question. Of all the many ways that I might have defined the liberal Jewish community of which I was then a part, “faith community” was definitely not among them. As successful as many American Jews are, I can think of none who subscribe to what Tara Burton, in her overview of American Christian theologies of success, calls the “prosperity gospel.”

The 80 percent of American Jewry who reside outside of Orthodoxy would not cite fidelity to the “prosperity gospel,” not only because they do not subscribe to its theological tenets, but because they do not subscribe to much by way of positive theology at all. Theology in the liberal Jewish world—in Israel no less than in America—has become more a matter of stating the beliefs one does not hold (that God revealed the Torah on Mount Sinai, that commandments are binding, that God granted the Land of Israel to the Jewish people) than what one does. Most liberal Jews today are not comfortable with theological certitude.