Sherwin Wine

Sherwin T. Wine (January 25, 1928 – July 21, 2007) was an American rabbi who founded Humanistic Judaism, a nontheistic movement emphasizing Jewish cultural identity, history, and ethics independent of supernatural beliefs or theistic doctrine.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, to parents who had immigrated from the Russian Empire, Wine studied philosophy at the University of Michigan before ordination as a Reform rabbi from Hebrew Union College in 1956; he briefly served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea from 1957 to 1958 but grew disillusioned with traditional religious practices, leading him to reject God and theism outright. In 1963, he established the Birmingham Temple in Farmington Hills, Michigan, as the world's first Humanistic Jewish congregation, initially with eight households, where services focused on human-centered celebrations of Jewish holidays and life cycles without prayer or divine references. This innovation expanded into the Society for Humanistic Judaism in 1969 and later the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews in 1985, fostering a global network of communities that prioritize secular humanism within a Jewish framework.

Sherwin Wine was born on January 25, 1928, in Detroit, Michigan, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Herschel Wengrowski (who later anglicized the family name) and Teibele (or Tillie) Israelski Wengrowski, who had emigrated from the Russian Empire (present-day Poland). The family resided in a modest, working-class environment amid Detroit's densely packed Jewish neighborhoods, where immigrant ambition and intellectual striving were prevalent cultural forces shaping daily life.

Wine's parents maintained a Conservative Jewish household, observing the Sabbath and participating in traditional rituals, though their commitment appeared rooted more in communal custom than fervent supernatural belief. He encountered Jewish traditions through family practices and attended services at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a Conservative synagogue, during his youth in this poor, predominantly Jewish community.

Despite his philosophical bent, Wine enrolled at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati, the primary seminary for Reform Judaism, opting for rabbinical training to engage alienated Jews rather than pursue an academic career in philosophy. There, he completed studies in Jewish history, biblical criticism, and theology, which highlighted historical and textual inconsistencies in traditional narratives of divine intervention and revelation. These elements, combined with prior exposure to Enlightenment rationalism and figures like Baruch Spinoza—who critiqued biblical authority through a naturalistic lens—reinforced Wine's emerging view of Jewish cultural achievements as products of human effort rather than divine mandate.