Jewish atheism refers to atheism as practiced by people who are ethnically, and to some extent culturally, Jewish. Because Jewishness encompasses ethnic as well as religious components, the term "Jewish atheism" does not necessarily imply a contradiction. Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish.
Read more about Jewish Atheism: Organized Jewish Life, Jewish Theology, Secular Jewish Culture, Notable People
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or atheism:
“A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die.”
—Philip Roth (20th century)
“Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)