Jewish Atheism - Notable People

Notable People

A number of well-known Jews throughout history have rejected a belief in God. Some have denied the existence of a traditional deity while continuing to use religious language. In 1656 the seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Sephardic synagogue after advancing a pantheist notion of God that, according to some observers, is both compatible with and paved the way for modern atheism. Deeply influenced by Spinoza, Albert Einstein used theistic language and identified strongly as a Jew, while rejecting the notion of a personal god. The astrophysicist Carl Sagan was born into a Jewish family and was a non-theist.

Karl Marx was born into an ethnically Jewish family but raised as a Lutheran, and is among the most notable and influential atheist thinkers of modern history; he developed dialectical and historical materialism which became the basis for his critique of capitalism and his theories of scientific socialism. Marx became a major influence among other prominent Jewish intellectuals including Moses Hess. In one of his most cited comments on religion he stated: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".

Many other famous Jews have wholeheartedly embraced atheism, rejecting religiosity altogether. Sigmund Freud penned The Future of an Illusion, in which he both eschewed religious belief and outlined its origins and prospects. At the same time he urged a Jewish colleague to raise his son within the Jewish religion, arguing that "If you do not let your son grow up as a Jew, you will deprive him of those sources of energy which cannot be replaced by anything else." The anarchist Emma Goldman was born to an Orthodox Jewish family and rejected belief in God, while the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, when asked if she believed in God, answered "I believe in the Jewish people, and the Jewish people believe in God." More recently, the French Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida stated somewhat cryptically, "I rightly pass for an atheist". In the world of entertainment, Woody Allen has made a career out of the tension between his Jewishness and religious doubt ("How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?").