Sherwin Wine - Organizational Leadership

Organizational Leadership

As the outlook and practices of the Birmingham Temple attracted people in other locations, Wine assumed the responsibility for founding several organizations designed to link these adherents together.

First, in 1969, the Society for Humanistic Judaism was formed by Wine’s Birmingham Temple; a previously Reform congregation in Illinois headed by Rabbi Daniel Friedman, who had led the congregation from Reform to Humanistic Judaism after learning about Wine’s work in Michigan; and a congregation in Westport, Connecticut which had been organized by a member of the Birmingham Temple who had moved to Connecticut. The Society for Humanistic Judaism now has over 30 constituent congregations in the United States and Canada as well as individual members unaffiliated with any of these congregations.

To fulfill the need of the Humanistic Judaism movement for trained leaders, Wine founded the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in 1985. This educational institution was sponsored jointly by the Society for Humanistic Judaism and the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations. The rabbinic program of this Institute has educated and ordained seven rabbis in North America in addition to over 50 leaders (called madrikhim or madrikhot in Hebrew or vegvayzer in Yiddish) who have less training than rabbis but are certified by the Institute to officiate at weddings and other life cycle events. The Institute also has an active rabbinical program in Israel from which eight rabbis have graduated and been ordained.

Wine also founded several organizations that are not specifically Jewish. In 1981, he and others created the Voice of Reason for the purpose of responding to the upsurge of right-wing political activism by religious leaders such as Rev. Jerry Falwell. In 1982, The Voice of Reason merged with the Center for Moral Democracy, which had been started by Ethical Culture leader Edward L. Ericson and others, to form a new organization, Americans for Religious Liberty, which continues as an advocacy group for the separation of church and state.

In 1982, Wine founded the North American Committee for Humanism, a confederation of the six major humanist organizations in North America, and The Humanist Institute, a graduate school in New York for training humanist leaders. Wine served as President of both of these organizations from 1982 until 1993.

In the Detroit area, Wine founded the Conference on Liberal Religion, an association of liberal religious professionals, in 1985 and an advocacy group called Clergy and Citizens United in 1995. He was also a member of Triangle Foundation's Board of Advisors.