IFSHJ Re-launches its Web Site

Friday, September 18, 2009, Erev Rosh Hashanah
IFSHJ’s Staff and Board are proud to announce that it has re-launched its web site with a unique design that’s clear and simple to use. Its focus is to familiarize world Jewry about the tenets of Secular & Humanistic Judaism through the writings of Judaism’s patriarchs, their paradigm philosophers, rabbis and educators through the middle ages and the age of enlightenment into the twenty first century.

It links the reader to dozens of organizations throughout the world whose adherents are like thinkers and provides means of contact. The IFSHJ does not minister to individual Jews but is composed of national organizations which the reader could identify, unite with and enjoy the benefits of camaraderie and contemporary Jewish thought.

The site provides information about historical conferences and plans for future mini-universities combined with biennials, rabbinical ordinations and “off the beaten path” tours that will enchant. It is a living web site, a source of updating information about the growth of the Movement internationally and most particularly the thoughts of today’s humanistic philosophers and educators. The IFSHJ will publish relevant books, announce them and maintain a book store that will make available books written by its proselytizers, both Judaic and secular.

The IFSHJ is proud of its pluralistic principles and will provide a huge archive of web sites for the reader to access in order to determine his or her identity within Judaism. A major mandate for the IFSHJ is mitigating the attrition rate within Judaism, adjusting to the world in which we live, maintaining that “A Jew is a Jew,” even if that Jew is an active participant in the 21st century.

FIRST JEWISH HUMANIST MARRIAGE IN URUGUAY

Friday, September 4, 2009
For the first time in Uruguay, a couple celebrated its marriage with a Jewish Humanist ceremony. The celebration took place with a beautiful chupah installed in the “Cala di Volpe” Hotel in Montevideo´s coast and it was officiated by the psychologist Rasia Friedler, principal of the “Saludarte” foundation. The ceremony was inspired in the pattern created by Sherwin Wine, the ideologist and founder of the Jewish Secular Humanist movement in the United States, who died tragically in an accident in Morocco in 2007.

JEWISH CULTURAL CENTER OPENS IN RIO

Wednesday, August 5, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) -- A Jewish cultural center opened in Brazil.

Several governmental officials attended the recent opening of the Midrash Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro's upscale Leblon neighborhood.

The center, which boasts a plush facade featuring Hebrew letters, will feature lectures, courses, debates, exhibits, concerts on Jewish culture, history, literature, poetry and philosophy.

"I hope people from different religions, and also those with no religion, can get more familiar with the Jewish culture here," said Sergio Cabral, Rio de Janeiro's state governor. "It would be great if students from our public schools could attend."

"It is a place to promote tolerance and pluralism," said Rabbi Nilton Bonder, the center's coordinator and spiritual leader of a Conservative synagogue. "We have built a study house of the 21st century that will go beyond the literal by promoting the capability of looking at new perspectives."

Also attending the opening was Rio De Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc, and other Jewish and non-Jewish officials and artists.

 

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