Jewish and humanist: secular Jews who helped shape the humanist movement in Britain

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677):

I write nothing here that is not the fruit of lengthy reflection; and although I have been educated from boyhood in the accepted beliefs concerning Scripture, I have felt bound in the end to embrace the views I here express.

Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670)

Born in Amsterdam in 1632, Spinoza has been called the ‘founding father of modern unbelief’. He rejected the concept of miracles, and denied the efficacy of prayer, asserting that God was the substance of nature. For some, Spinoza’s name became synonymous with atheism, for others with pantheism, but though he never argued against the existence of a deity, he nevertheless placed the responsibility for living squarely with humankind. In dispensing with supernaturalism, and emphasising instead human beings’ capacity to strive for goodness – with no expectation of divine intervention, punishment, or reward – Spinoza laid the groundwork for the vocabulary of humanism today.

Ernestine Rose (1810-1892).

We should work to get rid of irrational laws based upon sectarian opinions and to replace them by laws standing upon rational knowledge. We ask only the right to investigate everything, to throw it free and open, and to see if after examination we can arrive at something we can say we know.

Ernestine Rose, ‘A Defence of Atheism’ (1861)

Polish-born atheist, abolitionist, and advocate of women’s rights Ernestine Rose was a remarkable freethinker with a passionate devotion to social reform. Rose had ‘a forcible voice, the most uncommon good sense, a delightful terseness of style, and a rare talent for humor,’ an anonymous female journalist wrote in 1860, and became infamous as a tireless freethinking feminist. Firm in her rejection of all religion from an early age, Rose’s lifelong advocacy of rationalism and humane social reform helped pave the way for generations of humanist women who came after her.

Felix Moscheles (1833-1917) & Margaret Moscheles (1854–1924)

I say with Bolingbroke in Richard II: ‘I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends.’

Felix Moscheles, Fragments of an Autobiography (1899)

Felix and Margaret Moscheles were founding members of the West London Ethical Society in 1892, and actively involved in the Ethical movement for decades. Felix Moscheles – born in 1833 into a German Jewish family in London – was a painter, peace activist, and promoter of Esperanto, whose advocacy of a ‘universal language’ was rooted in the desire to overcome international conflict and division. Margaret (Greta) Moscheles (née Sobernheim) was also an artist, and both she and her husband were active in the international peace movement. Felix was president of the International Arbitration and Peace Association, and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize no fewer than 19 times.

Felix Adler (1851-1933)

The progress of mankind has been kept back for centuries by the disposition to expect, of the love and kindness of Providence, the benefits which, if obtainable at all, must be obtained by human effort. The progress of mankind has been incalculably advanced by the appeal to self-help, by the conviction that ‘the gods help them who help themselves,’ which, after all, is synonymous with saying that if we are to be saved we must save one another.

Felix Adler, ‘Prologue’ in A Generation of Religious Progress: Issued in Commemoration of the Twenty-First Anniversary of the Union of Ethical Societies (1916)

Felix Adler – the son of a rabbi – was the founder of the Ethical Culture movement, whose motto of ‘deed not creed’ centred on the possibility of establishing a system of morality without reference to theological ideas. Adler was a significant influence on Stanton Coit, who was a driving force in the popularising and growth of the organised Ethical movement (later called the humanist movement) in Britain. Adler’s wife, Helen Goldmark Adler (1859-1948), was from a rationalist Jewish background, and also played a notable role in the Ethical Culture movement in America.

Josephine Gowa (1854-1941)

Josephine Gowa was a driving force in the Hampstead Ethical Institute (later Hampstead Humanist Society, and part of what is now Humanists UK) for over three decades, many years of which she spent as its honorary secretary. Gowa, like many others in the early Ethical movement, was also actively engaged in Liberal politics and the peace movement: she was the honorary secretary of the Women’s Branch of the Hampstead Liberal and Radical Association, on the executive committee of the Rationalist Peace Society, and represented the Union of Ethical Societies (Humanists UK) at the International Peace Congress of 1908. In his history of the British Ethical movement, Gustav Spiller singled Gowa out for her active devotion to the life of the Hampstead humanist group.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

…if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives.

W.H. Auden, ‘In Memory of Sigmund Freud’ (1940)

Austrian physician Sigmund Freud remains one of the most recognisable names in psychology: the founder of psychoanalysis, who helped bring the study of mental health to the public eye and mainstream media. Born into a largely non-observing Jewish family, Freud was a lifelong atheist, who wrote of religion as a comforting illusion, and became an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association. Freud’s ideas on the origins of the religious impulse were a significant contribution to a tradition of scientific humanist thought, in which research and reason were the means of uncovering truth. They also served to highlight the powerful resonance of childhood influences on adult lives, not least in the realm of religion.

Gustav Spiller (1864-1940)

The Conscience has eclipsed the Scriptures; Science has destroyed the belief in Divine Interposition; Democracy and Civism have shown men how to help themselves, and the supreme test and interest of men have become Ethical, and have ceased to be Supernaturalistic.

Gustav Spiller, Faith in Man (1908)

Hungarian-born Gustav Spiller was a leading figure in the Ethical Movement, and a key driver of its internationalist outlook. On behalf of what is now Humanists UK, Spiller helped to organise the First International Moral Education Congress, and the First Universal Races Congress. This latter conference, a pioneering anti-racist effort, Spiller followed up with the World Conferences for Promoting Inter-Racial Concord – an organisation whose goal was ‘to promote cordial relations between all divisions of mankind, without regard to race, colour, or creed’. Spiller later became a key figure in the newly founded League of Nations, and in 1934 wrote a history of the British Ethical movement.

Chapman Cohen (1868-1954)

The man or woman who has not learned to set mere authority on one side in dealing with any question will never be more than a mere echo, and what the world needs, now as ever, is not echoes but voices.

Chapman Cohen, A Grammar of Freethought (1921)

Chapman Cohen’s first foray into religious debate was in defence of a man in Victoria Park whose speech impediment had been mocked by a Christian lecturer, but he ultimately became a prominent freethought writer and lecturer, and President of the National Secular Society for over three decades (1915-1949). As editor of The Freethinker for 36 years, as well as the author of numerous books and pamphlets, he espoused a reasoned, compassionate, but unflinching rationalism, and shifted the focus from ‘bible-bashing’ to the more positive benefits of thinking freely, and arguments from history, philosophy, and science. Chapman’s father Enoch Cohen was a confectioner, and though the family was Jewish, Cohen’s childhood was not especially observant. He would later confess that ‘In sober truth I cannot recall a time when I had any religion to give up’.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955):

But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people – first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (1935)

Born in Germany and raised in a secular Jewish home, Albert Einstein was – as well as perhaps the most famous physicist in history – a thoughtful humanist. Einstein actively supported the Ethical Culture movement in the US, was a founder member of the First Humanist Society of New York, and an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association in the UK. In 1955,with fellow humanists Bertrand Russell and Joseph Rotblat, Einstein co-authored a manifesto calling for peace and disarmament, and always emphasised the need for humanity in the application of science. Although his scientific contributions are well recognised, Einstein’s humanist philosophy is often forgotten.

Leonard Woolf (1880–1969)

I can get no comfort from believing what I want to believe when I know that there is no possible reason for believing it to be true.

Leonard Woolf, Sowing: an Autobiography of the Years 1880 to 1904 (1960)

Leonard Woolf was a Jewish atheist writer, the husband of Virginia Woolf, and one-time lecturer for the South Place Ethical Society (now Conway Hall), as well as for other humanist groups. An eloquent atheist and a deeply compassionate man, Woolf’s humanist credentials were evident in his close working relationship with Gilbert Murray, his tenure as Vice President of the Progressive League – a humanist campaigning organisation – and his becoming, just before his death, an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association.

Morris Ginsberg (1889–1970)

Lithuania-born Morris Ginsberg was a sociologist and philosopher, who was President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) 1954–7. Although he spoke little of his childhood, Ginsberg grew up in a tight-knit Jewish community, and was – according to friend and colleague Maurice Freedman – ‘entirely Yiddish-speaking’ into his early adolescence. On migrating to England, Ginsberg excelled first in philosophy, but his greatest legacy was in the field of sociology. He became chair of the department at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1929. In 1955, he became the inaugural President of the British Sociological Association (succeeded by another prominent humanist, Barbara Wootton). Writing in the LSE Magazine after Ginsberg’s death, Donald G. MacRae paid tribute to his influence on the discipline:

During many years he had carried the burden of sociology in this country almost alone. What the subject has of rigour, order, clarity, scholarship, creative doubt and humane concern in 1970 is the legacy, above all of Ginsberg.

Donald G. MacRae in ‘Morris Ginsberg: An Obituary’, LSE Magazine (December 1970)

As well as an admired academic, Ginsberg was remembered as a compassionate and principled man. In his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, Ginsberg is described as having been ‘respected for his integrity, loved for his gentleness, and admired for his informed intellectual power.’

Harold Laski (1893–1950)

Our business, if we desire to live a life not utterly devoid of meaning and significance, is to accept nothing which contradicts our basic experience merely because it comes to us from tradition or convention or authority.

Harold J. Laski, ‘The Dangers of Obedience’ (1930)

Harold J. Laski was born into a prosperous Manchester family, who were prominent in the city’s Jewish and political communities. With his marriage to Frida Kerry in 1911, Laski rebelled against the traditional values of his parents, who disapproved of his marrying a non-Jew. He struggled to reconcile the tenets of religion with science and personal freedom, ultimately becoming an outspoken rationalist. An academic and a political activist, Laski was active in the Labour movement and in Fabian circles, a suffragist and a socialist. Of Laski’s impact, his biographer Michael Newman wrote:

…few people have devoted such energy to a sincere attempt to combine liberty, equality, and internationalism in theoretical terms and to promote these ideals through teaching and participation in public life. He deserves full recognition for this.

Karl Popper (1902-1994):

… the responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God, nor to nature, nor to society, nor to history… we cannot shirk this responsibility. Whatever authority we may accept, it is we who accept it.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

Karl Popper is remembered as one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers of science, as well as an influential rationalist and philosopher. Popper’s definition of an ‘open society’, as outlined in his 1945 work The Open Society and Its Enemies, exerted significant influence on the policies of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK) during the 1960s and 1970s, epitomised by the 1969 conference ‘Towards an Open Society’. Popper was a member of the British Humanist Association’s Advisory Council, and contributed an essay to the 1968 collection The Humanist Outlook, edited by A.J. Ayer.

Ellen Gottschalk Roy (1904-1960)

When you are born in one country and your mother belongs to another, and your father to a third, and endowed with his citizenship, you are a foreigner in every country where you have grown up and studied and… lived and worked, and yet you feel at home in all of them; if you then marry an alien from a different continent… and become at home there too… you see the good and bad in all countries and peoples.

Ellen Gottschalk Roy, quoted by Kumari Jayawardena in The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during British Colonial Rule (2014)

Ellen Gottschalk Roy was a German-Jewish radical, writer, and close collaborator with her husband, Indian revolutionary M. N. Roy. With Roy, she was active in the organisation of the Radical Humanist movement in India, including as editor of its journal, and strongly advocated for international sympathy and cooperation.

Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974)

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible…

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (1973)

Polish-born Jacob Bronowski was a mathematician, historian, and broadcaster whose landmark 13-part series The Ascent of Man explored the development of humankind through its understanding of science. Bronowski, a writer of poetry and devotee of William Blake, also challenged the false dichotomy of art and science, always emphasising the humanity of the scientific process. He was actively involved in the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK), and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (now Humanists International), his central humanist philosophy underpinning a life devoted to the exploration and celebration of life.

Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005)

Every scientific advance, every discovery for the benefit of man, can also be applied to his peril… Every one of us has the duty to preserve our inheritance, and to ensure the continuing existence o f the human species. The scientist as a citizen shares this duty with other members o f the community.

Joseph Rotblat, Bertrand Russell Memorial Meeting, Central Hall, Westminster, June 1970

Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and humanist Joseph Rotblat devoted his life to advocating the responsible use of science, and working for international peace. Acutely aware, through his own involvement in atomic research, of the dangers of nuclear weapons, Rotblat was a signatory to what became known as the Russell-Einstein manifesto, calling on world leaders to ‘remember your humanity, and forget the rest.’ He was a founding member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs – which brought scientists together to discuss issues of nuclear weapons and world peace – and, as Rotblat himself recalled, ‘approached the problems in the spirit of scientific objectivity’. Through education, cooperation, and a sense of responsibility, Rotblat hoped that peace could be achieved. ‘Ending war sounds utopian,’ he wrote, ’but I believe it is possible nonetheless.’

A.J. Ayer (1910–1989)

Philosopher and humanist A.J. Ayer was the first President of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK) under that name, as well as of the Agnostics Adoption Society. Although Ayer’s mother, Reine Citroën, was from a Dutch Jewish background, Ayer had no religious upbringing. In his introduction to The Humanist Outlook (1968), Ayer offered a description of his personal philosophy – and definition of humanism – which epitomised his personal warmth and passionate activism, and has been widely quoted:

In common with other humanists, I believe that the only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs.

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999)

Menuhin witnessed unspeakable suffering, yet never lost his faith in humanity’s capacity for goodness. Most of all, he never lost his belief that music can light the way to a better world. And, in his prime, he gave us a glimpse of what that world would sound like.

Richard Morrison on Yehudi Menuhin for The Times, 13 March 1999

Yehudi Menuhin was a violinist and conductor, who accepted an invitation to join the British Humanist Association’s Advisory Council in 1963 on the proviso that ‘you do not mind including a “heretic”. Born in New York to Russian Jewish parents, Menuhin was a musical prodigy – giving his first full-length solo recital at just eight years old, to a wide-eyed San Francisco audience. He was recognised as a virtuoso, and went on to have a glittering professional career. By 1933, he was the highest paid musician of the time. During the Second World War, Menuhin gave regular performances for troops, and in 1945 travelled to Belsen concentration camp to play for the survivors, with Benjamin Britten on piano. In 1963, Menuhin founded a music school, in which he took an active role, and which is considered his greatest legacy. On his death in 1999, he was buried in its grounds.

Hermann Bondi (1919-2005):

I would never deny my Jewishness and take a real interest in my ancestry. These feelings are quite separate from any belief in Judaism.

Hermann Bondi to David Ibry, quoted in Exodus to Humanism

Hermann Bondi was a mathematician and cosmologist who, for almost two decades, was President of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK). He remains the longest serving President, but was just one of a number of Jewish humanists who held the title. In his tenure as President, Bondi worked actively to encourage the growth of the humanist movement and a wider awareness of humanist values. For Bondi, humanism meant ‘a willingness to change the world’, and he expressed this nowhere better than in his 1992 Conway Memorial Lecture:

I quote Thomas Paine: ‘We live to improve’, he said, ‘or we live in vain’. I am not quite clear from the context whether he means improving the world we live in or improving ourselves, indeed I am not at all sure he distinguished between the two. ‘We live to improve or we live in vain’, is a very wise saying. It is in service to others, it is as members of the community, that our existence lies.

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)

I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.

Rosalind Franklin, in a letter to her father, 1940

The work of crystallographer Rosalind Franklin was crucial to the discovery of the structure of DNA, enabled by a passionate devotion to science. Born in London into a distinguished Jewish family, Franklin became a firm and eloquent humanist, who rejected Judaism in favour of a rationalist faith in humanity itself. In an oft quoted letter to her father, Franklin defended herself against a charge of making a religion of science, arguing that ‘science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated’ but adding that science offered only ‘a partial explanation of life’. Her philosophy, rooted in scientific reasoning and the creation of meaning by working for others, was a humanist one. She wrote:

I agree that faith is essential to success in life (success of any sort) but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining. Anyone able to believe in all that religion implies obviously must have such faith, but I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.

George Melly (1926-2007):

I remain completely faithful to humanism and will tell God so when I leave the building.

‘Coffee Break Interview’ with George Melly in the New Humanist, Spring 2002

George Melly was a singer, writer, critic, and President of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK) 1972-4. He lived an ebullient and unapologetic life, and, believing there to be just one, revelled in music, art, and relationships, embracing the joys he felt were all the sweeter without any notion of an encore. Melly featured – along with another Humanists UK President of Jewish descent, Claire Rayner – in The Great Human Detective Story, a film created by the BHA in 1991 exploring the ideas and impact of humanism. In it, Melly expressed his sense of the active, positive qualities of the humanist philosophy:

I am a humanist, and I am an atheist, but I don’t think the two terms are interchangeable. Humanism implies a non-belief in the existence of god, but it goes a great deal further than that. It’s how you actually behave once you have established that you don’t believe in god. This I think makes up humanism.

Bernard Levin (1928–2004)

My own complete liberty to choose my subject has enabled me to indulge to the full (some would say to the brimming over) my devotion to the pursuit of hares of the most extraordinary diversity. It is just as well that there is no alleyway too narrow, ill-lit or obviously without issue for me to feel impelled to wander up it; I could not possibly write a general column three times a week if I were not inquisitive, to the point of impertinence, about almost everything.

Bernard Levin, Taking Sides (1979)

Journalist and broadcaster Bernard Levin was born into a Jewish family in London, but at home ‘followed hardly any Jewish observances’. A bright child, he won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital school in Sussex, and later wrote: ‘I left school having sampled two of the world’s great religions and derived nothing of importance from either.’ After studying at LSE under Harold Laski and Karl Popper, Levin embarked on a successful journalistic career, writing for The Spectator, The Daily Mail, and The Times. He wrote a column for the latter for almost thirty years. Compassionate, enthusiastic, and inquisitive ‘about almost everything’, Levin was an admired writer, a beloved friend, and an influential humanist voice.

Lewis Wolpert (1929–2021)

Lewis Wolpert was a developmental biologist and Vice President of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK), who did much to raise the public profile of mental illness with his 1999 book Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression. Born in Johannesburg, Wolpert was raised in a strict Jewish household and trained initially as an engineer, before switching to the study of biology. Like many scientists on this list, Wolpert was an advocate of the wider use and relevance of science, chairing the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science 1993-8. He was also a prominent voice for rationalism and humanism. In an article for the New Humanist in 2017, Wolpert wrote of his belief ‘like the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, that religion itself had its origin in relation to death by introducing a belief system that helps to reduce the fear of it’. He concluded his article: ‘I hope that when I die a few people will mourn me – but please, no religious ceremony.’

Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Harold Pinter, The Homecoming (1965)

Born to Jewish parents in Hackney, Harold Pinter became one of the 20th century’s most influential dramatists: a humanist and activist described by his biographer Michael Billington as ‘a permanent public nuisance, a questioner of accepted truths, both in life and art’. Pinter was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK), and in 2002 was among more than 100 public figures who protested to the BBC over a ban on atheist contributors to BBC Radio 4’s Thought For The Day. He was an active supporter of many humanist causes, including the abolition of blasphemy laws, and secular education. Through his plays he offered, wrote Roger Manvell for The Humanist, ‘an original diagnosis of our human nature, as well as an expression of his own particular vision of humankind’.

Claire Rayner (1931–2010)

It’s very difficult to make sure that you stick to the difficult road you’ve chosen for yourself if you’re involved in humanism. Never think it’s the easy way out… It’s not an easy way out. It’s a damn sight harder. You never stop thinking: should I? Should he? What should we do? What is best? It’s tough being a humanist but it’s much more, in my experience, satisfying.

Claire Rayner in The Great Human Detective Story (1991)

Claire Berenice Rayner (née Berkovitch) was a nurse, journalist, broadcaster, novelist, and agony aunt, who used her long career to impart thoughtful, compassionate advice to all who came to her. Rayner’s humanism imbued her life and work, and as an advice columnist and journalist, she emphasised compassion and frankness, not least in those areas typically viewed as taboo. As her husband, Des Rayner, recalled: ‘Through her own approach to life she enabled people to talk about their problems in a way that was unique.’ Rayner was awarded the OBE for ‘services to women’s issues and health issues’ in 1996, and became President of Humanists UK in 1999.

Jonathan Miller (1934-2019)

What is heroic is the fact of a conscious creature thrown into existence in the knowledge that he or she will be thrown out of it again. There isn’t anything else, but that’s quite enough to be going on with thank you very much.

Jonathan Miller, quoted in the New Humanist, December 2012

Doctor, comic, writer, and broadcaster Sir Jonathan Miller was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Hampstead. Working first as a hospital doctor, he ultimately became best known as a writer, performer, theatre and opera director, television presenter, and producer – remembered above all for the remarkable range of his interests and talents. A longtime member of Humanists UK, Miller was passionate about humanism and keen to shed light on what he saw as an under-explored history of humanist thinking and its positive impact on society. In 2004, he wrote and presented Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, which aired on the BBC and explored his humanism and ‘the hidden story of atheism’ around the world.

Lisa Jardine (1944-2015)

My mantra is that science is about doubt. Science is all about nudging up towards what you hope is the truth. Science, unlike religion, makes no fundamental claims that you simply have to believe.

Lisa Jardine in the New Humanist, August 2008

Like her father, Jacob Bronowski, Lisa Jardine was a historian and humanist whose interests ranged broadly across science and the humanities – refusing any notion of the ‘either-or’. An expert in the early modern period, Jardine became a professor of Renaissance Studies at University College London (UCL), and published an array of books – true to her father’s wry comment at the start of her career: ‘Make sure you write the big books, Lisa; then they cannot accuse you of being lightweight.’ Although she carved her own niche in the world of academia, creating spaces for interdisciplinary study and examining the historic role and education of women, Jardine delivered the 2014 Conway Memorial Lecture on Jacob Bronowski, titled ‘Things I Never Knew About My Father’. On her death the following year, Jardine – a lifelong humanist – was remembered for her scholarship, her humour, and her warmth.

Alf Dubs (1932-)

A child refugee from Czechoslovakia alongside many young Jews during World War II, Lord (Alf) Dubs was inspired by his own young experiences to embark on a lifetime of campaigning for child refugees and other good causes. In 2016, recognising his work on the ‘Dubs Amendment’ on behalf of child refugees fleeing persecution and war in Syria, he was awarded Humanist of the Year by Humanists UK.

A Labour peer and former MP, he is a longtime stalwart of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group and has given much of his time to a wide selection of humanist causes over the years.