E-Zine

(reprinted by permission from Jewish Chronicle, London, England, June 8, 2001)

In his latest book, Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sachs observed that there had been a "disproportionate" number of Jewish atheists. So it would probably come as no surprise to find that the author of a new book who argues that God is bad for us is a former president of Oxford University Jewish Society.

Daniel Harbour's "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism" is part of Duckworth's "Intelligent Guide" series, which has previously included a work on Judaism by Rabbi Shmuel Boteach. Indeed, the media-friendly rabbi helped the 26-year-old student clinch his book deal.

"I was at Shmuley's birthday party in London and the head of Duckworth was there as well," Mr. Harbour explained during a visit to his native London from America, where he is studying for a doctorate in linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His grandfather, the late industrialist Sir Emmanuel Kaye, was a sponsor of the Anglo-Jewish journal of Orthodox thought, "L'Eylah," at the time it was published jointly by the Chief Rabbi's office.

But despite attending a Jewish secondary school in Australia, the young author - who has a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Balliol College, Oxford - did not see the attractions of religion.

Not only is atheism philosophically preferable, he argues. It is also morally so, being grounded in a rational world-view which has yielded both scientific and social progress. Religious sentiments, he writes, are "often impediments and rarely allies to moral progress."

Not that Mr Harbour has relinquished his attachment to Jewish culture. "When someone says that Judaism without God is meaningless, that is a comment about them," he observed. "It's a failure to grasp what the heritage has to offer.

"My favourite aspects of Judaism are, as Sir Isaiah Berlin once said to my grandmother, 'the words and the food.'"

Raised in an environment of "Friday night, High Holy-days Judaism," Mr. Harbour moved with his family from Paddington to Sydney as a child.

He recalled his Jewish school, Moriah College, as having "an amazing number of dedicated teachers, who attempted to give us a religious education. If I go to synagogue, I know what's going on.

"But the best things I got out of it were a more concrete Jewish identity and a reasonable command of classical Hebrew, which has come in quite handy while working in theoretical linguistics."

His book is peppered with Jewish references to Maimonides, the Bible Codes and to his Uncle Morry, chartered-surveyor-turned-spiritual-healer Morris Tester.

In one test case, he uses the emancipation of the Jews to demonstrate that rationalist intellectuals, rather than religious leaders, have advanced the ideals of democracy.

Mr Harbour believed the question of whether Jews could survive as a cultural, as opposed to a religious, group threw up parallels with other communities.

"I work with two Native American tribes on language documentation and education projects," he told the JC. "One of the tribes is in Oklahoma, the buckle of the Bible belt. Members still perform many of the dances they used to, which all had spiritual meaning. But now they assiduously claim they're dancing for recreation. That's symptomatic of a very broad experience in many disparate communities."

What worries him about Judaism is "that a lot of the reaction to secularists serves to make it increasingly meaningless to many people - to come down with harder and harder rabbinic lines on issues that demand compromise, such as the situation with agunot (women denied an religious divorce). I think that's a prime case of where the law is going in the wrong direction."

On the "Intelligent Guide" jacket plug, Rabbi Boteach describes Mr. Harbour as "an intellectual steamroller," whose book cannot fail to stimulate "even devout believers like myself."

The two will be appearing at the book's U.S. launch in the autumn. "He's planing a debate," the author said. "I'm planning a discussion."

<< back