Can Secular Society Really Adopt Jewish Ethics? The Hidden Challenge, and a Possible Solution ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Can Secular Society Really Adopt Jewish Ethics? The Hidden Challenge, and a Possible Solution

When I started this project of secularizing and universalizing Jewish ethics, I thought that all I needed to do is omit anything that was dependent on God and specific mitzvot, and stick with just ethical behavior.

For the most part, I was right. The system I built works for all people, everywhere.

But as I've been veering from defining the framework into musing how such a system could be adopted by non-Jews, I came up with some challenges: some parts of Jewish ethics work well because of particular attributes of the Jewish people specifically.

I have mentioned a few of these, and suggested how secular people might be able to substitute the Jewish attributes with their own. So for example, the Jewish prohibition of chilul Hashem - desecrating God's Name, by acting in a way that reflects badly on all Jews - could be somewhat generalized for any minority group, many professions and other categories like nationalities. I also said that since so much of Jewish ethics assumes that everyone is a member of a tight-knit community, secular people can create their own meaningful communities to have that same sense of unity and solidarity that make it easier to take responsibility for your fellow.

But how many of these attributes that make it more difficult to port Jewish ethics to a secular context are there?

More than I thought.

I asked an AI to generate a list.

Pillar	Core Jewish Form	Secular Challenge
1. God as Moral Anchor	Infinite reference point for ethics	What anchors ultimate values?
2. Covenantal Community	Inherited mutual obligation	Can secular communities bond this thickly?
3. Mitzvah	Sacred, commanded duty	How to make ethics feel obligatory without divine command?
4. Halachic Discipline	Ethics practiced daily	Can habits replace law?
5. Teshuvah	Eternal soul enables moral return	What underwrites deep moral change?
6. Sacred Time	Calendar and memory encode values	Can “moral time” exist without holidays?
7. Sacred Disagreement	Dissent is holy, not merely tolerated	Can pluralism avoid relativism?
8. Pikuach Nefesh	Life overrides nearly all else	What’s strong enough to trump all values?
9. Tzniut / Anavah	Humility and restraint	Can this thrive in a culture of performance?
10. Din / Rachamim	Law and mercy must coexist	How to balance this without faith?
11. Redemption	History bends toward moral meaning	Can secular systems sustain moral hope?
12. Tzelem Elokim	Absolute dignity for every person	Can dignity survive without soul?
13. Safek / Teiku	Uncertainty is protected	How to build reverent ambiguity into secular systems?
14. Embodied Ethics	Physical life is morally infused	Can ethics guide bodily practice without theology?
15. Intergenerational Duty	Past and future are moral actors	Can individualist cultures embed legacy?
16. Symbolic Ethics	Actions carry layered meaning	Can secular rituals be ethically saturated?
17. Chillul/Kiddush Hashem	Behavior reflects on collective identity	Can moral visibility work without covenantal belonging?

No other secular system, as far as I can tell, even reaches the stage of asking “how can this be realistically implemented?” Most remain philosophical thought experiments - not lived and tested systems. Even without these challenges, the secularized Jewish ethics model is ahead in maturity, testability, traceability, scalability, and practical usability.

But my goal isn’t to design something for an ivory tower. I want to create a system that could genuinely change and improve the world, even if that might never happen in my lifetime.

Secular ethics originally arose during the Enlightenment as an attempt to build a moral system independent of God or religion, one grounded in pure reason. Ironically, every Jewish ethical principle in this framework is logical and does not, on its own, require belief. Yet the structure and guardrails of religious community make it much easier for people to live by these values.

That’s not an attack on freedom.
Self-help books routinely encourage us to set constraints and rituals for any goal, whether it is fitness, learning, or personal growth. Setting aside time for exercise, for music practice, or for family meals doesn’t limit our freedom; it enables us to achieve what matters. The same is true for moral growth.

After all, we already have secular rituals: Thanksgiving turkey, Independence Day fireworks, watching the Super Bowl or World Cup with friends, class reunions, block parties. Who can object to creating new ones imbued with meaning?

Secular people (and everyone else) can voluntarily create habits, rituals, and structures to strengthen their own ethical lives:

Make a habit of giving charity weekly, even a token amount.
Set aside regular time to study ethical writings, say, works by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
Create an annual day of reflection to review mistakes and plan for growth.
Join or form a community devoted to kindness and mutual aid, like visiting the sick, volunteering, or supporting neighbors.
Prioritize family rituals - shared meals, screen-free evenings, family game nights.

It may be true that morality doesn’t require faith. But like any skill, moral character doesn’t appear by magic. It takes hard work - and, in a secular world without built-in rituals or community, perhaps even harder work than in a traditional setting.

But the rewards are spectacular, here and now.