BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN

dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563

DURAHM — Being Jewish is an important part of Alan Metz’s identity. When he joined Kol Haskalah: A Humanistic Jewish Congregation six years ago, he had been looking for an alternative form of Judaism that was not theistic but still expressed Judaism in terms of identity and tradition.

Metz’s family is interfaith — his wife is from Scotland and raised Christian. Metz grew up in a conservative Jewish congregation in South Africa, then expressed being Jewish by living in Israel for a year, he said.

“As an interfaith family, this is much more welcoming,” he said of Kol Haskalah. They wanted to bring up their children in a secular way, but also with their Jewish identity. At a previous congregation, Metz’s daughters, now 12 and 17, didn’t like going to Sunday school. Now they do. Kol Haskalah holds Sunday school weekly on the UNC campus. The teachers relate to the children and Sunday school is more about education than formal tradition, Metz said.

Kol Haskalah is hosting an open house from 10:30 a.m. to noon Sunday at Murphey Hall on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill.

While the children are in Sunday school, the adults go elsewhere to engage in discussions. Metz said the adult conversations range from visiting lecturers to raising Jewish children in an interfaith family to taking an intellectual approach to what Judaism means to you. The congregation’s services are usually held at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham. There are 50 families — a total of 160 members — in Kol Haskalah. It recently changed its name from the Triangle Congregation for Humanistic Judaism. Humanistic Judaism was founded in 1963 by Rabbi Sherwin Wine in Detroit to provide a home for humanistic, secular and cultural Jews.

Kol Haskalah, which means “Voice of Enlightenment,” is a congregation that embraces Jewish legacy and history, Metz said. “We try to learn from literature and folklore what the humanistic lessons might be,” he said.

Metz said they celebrate Jewish holidays rather than observe them. “They are not actual services with prayer or rituals. We’re not atheistic, but non-theistic,” he said. The celebrations are about having fun around the event and learning Jewish traditions, Metz said. “It’s about understanding what festivals means to the culture, and the lessons to take from that,” he said.

Metz serves as the congregation’s co-president along with Cathy Moore.

Moore, who lives in Durham, was one of the dozen founders of the Humanistic Jewish congregation eight years ago, the only one she’s aware of in North Carolina. It allows her “a way to be Jewish in a way that is intellectually satisfying as well as emotionally satisfying,” she said. She considers herself observant, but not necessarily in traditional ways.

“For me, [being Jewish] is an ethnic identity. It’s an adoption of certain values,” she said. Those values include repairing the world and a responsibility to others, as well as questioning things in the Talmud and its multiple interpretations. There’s a Jewish humor, too, she said, that is hard to define but you know it when you hear it.

“I believe in rituals — there’s a certain psychological comfort. But they need to evolve to be meaningful,” she said.

Moore’s children are grown but she enjoys seeing the traditions passed down to Jewish children growing up in the congregation.

“Jewish people have a need to continue — to survive — because of the Holocaust,” she said. Seeing the next generation means that Hitler didn’t win, Moore said. She said Kol Haskalah’s congregation includes everyone from form Orthodox Jews to a Humanistic Jew married by Rabbi Wine, the founder.

Allison Wood, who is a member of Kol Haskalah along with her husband and three children, found the congregation through a newspaper advertisement. After moving to Chapel Hill four years ago, they traveled the gamut of Judaism from Conservative to Reform to Reconstructionist synagogues, she said.

“Humanistic Judaism is perfect for our family because it creates a path of educating our children to identity their own humanistic principles and values. We’re confident that, as our kids rise through the Sunday school program at Kol Haskalah, they will learn how to thoughtfully respond to others who question how one can live a moral or ethical life without God,” she said. “Kol Haskalah gives us a center from which to walk the walk of Humanistic Judaism and show others that it’s possible to live a rich, full, compassionate and meaningful life guided by your own moral compass.”

GO AND DO

WHAT: Kol Haskalah: A Humanistic Jewish Congregation Sunday School Open House

WHEN: 10:30 a.m.-noon Sunday

WHERE: Murphey Hall, UNC Chapel Hill

ON THE WEB: www.kolhaskalah.org