Westchester Community Information

The WCHJ community is a warm, supportive meeting place for non-theistic Jews and their families. We celebrate and explore our Jewish identity through thoughtful, creative and questioning engagement with Jewish traditions, ethics and culture. Our members share a fundamental belief in the power of human reason and responsibility, rather than of supernatural authority. Members participate actively in creating our own secular, humanistic ceremonies. How do we celebrate our Jewish identity? We meet for celebrations of major Jewish holidays, Shabbat dinners, monthly presentations by experts on issues of Jewish concern, member-led study groups, community service projects, and attendance at films, concerts, lectures and other events locally, and in metropolitan New York. Our social action efforts have included an Empty Bowls art sale fundraiser on behalf of the hungry, support of a "Back To School Supplies" project organized by Westchester Jewish Community Services, donation of toys to children in Northern Israel bombshelters during the war in Lebanon, and support for the efforts of the American Jewish World Service. We are very proud of our Bar Mitzvah graduates Mikey and Teddy Poneman, Cassady Gaier, and Lizzie and Jonny Turovsky. How are we connected to other secular Jews here and abroad? WCHJ is part of an international movement of secular humanistic Jews active in over 50 North American congregations, centers and schools and in 11 countries. Prominent in this network are the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, international federations and institutes of secular humanistic Judaism, and the Center for Cultural Judaism. The movement trains its own rabbis and madrikhim/leaders, conducts conferences in the U.S. and abroad, and maintains close ties with prominent Israeli secularists in politics, government, journalism, the arts and academia.