How did judaism become secular - how did it get to the point where homosexuality adultery heresy etc isn't punishable by death when these things are explicitly instructed in the Torah?

Answer 1

Because the Torah also has detailed laws on how trials are performed. A death sentence would require two eyewitnesses and that the person be warned and still continue to commit the crime. Also, only the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem could impose a death sentence. The Temple was destroyed and we have no one with the proper qualification to serve on such a court.

Additionally, even when the Sanhedrin had the power to sentence someone to death, it was so rare that a court that sentenced someone to death once in 70 years was noted for that one sentence.

Answer 2

In many Jewish communities, religious laws and practices have evolved over time to adapt to modernity and changing societal norms. Interpretations of the Torah and Jewish texts have been re-examined and reinterpreted, leading to more lenient stances on issues like homosexuality, adultery, and heresy. Additionally, secularism and the separation of religion and state have played a role in reducing the influence of traditional religious laws in governing secular society.

Answer 3

There are two very different questions going on here. The first is "How did Judaism become secular?" and the second is "How did Judaism get to the point where homosexuality, adultery, heresy, and other crimes are not punished by death?" The two questions may appear directly related, but, in fact, they are not.

Judaism historically had a court system and even during the times of the Israelite Kings, the actual infliction of capital punishment was seen negatively. As a result, trials were performed in such ways as to limit the actual infliction of capital punishment. That did not mean that these issues were no longer crimes, but they would be get much lower sentences. This persisted until the disenfranchisement of the Jews under the Roman Empire. After that point, the punishment shifted to Kherem or Excommunication, whereby the person would be ostracized until they plead for clemency or died from starvation. When Spinoza proved that Kherem was not a death sentence, since he was able to live with Christian friends, Kherem was more or less retired and only comes up in smaller communities.

As for the secularization of Judaism, this comes primarily out of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was at this point that Jews, primarily in Germany, were deciding to join modernity and reinterpret their traditions. While the more stringently religious tried to oppose them, they were unable to simply crush them because both the secularizers and their religious opponents lacked political power and had to tolerate each other. The Jewish World was roughly balanced between Religious and Secular Jews until the Holocaust, which took a much bigger bite out of the Religious communities as a percentage. With the establishment of a Secular State in Israel and the predominantly Secular Jews in the United States, the Secular Jews then had the primary voice in the Jewish World.