Rabbi Sherwin Wine was known primarily as the founder of Humanistic Judaism, a movement which advocated cultural, rather than religious expressions of belief. The Society for Humanistic Judaism, that he started in 1969, now has more than 30 congregations under its auspices.

Born in Detroit in 1928, Wine grew up in an observant, Conservative Jewish household. He attended a Detroit public school and studied philosophy at the University of Michigan, where he was influenced by the humanistic outlook of some faculty members and took an interest in empiricism, and in particular, the logical positivism that was in vogue.

Despite this move from the religious towards the scientific, Wine enrolled in the rabbinic programme at Hebrew Union College in 1951, after which he volunteered for service as an army chaplain. While awaiting his induction, he was associate rabbi at the Beth El synagogue in Detroit, before being posted to Korea in January 1957. He returned to Detroit in 1958 and the following year joined a group setting up a new Reform congregation in Windsor, Ontario.

In 1963 he was approached by disaffected members of his former synagogue in Detroit who proposed the formation of a new congregation in the northwestern suburbs of the city. Wine began leading services in September of that year, building a new template for prayer that he felt represented the views of the community more than the existing liturgy.

He argued that it was impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God in an empirical sense, rendering mean-ingless the concept of a deity. He termed this stance “ignosticism” and removed all references to God from the prayer book, focusing instead on Jewish culture, history and ethics. This, he felt, provided a sense of identity and community that was the essence of any religious experience.

In 1998 the leaders of the Humanistic movement took part in the United Jewish Community. Its members believed that this validated their position as an official strand alongside the Conservative, Orthodox, Reform and Reconstructionist groups.

Wine also took an active role in secular organisations. He founded the Humanist Institute and the International Association of Humanist Educators, Counselors and Leaders, and co-founded Americans for Religious Liberty, which argues for the separation of religion and government.

Wine died in a car accident in Morocco. His partner, Richard McMains, was also a passenger in the car, and he survives him.

Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, was born on January 25, 1928. He died on July 21, 2007, aged 79