Jews Rejecting Fate and Original Sin
Tens of millions of Christians believe in Original Sin. Tens of millions of Muslims reject Original Sin but do believe in God’s Fate over them. Jews do not believe in it either.
Austin Reid Albanese writing in the Times of Israel (9/30/2025) said: “Growing up in Ohio, I was baptized as a Protestant but educated Catholic. I remember watching my classmates line up for their First Communion while I stayed in the pews, unsure of where I belonged. Sometimes, despite the awkward glances, I went forward—taking a wafer and a sip of wine—with a gnawing sense that I was crossing a line I couldn’t name.
The real break came with Confirmation. Unlike Communion, this was not a sacrament I could discreetly take part in. To be confirmed meant fully entering the Catholic Church—yet I was too young to convert, and wrestling with deep questions. Chief among them was Original Sin.
The idea that humans are born guilty—marked by the failure of Adam and Eve, in need of redemption from a stain none of us chose—never sat right with me. It felt both unjust and dispiriting. And when I began to study Judaism, I discovered it rejected the idea outright. Sin, in Judaism, is not inherited but a matter of human action. Teshuvah, repentance, is always possible. Once I saw that, the road ahead became clear.
Rejecting Original Sin was the hinge. Once that doctrine fell away, the door to Judaism opened.
That is why Yom Kippur speaks so deeply to me. The Day of Atonement is not about condemning humanity as inherently broken. It is about affirming that we are capable of change. Judaism teaches that even grave wrongs can be met with repentance and forgiveness.
Our failures are real, but they do not define us.
On Yom Kippur, we confess aloud, but not because we are compelled. We confess because we are free—to name our missteps, to turn, and to begin again. As Ezekiel 18:27 states: “And if someone wicked turns back from the wickedness that is practiced and does what is just and right, they shall save their life.”
This is a profoundly different vision from the one I grew up with. It is not guilt passed through generations. It is responsibility embraced.”
Every Yom Kippur as observed by Reform Jews, is the public reading of some of the most powerful verses in the Torah: Deuteronomy 30:15-20: 15 “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
The idea that God is not just reaching out to, and entering a relationship with humans, but is asking them to become partners in a covenant, is one of Judaism’s revolutionary ideas. This model of partnership prevents (or corrects) two negative impacts (fate and all humans sin) which the encounter with God has had on human beings in history.
To many people—and in many religions, including Judaism at various times—the discovery of the existence of the God, who cares about humans, leads to a certain regression of people. Instead of taking responsibility, people turn over their requests and needs to the Supreme Lord. They ask that God do it all for them, e.g. bestow a better world or their specific personal needs, by divine miraculous gift.
The partnership concept rejects this magical thinking; and makes clear that, unless the people do their share, God will not do all of it for them.
God chose Israel and Israel chose God. It is a ongoing marriage.
The Merneptah Stele, erected in Egypt in 1208 BCE, is an Egyptian victory stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah that tells how he (and his army) defeated the Libyans, and put down uprisings in Canaanite cities, followed by a claim about the destruction of a people called “Israel”.
The Egyptian inscription describes the Israelites as a stateless group of semi-nomadic men and women inhabiting Canaan at a time when Canaan was under Egyptian rule. Pharaoh Merneptah groups them together with several Egyptian-ruled city states in Canaan that were crushed.
The Hebrew’s Exodus from Egypt occurred just a generation or two prior to this 1208 BCE victory stele. Pharaoh Merneptah’s totally false claim that Israel had been destroyed is evidence that the Pharaohs were still angry that the Pharaoh of the Exodus had been defeated by the one, imageless, God of the Hebrews.
