As has been noted previously, I love dates like this. (Thanks to Jake Squid for pointing this one out to me!)
Consider this an open thread. Post what you like, with whom you like, for as long as you like. Self-linkage is welcome.
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Metallica!
What happens when we decide Muslims are the enemy.
Not having a blog any more, i’ll ask it here:
How do other atheists who were born jews reconcile their desire to maintain links to heritage and traditions, and the fact that many of those traditions are at least somewhat religious in nature?
As someone who affirmatively denies the existence of God (atheist, not agnostic) I feel as if it would be unusually hypocritical for me attend my local shul. But of course that means that i have simultaneously barred myself from the main jewish social circle, and that my children will have almost zero exposure to Judaism at all.
Same thing with lighting candles. is Hanukah a tradition or a religious ceremony? How about Shabbat candles? Certainly getting bar- or bat-mitzvahed is religious in nature, but I wish there was some way to end up with kids who (like me) could at least recognize Hebrew and read it, albeit only with vowels.
Any other Jewish atheists here? How have you dealt with that? How do you balance “yes, Judaism is wrong about God, and we do not practice Judaism” with “we have a special reliationship to and obligation to understand the Holocaust?”
Sailorman,
I have no desire to maintain links to those traditions or the heritage. I am unavoidably linked to the heritage, though, so that isn’t really a problem. As for things like Channukah (I prefer the throat clearing sound wherever possible), my family celebrates it so I send them Channukah gifts & greetings while exchanging Xmas (or Belated Epiphany) gifts with friends.
For us, Channukah was never really religious and, in fact, Channukah is really a minor holiday for the religion. It’s important for the Jewish culture that lives in Christian dominated regions, though.
Shabbat candles were viewed as something the Orthodox and older generations did, not as something that most modern Conservatives do – although some certainly did.
I don’t think that there is anything hypocritical about attending your local synagogue as long as you aren’t there telling people that their god is a fiction. Judaism is actually very accepting of agnosticism and atheism in a way that most Christian sects are not. If you enjoy the community and music and stories of services, atheism is no reason to give it up, IMHO. And you’re right that, if you really want to join in Jewish social circles, that that is the easiest path to it.
As to your kids, even if you don’t believe, you can still send them to once to thrice weekly religious instruction. My parents were hardly devout believers and they forced me through 8 years of religious education. As a result I am quite familiar with US Conservative Judaism and the Old Testament. The choice of religious belief was mine from the time I was 6 or 7. I had the exposure to the religion of my family as well as the permission to decide for myself what to believe or not. I’m pretty happy with the result, although I think I should have been able to stop attending religious classes once I’d been Bar Mitzvah’d.
For me, and I don’t expect it to be for everybody, it’s easy. It takes no effort. While I certainly believe that theism and, therefore, Judaism is wrong about the existence of a god I am forced to understand the special relationship that I have to the Holocaust by the overt anti-semitism I witness on a daily basis. My ethnic & religious heritage (as well as covering the holocaust in religious school every single one of those 8 years) leaves me well aware of where anti-semitism can lead.
If I were in your position of wanting my kids to be able to recognize & read Hebrew and to understand Judaism I think I’d do what my parents did – find a liberal Conservative congregation, send my kids to their weekly religious classes, go to some services – particularly the High Holidays – each year until my kids age out.
I hope you find a way that meets your needs.
I think it’s a mistake to look at the ceremonies as either/or. Heritage/or religion. I mean, most religious identities — historically, globally — have also been about culture and ethnicity, and usually about place as well. The modern fad for religions that can be abstracted from the rest of one’s life and identity is… well, a weird fad… and doesn’t work so well for religions that aren’t Christianity (and to some extent Islam? I don’t know).
And a lot of atheistic Jews attend shul — or at least attend reform congregations. I don’t see a problem with that.
There is a Christian theologian and Anglican priest, Don Cupitt, who has written a fair amount about the ‘non-reality’ of God … that is, according to Wikipedia, he follows certain spiritual practices and attempts to live by ethical standards traditionally associated with Christianity but without believing in the actual existence of the underlying metaphysical entities (such as “Christ” and “God”).
My understanding is that in the modern world, where any literal belief in God, if it is to exist, must deny most logic, experience, and science, if religion is to survive and thrive among educated people, a Don Cupitt-style focus on the idea of God as a non-existing ideal rather than a big dude on a cloud is probably necessary.
—Myca
Sailorman,
I’ve wrestled with some of those same questions, though I’m not sure the way I’ve resolved (or perhaps more accurately, am trying to resolve) them will work for you.
Something that Bond wrote at Dear Diaspora in response to the “Who is a Jew?” post that rings true to me (though it’s obviously somewhat generalized and won’t apply to everyone) is that Christianity is something you follow because you believe it’s true and Judaism is something you follow because it’s yours. I don’t think the question of the nature of belief and the nature or even existence of God is as central to Judaism as it is in Christianity.
Something I bring to this that you may not is that I find elements of ritual practice appealing and meaningful without needing to believe in God or that God commanded us to do x, y and z in just such a way. I like the idea of pausing before I eat food to be grateful that I have food to eat and to acknowledge that while I may have worked to earn the money to buy it, the fact that I have the health and the education and the fortune to have a job at all is due as much to chance as to anything I’ve done. You don’t need religion to do that, and you don’t need a particular ritual to do that, but for me, drawing from my own tradition is the most meaningful way to do that. For me, the words for God in the blessings are kind of a shorthand for ideas that would take several paragraphs to express (ideas about right and wrong, the idea that we don’t control our lives as much as we wish we did, etc.) as opposed to the name of a specific entity.
We light candles, say blessings, say motzi on Friday nights and generally try to keep it family time. I don’t think these are things only Orthodox families do.
For our family, these things also help give a Jewish texture to the week and to the year. Another factor for me is that most of my in-laws are conservative evangelical Christians, and I’ll admit I worry a little bit about doing nothing and having that as the only model for religion in his life. I don’t mean to be anti-Christian by saying that, though maybe I am a little bit, at least for my own kids. Obviously, as adults, they’ll do what they want, but I want to provide grounding and exposure to Judaism from a young age.
If you’re troubled by participating in those rituals or just not interested, something my father did with us that helped ground our Jewish identity historically and culturally is that as we got older, is he would give us books – Jewish history, theology, politics, whatever, and we’d both read them and then we’d talk about and debate them. There were no right or wrong answers or ways to think about things. I think he felt a lot more intellectually honest approaching it that way that going through rituals he didn’t care for.
And I’ve never been to one, but there are Humanistic Jewish congregations that practice Judaism with all the God stripped out.
It’s official: Dollhouse will not be renewed for a third season.