I used to work with a Lubuvitcher (chabad) who took the Bible pretty literally. Maybe it’s their thing.
I’ve heard that quite a bit, even from some very Orthodox/Observant Jews. Also every atheist Jew I’ve ever met who cared about the matter at all (a lot of them don’t).
A lot of the very Orthodox/Ultra-Orthodox are about what, to my view (but not theirs) is obsessive observance of law and ritual, in contrast to the extremely conservative Christian types for whom belief is paramount.
But an atheist Jew who follows Jewish law is indistinguishable from a non-apostate Jew, and if they at least followed the Noahide laws I don’t think they’d be shunned or anything like that.
There is nothing preventing an atheist Jew from practicing that or anything else connected to Judaism. I used to work with a very staunch atheist who nonetheless went through the whole year-long Orthodox mourning ritual when his father died because his father had asked him to do so. Certainly, atheist Jews for whom Jewish culture and tradition are important for whatever reason, or who wish to stay in the good graces of a more observant family, may well participate fully in a Jewish community. And they don’t even have to be quiet about it - I’ve yet to encounter a Jewish community that didn’t have atheist Jews. They don’t make a big deal about it, but if you ask them they’ll give you an honest answer. The more religious Jews might think the atheists are missing out on something but it’s not something to cause arguments like it would in Christian communities.
Heck, I’m a “Schrodinger Jew” - whether or not I’m Jewish depends on the standards of whomever is looking at me - and Chadad welcomes me. They’re very much about outreach in the US, and at least the ones I’ve encountered are also open to teaching non-Jews about their religion and culture if asked (but they do not proselytize among Gentiles). So yes, a lot of Jews who aren’t Chabad and aren’t Orthodox do associate with Chabad and do go to Chabad gatherings and events.
My limited experience is that people like Chabad are interested in encouraging such people to follow Jewish law again rather than starting an argument with them. Not saying arguments don’t happen - heck, highly animated discussions are definitely part of the culture - but Jews are Jews whether they’re following Jewish law or not. And after WWII there have been a lot of Jews turn up who don’t even know they’re Jewish, in no small part because of people masquerading as Christians to save their skins and then not telling the kids all the details about their past. US Secretary of State Madeline Albright claimed to not know she was Jewish until her late 50’s, as one example. And a certain number of people who survived WWII gave up on G*d while in the camps or witnessing any number of horrors. A non-practicing atheist Jew might not be regarded as a blessing by some but they’re still fully Jewish. There might be some ritual issues around the matter, but for a non-practicing atheist Jew that probably won’t matter. At least in the US - I have no idea how this sort of thing is seen in Israel.
Yeah, if any one Judaism is going to take the Bible literally it would Chabad or one of the Ultra-Orthodox types. That’s only a minority of Jews, though.
(You have to be careful about articles that say things like "40% of Jews have engaged with Chabad. Just because I talk to the local Chabad family and may have gone to a Passover sedar at their place does not mean I myself am Chabad or have any interest in being Chabad. It’s just that they’re the ones the have the seder open to all which is important for those of us who don’t have families in the area to celebrate with.)
Heck, I’ve been to a couple of services with Chabad just out of curiosity, and because my coworker invited me. Yeah, I’m an American Jew who as “engaged with” Chabad. I reject most of their teachings, though. (And haven’t engaged with them in decades.)
Don’t confuse the language with the writing system. The story of the alphabet is complicated and very interesting, but has little to do with language. Starting as pictographs, then using the initial sound of the pictograph to stand for that sound, then modifying the picture till it bore little or no relation to the original picture, meantime borrowed and reborrowed till it came to a language that didn’t use all the consonants (initially vowels were omitted), then repurposing the unused consonants to represent vowels and then undergoing further modifications.
Shortest Passover service I ever attended, in toto: “The Jews escaped from Egypt. Now let’s eat”. Really.
An atheist can practice: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”?
I do actually agree that God belief is non-essential, or, as I’ve read elsewhere, non-central, in Judaism. That My Jewish Learning link is a good bit. It really places the need for God belief as a Maimonides thing more than anything else. Of course that was the era that set up a few centuries later having Spinoza excommunicated as a heretic.
In support of your take they have this:
And I also like the interpretation that belief is less desired than awe. Which brings back to the OP.
An atheist can say the words when called to do so by ritual. There’s nothing in the rules requiring said atheist to believe in those words. Performance is entirely possible even when belief is absent.
Indeed, one Orthodox Jew I was discussing this with once upon a time asserted his belief that if the ritual was performed sufficiently often believe might come from the repeated actions. Personally, I didn’t buy it, but if he found that notion comforting I wasn’t going to take it away from him.
Well there are those pesky Ten Commandments…
It is pretty uncontroversial that Egyptian is an Afro-Asiatic language just like, and related to, Hebrew:
[Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, James P. Allen]
That is, of course, not the same as saying something like that the Hebrew language is a dialect of a (non-Semitic) language like Egyptian, but there are absolutely a handful of Egyptian loanwords in the Torah (about 0.91% if this table is accurate).
On phone having trouble typing short answer 10 commandments require action not belief. Give long answer when I am at computer
BTW www.karaites.org explicitly says that certain passages in the Torah are metaphorical, parabolic, or prophetic visions, etc.:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221218215755/https://www.karaites.org/uploads/7/4/1/3/7413835/mikdash_meat_section_10_ten_principles_of_faith.pdf
At the same time, they affirm certain principles of faith, including, unsurprisingly, belief in God.
I’m back home now. Sorry, I find it nearly physically painful to type on my phone. As I was saying, the only one of the ten that speaks to emotion/thought rather than action is ‘thou shall not covet’. All the rest are commands to do or not do things.
Bearing false witness takes thought.
But the command is not ‘do not think about lying’ it is a command ‘do not lie’ a ban on action.
And anyway, Jews don’t have “the ten commandments”. They have 613 commandments.
That’s a lot of guilt.
עשרת הדיברות is definitely part of Judaism, even if there are 603 additional מצוות. Both words translate as “commandments” but they are different things.
An excellent point. Although I am an atheist, I do follow a few of the rituals (e.g. fasting on Yom Kippur), although I am not sure why. I once met a rabbi who admitted to not believing in God. Although he must have recited the Shemah. I asked why he became a rabbi and he gave some bull about being a social worker.
I knew an atheist rabbi for a bit. He worked at Camp Isabella Friedman. Bunch of frum (religiously observant) Jewish hippies. Needless to say, I LOVE Camp Isabella Friedman.
Driving north along the Dead Sea, the Jordanian guide pointed out the pillar that was allegedly Lot’s wife, up on top a cliff… 
OTOH, reading the long story of Lot, it was simply a way to grossly insult their neighbours by calling them descendants of incestuous reations by a family from a (literally) town of sodomites. Plus the important lesson, “please do not try to bugger the angels”.
Am I the only one who heard that pillar of salt bit as a metaphor for being immobilized by grief, salt being tears?