Get even! Dump sets of religious tracts (especially those ubiquitous Chick tracts which will especially annoy him) even if you don’t believe it just to piss him off. That’ll get him to shut up.
Look, I’m as skeptical as they come, but people deserve to not be harassed in the workplace about their shit. Work is not the SDMB. I don’t care if it’s religious shit, sexual orientation shit, what shit you like to do in your spare time, or what the hell ever else. Unless you’re making your shit everyone else’s problem, people need to leave you the hell alone about it.
I work with a Fox News-watching, Rush Limbaugh-listening, flag-waving, super-conservative religious type. Philosophically we are pretty much exact opposites in every way. But you know what? I treat her with respect, and she treats me with respect, and we get along just great. There’s one jackass in our office who makes me crazy because he just won’t leave her alone. I agree with the guy’s stances on the issues, but I hate the way he has to be nasty and smug about it. He’s done the same to others, and takes advantage of his position of being friends with the owners to do it.
I don’t care if you find out that your co-workers thinks that they’re a Jedi Knight or the second coming of La Petomaine brought back to bring a message to Earth; if they didn’t bring it up and don’t want to discuss it, there’s simply no reason to bother people who are minding their own business.
Oh, I agree. I was commenting on raindog’s comments about what would happen here on the SDMB.
As for proselytizing anything at work, I think it’s unethical to push your hobbyhorses on people who are essentially a captive audience.
Your boss is an idiot and a bit rude. Invite her to join the SDMB.
Haranguing an employee about religious beliefs is completely out of bounds. You have already asked her once to keep religion out of the workplace. She kept right on doing it.You would be within your rights to go to HR to complain about it. Any competent HR manager will put a stop to this. The only question is whether your care about your boss’ reaction - it’s possible she will hold a grudge. On the other hand, it’s also possible you will gain her respect by standing up for yourself.
BTW, your boss probably damaged her own reputation when she ridiculed you in front of your co-worker. I wouldn’t have any respect for a manager whom I saw treating an employee that way, and I’m an atheist myself.
That’s a Sermon on the Mount I’d pay to hear.
Levity aside, your boss is not proselytizing or being an evangelical atheist… your boss is being a smug jackass. Frankly, since she claims to have understood your feelings on how she’s treating you and your beliefs but is ignoring it, I think you’re perfectly within your rights to take her the hell off your friends’ list and not be overly polite in shutting down any religion-centered conversations she initiates. (Note I said “not overly polite”, not “impolite”. There are quite effective ways of implying “Shut yer festering gob, yer ratbag” without actually saying as much.)
Me neither, but I know that New Englanders are really unusually closed lipped about religion or lack thereof. I wonder if it has to do with what sorts of religion are common where a person works and lives. There could be a thread in this.
I wish I could offer the OP some advice, but my tactic when being similarly harrassed about politics right after college, didn’t work. Not saying anything and refusing to engage doesn’t stop people from monologuing to a captive audience.:rolleyes:
About the Facebook thing, most of us (team of 12) are on each others’ Facebooks and Twitters (for those who have them – I don’t). It would seem a little weird to defriend everyone now, wouldn’t it? We do a fair amount of socialising outside the office – as posters have noted, the boundaries between Work and Casual are not very clearly set in our workplace. It works fine except when it doesn’t!
Seriously, it really irritates me when people lump in Jews with the sort of religions that evangelize. Jews have never proselytized or sought converts. In fact, the Talmud has some pretty nasty things to say about people who do want to enter the religion (I don’t agree with them, I should note). We have never pestered anyone about their religious beliefs, and in fact gently discourage people from converting unless they’ve proved they’re really serious about it. And now, even after the Inquisition (which was totally unexpected), pogroms, and a little thing people like to call the Shoah or Holocaust, non-religious atheists are coming in with “Ha ha, believers, how does it feel now that the shoe’s on the other foot?” Um, it’s been there for at least a thousand years, thanks? People trying to get Jews to stop being Jewish is nothing new, but it is, at this point, really tedious.
I like that response. I think she understands that hostile work environments are bad, but doesn’t think of “hassling religious person about their (to her, clearly ridiculous) beliefs/practice” as creating one. If I make it clear that I see it that way, I think she will knock it off.
The thing is, I wouldn’t mind chatting about traditions and practice with someone like my non-religious atheist desk partner, or my Anglo-Catholic coworker, who is the one who asked about the bacon sarnie, because I know none of us would be rude or disrespectful. But I realise that I will have to completely shut off all participation in religious discussion in the workplace to get my boss to stop.
This is clearly the best option, however. 
But do you tell him “your beliefs are batshit insane and by the way I do not believe you when you tell me what they are”? Or do you believe that he believes Reform Jews aren’t real Jews? SecondJudith’s boss would not let your coworwer finish and
would claim that what he says he believes is not what he believes. I wouldn’t want to work for someone who calls me a liar; for some reason there’s people who think it’s fine to call you a liar so long as you’re talking about your own life - well, it’s not.
If SecondJudith’s boss was genuinely interested in her beliefs, that would be great. But she’s not, she’s just using that particular detail about her to attack her. What she’s doing has nothing to do with religious ideology, it’s more akin to someone going “but you can’t be colorblind but only for some colors! There’s no such thing! Anybody who claims to be colorblind but only in the red/green spectrum is a liar!”
I’ve had people refusing to believe me
- when I told them that Spaniards do not need a Visa to visit Argentina - this one refused to look at the screen when I tried to show her an email from the Argentinian embassy stating that I did not need a Visa… she also refused to take a printout of the same email
- when I mentioned that while I (female) was in High School at the Jesuits, my brothers were in Primary School at the nuns; or that both schools were coed; or that most of those nuns did not wear habits
Just off the top of my head.
I wish they’d be more tight=lipped about other controversialness…aside from this morning…in between the conservative talk shows played just loud enough for me to hear, I innocently mosey over to the communal three-hole punch and can’t help but notice two co-workers watching a video report of an amazingly disturbing topic newborn being raped and beaten And two of them are crime buffs who describe this stuff in detail. Really? In the workplace? Grrr.
I know, I need to find a way to say something. :smack:
Perhaps as tedious as the readiness with which certain middle class western Jews (not necessarily the OP) to bring up the Holocaust and attribute any number of things to antisemitism?
Jews certainly can be lumped in with just about every other sort of religion - whether evangelical or not - to the extent they believe in a whole bunch of stuff that impresses nonbelievers as really stupid shit. In fact, when you start talking about what you can and cannot eat, where you can and cannot go and do from sundown to sundown, and any number of other wacky habits, Jews would give most other religions a healthy run for the money in terms of goofiness.
There are A LOT of aspects of Jewish philosophy that I find extremely appealing. But the mythical beliefs and practices . . .
I have told him that his beliefs make for a mighty high maintenance lifestyle. But no, I wouldn’t tell anyone I do not intensely dislike that I considered them or their beliefs batshit insane.
And I am certain that he does not consider less orthodox jews fully “jewish.” But instead of admitting as much, I am confident that he would sort of smugly demur from making such a judgment in a manner that leaves no question how he feels.
I’d like to point out my initial observations that I sympathize with the OP, that she shouldn’t have to put up with that in her workplace, and that her boss sounds like an idiot. Living in a heavily christian community, I have often felt myself very close to the few Jews in the community to the extent the majority did not respect our beliefs.
Really? I guess I’ve been immersed in the culture here so long that I don’t really have much to compare it to. But as much as I like going to Florida every year, yeah, people there are much more open about their religious views, and they’re often views very contrary to my own.
Around here, there are people of every religious stripe, but evangelicals are really uncommon. The big religions here are Catholic and Jewish. Hey, maybe they just feel guilty about prosletizing!
Know the Word of God and how to use the Word.
Grew up in Maine and didn’t notice/appreciate this either until I moved to the west coast, where people feel the need to (for lack of a better word) “register” their church attendance by dropping mention of it in the workplace. That’s one thing I miss - you could know someone for years and not know their religious persuasion.
I reccomend hypersensitivity. Ask your boss if he has some sort of problem with Jews. Ask him if he knows who *else *had a problem with Jews.
The best way to deal with people like him is to put them on the defensive.
In the case of the OP, she’s (? I’m going by the “Judith” part of her username) Reform. I think that may cut out a lot of the can/cannot eat etc. stuff.
IMO, the workplace is not a place for religious discussion of any type. If you all socialize outside the workplace, have your religious studies out in the bar. I don’t think the discussions, whether they’re about your personal beliefs or speculations about others’, are appropriate at work AT ALL.
Shouldn’t you all be working, anyway?
OP, you could take it to HR as a group issue, so if HR needs to tell you all as a group to knock off the religious studies, it’s not personal toward anyone and could be passed off as something that wasn’t complained about directly by you. Perhaps HR got wind of it from another department or something.
When you’re at work, you can remind people to stay off the subject.
Then, when you’re not at work, and your boss decides to tear into your personal beliefs, you can remind her as strongly as you wish how you already discussed her dissing you personally.
I don’t get why everyone is making the distinction about this having to do with work. I live in the Bible belt, and we don’t discuss religion except at explicitly religious places. Sure, some people will mention going to church, but nobody talks about what they believe. And, more importantly, nobody ever makes fun of someone because of what they believe. It’s just a huge social faux pas. We may mostly be Christian, but you don’t discuss what we disagree on.
It didn’t use to be, though. Just one generation back and atheists can’t be friends with Christians. So it always seemed to me that this level of politeness came with the political correctness that is all over the place with my generation and below. So I’m surprised when in other places, which have had the whole PC progressive thing longer, this sort of thing seems normal to some people.
Unless this woman thinks she is just teasing you, I don’t understand her actions, whether in a workplace setting or not. Not even the worst radical atheist on this board is that bad.
You mean this little exchange didn’t help? 
Pardon me, but this cannot go unnoticed: “Believe in G-d is not a big part of Judiasm?” (quote from OP) Please take some constrcutive criticism: The short reply is please do some soul searching…even if this was just a dodge to avoid someone questioning your heritage.
If no dodge, I think you either better go back to Hebrew school and re-learn the story of Abraham (for one), or join your boss. I don’t understand what Yom Kippur means to you without unwavering believe in G-d. Perhaps to you, it simply means being present on this Holy Day to assuage some sense of guilt and nothing more.
Beyond every prayer praising, thanking, and acknowledging G-d as the One Eternal, Jews have 13 principles of faith. Me thinks this is a biggie on that list! Yes, even the Reform understand that’s what it’s all about. Otherwise, you might as well be doing the hokey-pokey in the sanctuary every Saturday and holiday.
If that was just a dodge, I think you could have dodged your boss’ interrogation without caving. You’re haphazardly dismissing everything to which Jews cling as trivial.
Your “quote from OP” is not quite accurate, and you’re responding to the misquoted phrase without proper regard to the context, amongst other things.