[emphasis mine]
There’ve been a few threads on the subjects here. So what I’m getting is that you are maybe less outspoken than she is but agree with her much of the time.
I hear her (rudely) saying that any and all organized religion must embrace internal inconsistencies. This seems self-evident to me.
Any religion that unites its members in community effort and accepts differences among people is a good one and certainly not “stupid”. It is a religion, however.
Good start
With who and why should you care? Who’s keeping score?
Oh sure. Now that things have settled down, turn her in and irretrievably fuck up your otherwise pleasant relationship with the person who is your boss.
As a nonbeliever, I certainly am not about to tell anyone how they ought to exercise their faith.
And I certainly am not an expert on whatever various differences may exist within a religion such as Judaism.
Plus, there is always the added complication of religious vs social/cultural Judaism.
But when my wife and I were considering whether any “church” was a good fit for us, we spoke with “Rabbi Bob” from the (my understanding) very liberal congregation one town over - not sure of its precise denomination.
And we really liked and agreed with pretty much everything he had to say about how and what his congregation believed and practiced.
But it came down to one sticking point when we asked him whether or not it was required to believe in some supernatural being/power, and he said, “Pretty much, yeah.”
But I don’t quite understand Jews for Jesus either, so don’t go by me.
Whatever turns your crank is what I say.
Just prefer that everyone - believers or non - keep it to themselves.
I’m a bit confused by this. It’s not a pleasant relationship when she’s needling me and asking me baiting questions so that she can follow up with something like “And that’s why every religion ever is irredeemably stupid! :smug:”. If a hostile work environment occurs and continues even after I’ve asked her to knock it off, what’s wrong with going to HR for advice and to start documenting? Isn’t that especially true if the person in question is my boss? I don’t understand what you think should be done in situations like this.
Not necessarily me, you just happened to bring it up in a thread where it’s totally irrelevant except for the fact that I mentioned it a few posts up. :rolleyes:
For the record, I don’t believe my problems in the work place have anything to do with antisemitism! I brought up the historical persecutions of Jews solely to refute these posts in this thread:
which imply that Jews have never experienced harassment and persecution as some of today’s atheists also have. That’s just factually untrue.
I have no desire to turn this into an “Ask the Atheist Reform Jew” thread (although that might be worth starting one of these days, based on the responses here!), but a few points:
The Reform movement was born out of the Enlightenment and is vigorously, almost fanatically rationalist. The first graduating class of Reform rabbis served pork, shellfish and milk and meat together at its celebration dinner. The 1885 Pittsburgh Platform is a good read about its main principles (obviously the movement has developed further since then), especially:
and
Two out of my shul’s three rabbis are also avowed atheists, in the “god is a metaphor for the specialness and mystery of the universe” sense; I’m not sure about the third, but I would be shocked to learn that she believes in a sentient interventionist god.
Dinsdale, I can feel safe in assuming that your local shul isn’t Reform, Liberal or Reconstructionist? Heck, in Reconstructionist Judaism the atheism is pretty much mandatory! Is it Conservative or Masorti? Those guys are my next favorites.
But it *is *anti-semitism, and the fact that he picks on other religions as well doesn’t make a damn difference. It’s like saying that because someone hates *all *non-white people, he’s not racist against black people.
I see no difference between a Christian who doesn’t like Jews and an atheist who doesn’t like Jews. Other people here may see this story as atheist vs. theist, but I consider it gentile against Jew.
I have no idea from where Rabbi Bob got his semicha, but I am certain that even Conservative and Orthodox Jews would agree, if pressed, that believing in God is not technically a mitzvah - a commandment. Judaism of almost all stripes is an ethical religion, as opposed to Christianity, a mystical religion. (I will grant the Chassidim are mystical).
In other words, Judaism is much more a function of how you behave, not what you believe.
Of course, it’s obvious that strict adherence to the commandments doesn’t make sense if you don’t believe that there was a God or a covenant between Him and the Jewish people… but that’s why a Reform atheist is not a concept that’s ultra-rare: the reform camp generally believes that the mitzvot are more ideas from an age we no longer live in than specific commands from the master of the universe.
Rubbish. I don’t know what the Talmud says, nor when the part you’re referring to was written, but Judaism was once a proselytizing, growing religion. That declined as Christianity rose, the Temple was destroyed (with the consequent dominance of rabbinical Judaism), the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, and Islam finished the job Christianity started.
Pardon me if I missed this, because I skipped over a lot of the diversions in the middle of the thread, but you work for a larger company, right? One with an HR department and bosses above your boss?
Perhaps one day when she’s on this rant, you need to say “Look, isn’t there an HR policy or something about this? I really don’t think it’s cool to insult people because their beliefs are different from yours.”
And yes, if this has been going on long enough, it’s well past time that you had an informal chat with someone in HR about how often this is being brought up and thrown in your face. Not necessarily as a “Hey, I’m upset and want to file a harassment complaint”, but in a more “Sorry to bother you, but is there a policy on this? Because I’m beginning to be a bit bothered by this.”
Bottom line, company wise: Someone in a position above her needs to tell her to shut the fuck up about her personal beliefs and the whole ‘pointing and laughing at others who don’t share her beliefs’ bit. Who knows, maybe that person above her is an Evangelical Christian and they’ll take umbrage with HER beliefs.
See, this I think might be the disconnect. I know that I had ZERO thought about Jews specifically in my mind when I made that comment. So even tho I did not intend to imply anything about Jews being harrassed or persecuted, you inferred as much.
I acknowledge that I am not sophisticated as to the minutiae of Judaism - or any other faith. But my ignorant understanding was that Judaism did share a “belief” in some “supernatural/mythology” in common with Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists, etc. The same way I know many people to be casual christians who rarely go to church and essentially give lip service to Jesus and the new testament and such, I had assumed that religious Jews shared at least some belief in the God of the old testament. So that is the sole manner in which I was distinguishing atheists from Jews - simply nonbelievers from believers.
I’m not sure I understand exactly what is involved in being an atheist Jew. But thanks to you I understand that such persons exist. And so long as it makes you happy, I’m all for it.
And I repeat my previous statements that religion rarely has any place in the workplace, and that anyone who denigrates another’s beliefs in the work situation is a jerk.
I agree with the folk who have suggested that various factors of your workplace and the dynamics between you and your boss are relevant to how you proceed. I have had some bosses whom I would have simply said directly, “Look, you have to cut out the remarks about religion. Whether or not you intend anything, I don’t want to hear it. And if you insist on continuing, it will impair our working - and social - relationship.” Other bosses, I’d paper my ass and report them to HR without even considering speaking to them frankly.
What are the various ways this could be resolved, and what are the foreseeable implications for you depending on how smoothly it goes? It really stinks that many times even the person who is wronged ends up paying costs for going through the prescribed processes.
I agree with Chimera. It may be appropriate in the course of your conversation with HR to mention that she’s cut back on the nastiness towards your beliefs since you objected, but nastiness towards other’s religious beliefs still has a tendency to make you feel like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Especially since you are unable or unwilling to completely separate your work relationships from your friend relationships, it sounds like you could use some backup on the idea that this is (or could be) creating a hostile work environment.
And then, if she denies you a day off because it’s a religious holiday for Jews and only Jews and she knows it, you’ve got evidence supporting your contention that this is a mild form of persecution and not just paranoia talking.
That’s a really good way to start the conversation with HR, thanks. I do feel a lot like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially after she asked a baiting question and made an insulting comment about Simchat Torah after I’d already asked her to knock it off. So I think I’ll do that, without waiting to see if she will make another comment, just to find out where I stand policy-wise.
I’m still a bit unsure about the situation as it now stands – I asked her to stop and she mostly did, except for that one time. I don’t know if that means it’ll happen again or not.
You’re absolutely right, I was using “Judaism” as shorthand for “rabbinic Judaism”, which is the version that’s survived today, but that’s obviously factually incorrect. Temple Judaism had its own hassles (Babylonian exile, Ten Lost Tribes, etc) but when Israel and Judah were nation-states, of course they were running around trying to conquer people just as much as the other ancient Near Eastern nation-states.
FTR, Rabbi Chelbo in the Babylonian Talmud is the one who really rips into converts (the Babylonian Talmud is generally a lot harsher on converts than the Palestianian/Jerusalem one) – he lived about 200-300 CE, and the Babylonian Talmud was of course compiled and redacted around 700-800 CE.
Sorry about the misunderstanding, that does clear it up. Although I don’t think it was too unreasonable of me to have assumed that you were talking about Jews in a thread I started about my specific situation as a Jew, though, rather that figuring out that you were making a more generic comment about evangelical religious believers, and weren’t actually thinking about Jews at all!
She gets something out of observing Yom Kippur, or presumably she wouldn’t do it. Just because you can’t think of any reason why an atheist should observe Yom Kippur doesn’t mean nobody else can. Maybe she feels it connects her with her family or family traditions. The same holiday can mean two very different things to different people.
But what happens when Yom Kippur falls on a Thursday, as it did last year, or on a Wednesday, as it will in 2012? Next year it’s on a Saturday, so this wouldn’t come up.
In the Land of Grown-Ups her boss shouldn’t be asking why she’s taking the time off in the first place; it’s none of her business. The only part of the day off that’s her business is how it might impact the work, and what’s necessary to work around the employee’s absence.
So if Boss asks why, you could answer:
[ul]
[li]I’m taking some personal time.[/li][li]Because I want to.[/li][li]I have an appointment.[/ul][/li]
All of which are true, but don’t volunteer information that’s none of her business anyway.
I use this method all the time when someone makes a “What are you, gay?” comment. If there’s some fight/argument brewing in the bar and someone makes some “you’re gay” comment, I’m like “You have something against gay people?” and all of a sudden, they’re tripping over themselves to backtrack while their friends look at them with a little disgust and a little contempt. Works every time.
It doesn’t need to go that far. The boss has already created a hostile work environment. That’s enough for her to get slapped with a harassment suit fast enough to make her head spin & the door hit her on her rational ass on the way out.
I don’t know about the best way to handle this, but certainly the simplest way would be to pander to her, SecondJudith. By your own admission, you’re basically
a ceremonial Jew; explain this to your boss. Tell her you just do it to keep your mother/husband/whoever happy, and/or you like the sense of community and bake sales and ritual and bowling league and so on.
She’ll stop talking about it and you can move on with your life. Now, frankly, your boss wants a good sound slapping, but presumably you aren’t in a position to deliver same right now.
I do recall having a somewhat entertaining conversation with a former boss. He’d made a crack about… oh, I don’t remember now. Something about papal infallibility, I think.
He didn’t realize he was at the table with one person (my coworker) who was Catholic, had been brought up Catholic, had gone to Catholic school his whole life, and another person (me) who’d studied Catholicism, gone to Catholic school for long enough to understand the basics of its hierarchy and workings, and happened to be Episcopalian.
My coworker answered the sarcastic question with a genuine and scholarly response. Slightly befuddled, our boss asked another question and another and eventually we were having a brief conversation on the basics of the Catholic church’s organizational structure. Nobody got nasty and ignorance was fought. We didn’t make a convert, nor were we interested in doing so, but I must say that working in an industry that is largely and loudly atheist and/or pagan-oriented can be a little challenging for even mildly religious folks. Everyone is assumed to be, if not a staunch atheist, at least non-Christian and not Christian-friendly. Being Jewish is rare but tolerable. Being any stripe of neo-pagan is utterly normal. Being openly Christian to the point of actually wanting to go to church is a bit weird.
My sympathies, SecondJudith. Ordinarily I would recommend education and engagement, but it sure sounds like your boss is unwilling to even consider your religion as anything other than a point of mockery.
So what I’m getting is that you are maybe less outspoken than she is but agree with her much of the time.
