My god belief would be described as atheism by most. It certainly isn’t the God of Torah, more a Spinozan influenced pantheistic thing, nothing that gives a fuck. Still I believe in the religion of Judaism which to me, despite the Sh’mah, is less about God than it is about lots else about how we live our lives, about which myths have meaning and why, and identity (and that discussion could be a long one). Those beliefs are sincerely held. I do not observe dietary laws, I do not wear a kippah, I do not don T’fillin, I do not attend services regularly. I do participate in a Seder most years, do pay Temple dues, and do sometimes make it to High Holiday services. A large number of like-minded American Jews, of the world’s Jews, would recognize that as Judaism. A few would not.
So would I count according to the parameters?
Nice that you are willing to create the definitions for other people. One thing however that Orthodox rabbis and the rabbi of my childhood Reform temple (when discussing my then hard atheism) would agree on however, is that you are wrong, even as they’d define what is being “observant” in very different ways.
To the Orthodox I cannot run from being a member of the Jewish religion. I am an apostate to their eyes, a horrible thing, much better to be a righteous Gentile, but a member of the Jewish religion? Even if I said no, to them I am.
My childhood rabbi liked to tell me that I was more religiously Jewish than many of the other kids in the congregation who would answer “of course there is a god”. To him the fact I cared enough about the idea that I was thinking about it and arguing over it, while discussing and debating what these stories mean to us today … that was being religiously Jewish.
Feel free to say “it” or whatever you like. The fact remains that Judaism the religion, be it from the perspective of the Orthodox or from a Reform one, is not so much about what one believes as what one does.
Well, yes, it is.