Let me just add that I once met a rabbi who admitted that he also had no belief in God. Of course, I asked him why he became a rabbi. His answer, as well as I can recall from 60 years ago is that he saw it as a kind of social work. He was the rabbi at my parents’ reform synagogue and was encouraging me to come to services. He didn’t succeed.
Very recently, I read a review of a book by a Jew who had converted to some other religion–Christian IIRC–who commented that, regardless, she was born a Jew and would die one. That’s further than I would go, but I mention it as another data point.
Incidentally, FWIW, my wife and I participate in some of the rituals. We fast on Yom Kippur, light Chanuka candles, and stop eating bread during Passover. We don’t have a Christmas tree. You can make what you will of all that. I could not explain any reason why we do these things, so don’t ask.
Tell me, in Israel are Jews who are not Orthodox (let’s focus on those who identify primarily as Masorti, but I’d also entertain information on “secular” Jews who celebrate holidays in some religious manner) all considered as NOT religiously observant, because they are not observant in the eyes of the Orthodox?
Because there are all these articles identifying Naftali Bennett as “the first religious prime minister”, or “first religiously observant prime minister” …
I know that the Orthodox are more common in Israel than in the United States, but from the perspective of the American Jewish community (in which Reform is the most common identification, followed by none) the Orthodox are our religion’s fundamentalists, and one does not need to be a fundamentalist to be practicing a religion, even avowedly. The fundamentalists of any faith should not be the definition of “practice”.
I think all prime ministers were observed being observant (going to services, participating in certain rituals, etc.). Maybe it was for show, maybe sincere, maybe some combination … but observance is the action and to whatever degree belief has importance, we really can’t say what most of them really believe.
I’m not at all disputing your assertion of your Jewishness, just wondering where that leaves people like me. I happen to be 50% a Jew who has no belief in god: that is, I participate in that same shared history, culture and genetics, but only from the side of my family that doesn’t officially count for halachically determining Jewishness.
As long as we’re treating Jewishness as a binary state that requires an arbitrary religious criterion to achieve it—namely, that being descended from one Jewish parent is sufficient to make you Jewish only if that parent happens to be your mother rather than your father—then the conditions on Jewishness are still inextricably somewhat entangled with religious belief.
ISTM that my genetic, historical, and cultural participation in Judaism is just as salient and valid as that of any atheist who happens to be descended from a Jewish mother and gentile father. But that other atheist is officially considered entitled to claim the identity “Jew” just as much as you (or any other child of two Jewish parents) would be, whereas I am not.
I noticed that before this thread was resurrected (sorry), someone asserted that one must have had a Jewish mother to be considered a Jew. IIRC, that’s only true for Rabbinic Judaism, in particular the Orthodox. Aren’t there a number of sects or communities which recognize the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother to be Jewish?
Double Standard City, obviously. A child of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father is officially recognized as Jewish even if they never do jack-diddly in the way of “public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish faith and people”.
But for the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, such acts would be required for even Reform Judaism—and not all Reform Jewish communities, at that—to officially accept them as Jewish.
And Conservative and Orthodox Jewish rabbinical bodies would still not accept such a person as Jewish by birth, no matter how hard they “identified with the Jewish faith and people”.
It leaves you deciding your identity for yourself, not for someone else to claim that they get to decide. My wife’s brother has chosen not to be Jewish, even though my father-in-law is a Jew by birth and my mother-in-law a Jew by choice. He has not joined any other religion, but his wife and kids are not Jewish in thought or practice and he associates with that.
Sounds good, but of course the vast majority of Jews (and non-Jews who accept the validity of halachic/rabbinical rules for determining Jewish identity) do not agree with you that I have the right to “decide my identity for myself”. If I tell them that I’m a Jew, they will tell me I’m wrong.
Mind you, I understand that there’s a very complex historical and cultural evolution that has led to that situation, and I’m not storming any barricades for my “right” to identify as Jewish. I have never sought to claim more than my identity as a “half-Jew”, metaphorically speaking.
I just think that it’s a trifle double-standardy for any religious group to maintain that the child of an in-group mother and an out-group father has an innate right to an in-group identity, irrespective of their personal religious beliefs or practices, but the child of an out-group mother and an in-group father does not.
No double standard in the Reform side. It’s the same. From either side so long as there are also acts of identification with the faith. Interestingly rigidly applied a child of a Jewish mother who does not actively identify as Jewish would be not Jewish according to that standard while Jewish by Conservative and Orthodox standards.
True. Still kind of double-standardy that a child of two Jewish parents is presumed to be Jewish without any “acts of identification with the faith” no matter how irreligious or non-practicing the parents are, though.
It IS key, but not in the way it’s being characterized here. The idea being expressed in the quote is that if they keep the Torah without maintaining their belief, it will eventually lead them BACK to belief, whereas if they claim to believe but do not keep the Torah, then eventually the belief itself will atrophy. The quote is not at all meant to imply that belief is a less-important component of Judaism.
When I married into a secular Jewish family, I had to put forth some effort to wrap my head around the concept of “culturally Jewish”, but I accept and respect it. Ms. P was surprised to hear that I don’t indentify as Christian because my parents are (I do indentify that way, but that isn’t the reason; unlike them, I don’t believe in a literal resurrection).
I hope this question isn’t a derailment, but what if a couple where the wife is Jewish adopts a child? Or if two men, one Jewish, adopt a child? Is it only determined by the birth parents?
I was adopted into a Jewish family. My parents had requested a Jewish baby. It turns out my birth mother was Jewish but I also underwent a ceremony in the mikvah, as my mother said “just in case”. So I assume that is what happens to any non-Jewish baby adopted into a Jewish family.