Who is a Jew? (removed from thread on Jewish heads of state)

In My Humble Opinion
61

For the record, I’m another atheist Jew. My mother’s family were assimilated German Jews who escaped Europe in 1941, and my American-born father came from a Protestant family, but was not religious in any way. Although my sister and I always knew we were Jewish by birth, there was no discussion of god or religion in the family, and we were not raised with any awareness of Jewish practice or traditions. It wasn’t until I had a Jewish friend in high school that I learned about things like keeping kosher.

Having had no religious indoctrination as a child, I always considered myself an atheist, once I knew what the word meant. As a young adult, after learning a little about the various major religions, I realized that Judaism was the only one I could have much respect for, mainly because it didn’t emphasize blind faith, but valued doubt, independent thought, and intellectualism. For most of my adult life I would tell people who asked that if I were forced to claim a religion it would be Judaism, not only because I was technically born into it, but because it is one of the few religions in which you can be an atheist. However, I never engaged in any Jewish practices other than occasionally attending friends’ seders. (I never had a bar mitzvah ceremony.)

About 12 years ago I became involved with a woman who, although not born Jewish, had had an Orthodox conversion at 22 and has now worked as a Jewish educator for 40 years. She is far more knowledgeable about Judaism than most people who were born Jewish. She is also an atheist.

When we met she was an observant Conservative, keeping kosher, observing the major holidays, lighting candles and saying the blessings at Shabbat dinner every week, etc. Through her I have learned a great deal more about the traditions and culture of Judaism, and have seen their value even for people who don’t believe in god.

We were married under a chuppah in a ceremony jointly officiated by my wife’s rabbi friend and my sister, a Unitarian minister.

I bake challah for dinner every Friday, we go to high holiday services (when there isn’t a global pandemic), and we attend seders with family and friends every year. I have built Sukkot in every house we’ve lived in (four different ones, now.) The tallit I wear at services is at least 70 years old and belonged to my great uncle Fritz, who with my grandmother’s sister, Anni, were the first members of our family to flee Germany in the 1930s.

I am an atheist. And a Jew.

62

Hmm…I’m no world theologian, but it seems to me that there are other major religious traditions that don’t emphasize blind faith, including Jesuit teachings and many flavors of Buddhism.

63

I would suspect that people who live Orthodox lifestyles but identify as atheist are “in the closet” to all but close friends, and have decided that keeping quiet about their personal beliefs is preferable to being shunned by their family and friends.

64

Of course. But that was my perception as a not-terribly-well-informed 20-something.

65

I am kind of astonished by the idea of a non-believer nonetheless practicing Orthodoxy, since the practice restricts your life in so many ways. But I guess it may be easier to leave your god than to leave the community you grew up in.

My bottom line is you are a Jew if you say you are a Jew. And not if you deny it. Whatever your actual beliefs and even practices. I I guess that leaves out Spinoza.

This thread has been fascinating.

66

I had a (now deceased) atheist friend who assiduously kept kosher, powered-down when the sun went down on Friday, etc.

She appreciated the structure this gave her life. Me, I agreed her thing since I believe that self-discipline = self-respect, and did Shabbatz goyim stuff for her. And she also drew from the Jewish tradition of social consciousness by leasing office space exclusively to AA/Alanon when she could have made more money leasing to another business.

67

Naw, it’s more something you don’t trumpet, but everyone sort of assumes about you, i suspect. I don’t think it’s terribly uncommon for Orthodox Jews to be atheists.

68

I have no stake in this except for curiosity, but do you consider Messianic Jews to be Jews? My limited understanding is that most non-messianic Jews do not, considering them to be Christians no matter their self-identification.

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FWIU, the ceremony is not a requirement, but rather a cultural thing. One is bar mitzvah when one reaches the age of responsibility, ceremony or no ceremony.

ETA: You might be interested in Humanistic Judaism.

70

Yes, I know. That’s why I phrased it that way, rather than saying I never had, or was, a bar mitzvah. At 13 I didn’t even know what bar mitzvah was, but according to Jewish tradition I was one.

71

Thanks.

72

I wonder what y’all would make of this, in my family:

One of my non-religious male relatives, not at all Jewish, married a Jewish-atheist woman. They have raised their children (daughters) as non-religious.

The girls are young women now, but all through their early years the Jewish grandparents worked very hard to instill in them that they are Jews. Something which the girls’ parents reject. It caused much strife in the relationship with the grandparents.

Obviously the ultimate arbiter of whether they (the girls) are Jews is up to them. But in the absence of such an attestation, would the Jewish community generally consider them Jews?

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Yes, because the mother is Jewish, regardless of her beliefs or practices, or theirs. (That is, presuming that her mother was Jewish, too.)

74

Would it be offensive if the Catholic grandparents of the father claimed them as Catholic?

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I believe that in order for them to be considered Catholic by anybody, they would need to have been baptized, which doesn’t sound like the parents would ever have been permitted. It’s not like Jewishness, which by its own definition is a heritable condition.

If they had been baptized, the Church would then view them as Catholic. Jews would still view them as Jews, though heretical ones. Could make for some interesting Thanksgiving dinners.

76

If, however, they subsequently renounced Catholicism and began practicing some other religion, or became convinced atheists, the Church would view them as having effectively excommunicated themselves, so there would no longer be a conflict. Unlike Catholicism and other creedal religions, Judaism doesn’t recognize an individual right to opt out.

77

My husband, who is an atheist, is both a Jew and a baptized Episcopalian. He participates in some Jewish cultural things, and has no connection to the Episcopal Church beyond a childhood baptism. So i guess that makes him a bad Episcopalian, but he still considers it part of his identity, or at least, a non-religious part of his personal history.

(The baptism caused some family stress, which probably mattered more to him than the religious aspect.)

78

As a reform Jew, i am agnostic as to their status without their attestation. If they wanted me to count them in my minyan, i would. Otherwise, it’s unlikely to matter to me.

79

The interesting part of the question is, to me, who gets to define members of a group: each individual, or the consensus among members of the group?

I was confirmed into the Presbyterian church at the age of 13, and immediately came down with a nasty case of chicken pox, and concluded that it was a sign from God that He didn’t want me believing in Him, so I became an atheist.

Some 15 years after I left the church, I got a letter from my old church asking me whether I wanted to remain a member of their congregation or switch to a different Presbyterian congregation. The letter had no option for “I am not a Christian”–but fortunately I had a pencil and a stamp and made my own option and returned it to them.

So: am I Christian? They think I am, since I was confirmed into the church and there’s apparently no off-ramp. I think I’m not. Who decides?

Are Mormons Christian? They think so, many evangelicals do not.

Are Messianic Jews Jewish? They think they are, most Jews do not.

Are the girls OldOlds talks about Jewish? Most Jews think so (I think), they do not.

I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule, but I lean heavily toward the “let the individual make their own declaration, and if I think it’s good faith, roll with it” end of the spectrum.

80

I’m not sure that’s entirely answerable. Often, of course, they agree, in which case there’s no problem. When they disagree, I think sometimes the best that can be said is that they’re simultaneously both right and both wrong.

There’s also the issue of identification by consensus among members of a different group. That’s made a whole lot of difference in the lives, and deaths, of quite a lot of people; and not only for Jews.

‘I’m an atheist because God wants me to be one’ is an interesting statement!

Agreed.

But I will also say: changing one’s practice is one thing; and changing one’s identification is another thing; but changing one’s back-of-the-head assumptions is a third thing, and is not at all easy to do. For one thing, first you have to recognize them all, and that can be very difficult. For another, even when you see them, and even if you recognize them as having religious roots (sometimes even two or three or more generations back), they may well stay put.

This is at least as true of Christians as of Jews (and I suspect of people of other religious backgrounds). But I think it may be even more likely to be true of Christians in a background-Christian dominant society, because they’re surrounded by people making the same set of assumptions as they do.