I am a religious atheist-Jew. It’s ok and it’s allowed. Judaism is not defined solely by belief in God in the way other religions are. You are right that cultural aspects of Judaism and the religious aspects are intertwined, but the dividing line is not belief in God.
This is a rather good article on this topic, though I am in no way scholar enough to know if it is completely accurate.
I think the confusion, to the extent that there is any, is “Judaism as culture” and “Judaism as religion”.
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For example - those atheists who are “culturally Catholic”, are they accepted as fully Catholic by non-atheist Catholics?
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I’m Lutheran rather than Catholic, but I have never met anyone who was a practicing, atheist Christian.
Protestants in particular focus on belief and conviction much more than on ritual, and even one of our main rituals (the Eucharist) is confined explicitly and exclusively to those who believe.
I have no idea how many of those who only go to church on Christmas and Easter are really atheists, but I bet it is less than the number of atheists who don’t go to church at all but still exchange presents and decorate trees. But neither of those are specifically religious rituals.
Regards,
Shodan
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They bear witness, as a people, to God’s singualrity.
From memory: “Hear O Israel, the lord is our god, the lord is one”.
This is a statement about communal beliefs.
The point here is that it isn’t up to some third person to judge this relationship. If you don’t believe in God you can’t love him it is true - but that is not anyone elses’ concern.
They may recite the prayers, because the prayers are are an ancestral ritual. They are a link to an immemorial past.
Put it this way: I remember reading a short story by J.L. Borges about a “secret” that is handed down from generation to generation. The contents of this “secret” are unknown to the people who receive it, but that doesn’t matter … it is the very fact of having it that does.
Don’t agree. The religion and the culture cannot be so dis-entwined, when it comes to Judaism. For example, conversion to another religion makes you “not a Jew” in a way that being an atheist does not.
You can be a Jewish Texan, but you cannot really be a Jewish Muslim or a Jewish Hindu. You can be a Jewish atheist.
Judaism has its own logic, which is not the same logic as that of Christianity. You can’t force it to conform to Christian-type logic, or it ceases to be, in some essential sense, Judaism.
People can define words however they feel like, but in my definition, the dividing line in any religion is belief or lack thereof in a God or Gods or other supernatural force.
Otherwise, it’s just a “cultural system” or a philosophy. If you and others equate the term “religion” with “cultural system”, that’s fine, but I don’t equate the two.
So if someone doesn’t share my lifestyle but sperm can still come out of their shoot, I should marry them? 
Getting married is one of the most personal decisions one can make. Hell yeah I’m going to be selective.
The issue isn’t how you or him think about it. As you note, people can define things as they want.
The issue is how most Jews think about it. Most would not have a problem considering someone who was an atheist but who otherwise fit the definition of a Jew to be a “Jew”.
You’re of course free to define religion and ethnicity however you see fit. So are Jews, and unsurprisingly your definition doesn’t override ours when we consider who is and who is not Jewish. You don’t have to agree, Jews don’t require outside sanction to manage Judaism.
Thank you.
I’m an atheistic, mostly practicing, refrain-from-pork-and-Christmas, only-date-other-Jews type.
When I was in the hospital about five years ago, they weren’t sure if I’d “make it”.
You bet the very last thing I mumbled before sleeping was the shema. It as an affirmation of my identity (and a rather peaceful feeling), not a declaration of God.
God doesn’t have to be static. To most of us, taking care of this group (the Jewish version of American patriotism, I guess) is the point. If you were to count up all 613 mitzvot and examine all of the halalchic rulings in the Talmud, you’d be surprised at how much of Jewish law is about Jewish* people.* God* is* important. But the unshakable belief that a supranatural being exists the way tradition says so is not the sticking point.
Now there’ll be a thread “Why do Jews get a pass when it comes to defining themselves?”
But if you’re an atheist, you actually believ that “the lord is none” not “the lord is one”.
So, you cannot truthfully bear witness to the singularity of God if you are an atheist.
Of course, you can lie, but so can atheists in Catholic ceremonies. That doesn’t make them real Catholics any more than you saying the above makes it OK from them point of view of the above prayer.
If we assume that that prayer is part of the Jewish religion, then if you don’t believe in God, then you can’t love him, and so you can’t be part of the Jewish religion.
It doesn’t matter if other people know whether or not you believe in God or love him or whatever. The fact is that if the religion says “love God”, then if you don’t believe in God, you are not part of the religion.
Are you saying that the above prayer is not an essential part of what makes someone part of the Jewish religion?
So, if someone with Jewish parents converts to, say, Hinduism, that he is no longer, ethnically, a Jew?
I would think that if Jerry Seinfeld converted to, say, Christianity, he would still be ethnically/culturally Jewish, but no longer religiously Jewish. Are you claiming that he would no longer be a Jew in any way?
Yes, he would be a “Jew” but from the cultural point of view only.
If Jews consider the belief in God to be immaterial to whether you are a fully-fledged member of the Jewish religion or not, then Jews consider religion to simply be a “cultural system”.
Is it… is it because we’re racists?
You are not grokking.
Imagine that there is a social club. This club is called The Loyal Order of Moose and Squirl, or LOMS. Now, one of LOMS’ core tenets is that you need to be able to speak in a horrible fake Russian accent. But Smitty is a member of LOMS, and can’t manage the accent at all. So the club decides that they’ll make an exception for Smitty, and all other folks like him as long as they meet certain other metrics, like not belonging to that heretical Rotary Club.
In that situation, is Smitty, or is he not, a members of the Loyal Order of Moose and Squirl? Does your vote, as a non-member, overrule their vote, as a members-only club?
He’s out of the Jew Club. Yep.
Just like “Messianic” Jews are not Jews at all, but Christians.
Our rules came before the concept of ethnicity, so we win.
LOL. This makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
Why refrain from pork? If you don’t believe there’s a holy basis for your religious tenets, why obey seemingly arbirtary ones like “don’t eat pork”? When you say “mostly practicing,” what is that even supposed to mean? What is it that you’re practicing?
I abandoned the Jewish religion and culture long ago because my parents were people exactly like you. They had no true principles of faith at all, and we never had a single talk about spirituality. It was just “we do this because we’re supposed to. Because we’re Jews.” I had to memorize a bunch of Hebrew that I didn’t understand for my Bar Mitzvah which was a meaningless farce without any real spiritual underpinning. When I found some Christian literature at one point in high school and was interested in it, my parents were deeply upset at the idea that I could ever abandon “Judaism.” Why? You never gave me any kind of spiritual sustenance at all. Your judaism was all a put-on. It’s funny, they would never in a million years have been upset if I declared that I didn’t believe in God. But the idea of “leaving the religion” upset them so much.
I define my spiritual beliefs on my own terms. Nobody else’s . But I make no pretensions that my beliefs are any form of “Judaism.”
So let me get this straight:
I observe rituals that are symbolic and have meaning to me and my community.
I pray and meditate on the prayers and it brings meaning to my life, gives me peace and insight.
I observe rituals in my home consistent with my religion’s practices and derive meaning from them.
I derive meaning from a religious texts and learned commentary and discussion.
I support my community in their observations.
My community accepts me and had a long standing history of recognizing those with similar perspectives.
My religion already states that acts override beliefs.
But you have decided it all doesn’t count.
Argent: not all families are like yours. We find tremendous meaning in being Jewish and it’s an every day presence in our life, atheism notwithstanding.
Do you eat pork? If not, why?
I don’t think you are getting the point.
The “rules” of Judaism may make no sense to you, or indeed to anyone, but they are what they are, and they are stated in the prayer.
From the community’s POV, you are not allowed to proclaim allegiance to a god that is different from the Jewish concept of god. As in the commandment: “thou shalt have no other gods before me”.
Similarly, you must proclaim that the only god acceptable to Israel is the singular, Jewish concept of god.
However, there is no commandment to publicly state that you believe in God. Loving god is a private matter, not for public pronouncement, and is in any case demonstrated in one’s acts.
Not so.
Again, not so. Judaism is all about doing right. While much of the “right” may be, in essence, meaningless ritual to some, “believing right” simply isn’t an aspect at all.
They aren’t Jews any more. They are people of Jewish ancestry, but not Jews.
Judaism is commonly critisized for “being short on spiritual substance” and “full of meaningless ritual”.
The reason it is seen that way is exactly because the religion places mystical beliefs firmly in the realm of the private.
Even such basic matters as the very existence of an afterlife is, in Conservative and Reform Judaism, basically a matter of individual choice as to whether to believe in it or not.
Judaism has a logic quite different from Christanity and attempting to bang the square peg of Judaism into the round hole of the Christian definition of what a religion should be is bound to end in failure.
If belief in God is not important to being a religious Jew, why does it matter if you believe in another God?
If you do all the same rituals as religious Jews, what is the difference if you, internally, (a) don’t believe in God vs (b) believe in Zeus
You are saying that (a) is OK, but (b) is not. Why?
As you said earlier: "The point here is that it isn’t up to some third person to judge this relationship. If you don’t believe in God you can’t love him it is true - but that is not anyone elses’ concern. "
Why can’t you say “The point here is that it isn’t up to some third person to judge this relationship. If you believe in Zeus instead of God you can’t love him it is true - but that is not anyone elses’ concern.”
Sounds like marriage. You don’t have to love your spouse, but if you want to marry someone else, you have to divorce the one you have.
Occasionally, but not often. Occasionally I will bring bacon into the house, but its pretty rare.
I grew up in a Kosher home. My mother expressed her lack of belief in God when I was young. My parents are holocaust survivors and she told me that everything she did was in honor of her mother’s memory. She also didn’t want to break the chain of religion and ritual that Hitler tried to wipe out. That made perfect sense to me and I was proud to be kosher in honor of my family.
We don’t keep kosher in my house for many reasons. I fully admit to my kids that it is irrational that I will cook a cheeseburger or shrimp, but pork is off limits for me. It’s visceral and I"m ok with that. Just because it’s not logical doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. We talk about the meaning in keeping kosher and other rituals that go way beyond “because the rabbi says so”.
Your situation sounds terribly unsatisfying and I can see where you are coming from. In my house growing up and now it was different. Atheism wasn’t equated with a lack of faith or meaningless ritual. The meaning just came from elsewhere nad was right there out in the open, enriching our lives.