maybe it is because you know nothing about judaism. you think the "old testament" tells you everything you need to know about it. otherwise you would not say such a thing. and yes, i am an atheist. i am not defending a belief in a god or gods. i am defending getting facts straight.

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@genessa Perhaps so, It is like no other identity I have ever heard of. One never comes across Christian Atheists or Muslim Agnostics. It seems more a racial identity than a religious one. One is simply born to it. I am sure this must be all wrong, if you might be so good to explain.

@genessa Also what facts are we referring to here? I have made no factual claims other than I do not understand an identity of a Jewish Atheist and that it appears singular to me.

@CapriKious well, there is a lot of controversy about it -- some are offended by the thought of a racial element, and others find it comforting. scientifically there is no such thing as race (there are families and communities). ethnicity is different, though. there is definitely a jewish ethnicity, or rather a few jewish ethnicities: ashkenazim have a different culture (religion aside) from sephardim, and there is a third group, often lumped in with the sephardim, and i can never remember the name of that group, begins with an m i think, not that that's helpful, right? but there IS a culture and whether you consider it a racial culture or not, there is an explanation for it, and that is the diaspora. until the mid 20th century, jews had no homeland except whatever country they settled in. german jews assimilated quickly and did well... until you know what. oops. some of them protested, but i am not religious, i am a good german, and they got gassed anyway. (the nazis believed in race and to them it was a racial issue, but my point is that the assimilated jews valued their german identity to the extent of repressing their jewish identity and the result was a bit of an object lesson to the survivors.) most jews of the diaspora found that the only way to have a cultural and origin-based identity at all was to hold onto their jewish identity, since in most cases they were NOT permitted to assimilate, regardless of whether or not they wanted to. a catholic in america might be an irish american or an italian american or a mexican american and being a catholic-american as primary identity was unnecessary; one's ancerstors were irish or italian or mexican. a jewish american can claim a nation of origin but that nation probably never acknowledged him or her; the jewish identity is the only origin the jew could safely claim. whether or not that is still true is irrelevant; it became its own thing and it persists. i am part of it myself.

there is also the interesting phenomenon within judaism itself that, unlike in other religions, one is expected to ask questions. one is expected, even, to doubt. in catholicism (to continue using it as an example) that gets you excommunicated, right? or at least spanked! but a jew is born to ask questions. it's not a faith-based faith, the way various kinds of christianity are. there is no such thing as excommunication per se in judaism but there is apostasy and there is only one thing that can render a jew no longer a jew. it's not being an atheist; that won't do it. it's not eating pork. it's taking on another god. well, an atheist jew isn't likely to be doing that! so i'm still a jew )

that's not the whole story and i don't know how well i explained it, but it's at least part of it.

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@CapriKious If you are REALLY INTERESTED IN LEARNING you can check out Jewish by Culture. Judaism is culture to us NOT RELIGION.

@genessa It had not been my intention to compare Judaism to slavery, It was only the analogy that popped into mind to explain how odd it seemed to me.

@sassygirl3869 I would assume that there are practicing Jewish persons that would disagree that Judaism is not a religion as i am forced to myself. That a culture is aside from Judaism itself I may readily accept. That those that embrace this nuance prefer to call themselves Jewish, I find personally irritating, but is of no particular moment.

@genessa I appreciate your effort to help me understand. Not being immersed I should never have a full appreciation as you would. But your explanation made me look at it differently and for that I am grateful.

@sassygirl3869 sassy, let me respectfully disagree but i think you will be happy with my disagreement. judaism is a religion. jewishness, yiddishkeit, is a culture.

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@CapriKious i appreciate your willingness to listen! not everyone has that, alas. now, as for immersion, i was raised secularly, with a strong sense of jewishness but not so much of judaism. i don't remember EVER going to shul on the high holy days. i know i experienced seders but i only remember one. (i don't remember a single thanksgiving, either, for that matter, and i know we celebrated it, so who knows?) we went to shul if someone got married or had a bar/bat mitzvah. that was it. i started holding seders myself, on and off, when i grew up, and then i met my guy in 2000 and he goes to shul on his parents' yahrzheits (death anniversaries) to hear their names read aloud, and he goes on the high holidays, so i started going with him on some years. before i met him, when i was new in minnesota, i found out that some individuals make a habit of inviting strangers to a seder if they have nobody or nowhere to go, so i signed up and went to the home of some lovely people, and they told me that even though i was an atheist i had more yiddishkeit (jewishness) and neshuma (soul) than some of their relatives (they named them, haha!) so my life has not been immersed in judaism, but it has, rather, in jewishness.

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@CapriKious

Indeed, one doesn't often (or ever? run into Christian or Muslim Overt Atheists (as far as I know) but Jewish atheists such as myself are sort of common, and have been for more than a century (if not millenia for all I know). eg:

[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]

[I'm going to edit this because it may be offensive in some way, I had compared to Native American tribes.]

The word that I like to use sometimes is that I'm a member of the "Tribe" of Israel - there is some commonality with other tribal members of of creator mythology, moral teachings, language, customs, ceremonies, music, dance, food, etc., yes along with commonality of DNA and ancestry. As well, there may be commonality of geography and some of politics.

Going to a theistic ceremony with friends or family every once in awhile,can be problematic, and some (or many) Jewish atheists won't do this, but some will... they may say that it does not mean that one necessarily personally believes in the creation mythology or the moral teachings. It may be that one simply enjoys the fellowship and sense of community. Yes, it's a problem that some both inside the tribe and outside of it will insist otherwise (i.e.: they will take your presence at a ceremony as meaning, ipso facto, that one is in some way a believer) , but there's not much one can do about that.

There is also a modern branch of Judaism which is welcoming to atheist Jews, though I don't know that it requires atheism:
[shj.org]

fwiw, I went to a high holy days observance once at that place and it didn't seem that good to me, but I'm not that into Judaism in general.

More broadly, a couple of times I have gone to regular Sunday services at a Unitarian Church nearby. There are some atheists who will (out of ignorance) assume that no true atheist could go to a Unitarian Church service, but (in my limited experience) that is the other place I have found which is better about affirming that atheists are welcome, though not everyone who goes there is atheist, and they will not obnoxiously assume the presence of an atheist means the atheist is in some way affirming a belief in God.

Thanks for that

@Geoffrey51 )

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You genesis are exactly right. These are the days I miss being part of a Jewish community for the last 20+ years in small southern town

@Movdsouth hence your screen name yes?

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This supposed omnipresent and just entity has apparently ignored genocide and children being raped and murdered by people in their own families, but he did help Karen find her keys last week.

@BufftonBeotch just once my prEyer to the lottery gawd could be answered with the PowerBALL Numbers exactly matching my 3 dollar ticket

actually the kosher rules are NOT religion-based. they got incorporated into judaism because that's how things got codified in the absence of real science, but they were based on astute observation that people who ate pork and shellfish were dropping dead of (what we now know is) trichanosis (pardon my spelling). without science, the best they could do was say god was punishing those people for eating those things. deserts get pretty hot, there was no refrigeration, and those foods can, if not properly stored and prepared, cause that illness. there is no need to follow those rules now as we DO have refrigeration, and theoretically we have the fda looking after us (i wouldn't count too much on that). but kashruth DID get codified and there it is. but i would like to know what the hell that has to do with the high holy days anyway? the question wasn't how to amuse oneself during the high holy days. the question was how to OBSERVE them while being true to one's actual beliefs.

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@genessa I WAS attempting to facetious and having a joke with my reply.

@Triphid i understood that. it didn't work and the reason is that jokes are funny in direct proportion to how hard they hit the truth. since your joke was based on an apparent misreading of the question and an apparent misapprehension of a fact crucial to the joke, it didn't work.

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@genessa good point-Islam has same dietary laws due to lack of refrigeration years ago in the hot Middle East.

Damnit, you got there first. Have you been following me around for the last 30 years?

So being Jewish is much more than a religion it’s a heritage and a tradition that goes back almost 6000 years. Unlike christianity with its definitive rules, even if you believe in the god of the Jews there is no punishment for questioning his or her existence. Before I go any further in this discussion with you personally, I should point out that this site is agnostic.com, not atheist.com

@Movdsouth i don't really care about the stupid "traditions" of any religion, they are all moronic and baseless. I care even less what the site is called, I don't use labels, I just do not believe in bullshit.

i think she already is a secular jew. but maybe she likes the tradition and wants to be able to enjoy it without feeling a conflict with her secularity. i am also an atheist and a jew, and i have responded to the best of my ability (without writing war and peace about it) above.

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ha that is funny. what i have always said, myself, is that most jewish holidays are about this: "they tried to kill us. they failed. we lived. let's eat!"

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@genessa Yes, I've heard that one, too!

@bleurowz me too-its all about the food!

Agree with the others. Food

it does not seem in the least strange to me!

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No guilt, just having a conversation

See above. Thanks.

that is odd. we cannot afford membership (nor would i want membership) in the local shul but they do not turn us away; they know we're poor and they accommodate us. that is what they're SUPPOSED to do.

oddly, i don't think of passover in terms of restrictions, but maybe that is because i don't eat that much bread to start with and i like matza. go figure, right? so to me it's an increased availability of some special things i like to eat.

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@genessa Yes, I would think that that is what they are supposed to do, as well. I applaud your schul!

I have lived places with friendly open armed Jewish communities and some with snobby not so nice, show me your tickets Jewish communities. Hmmmm, sounds the same as goyim and atheist communities.

@Movdsouth yep, just like the rest of humanity! individuals with something important in common and lots of other stuff not in common )

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