Oy vey, this is a long post

Becoming disabled by chronic illness turned me into an atheist.

Maybe not in the way you might expect. There was no epiphany of God having forsaken me, as I was never close enough with a formal version of God to feel forsaken by him. And I haven’t even read anything by Dawkins yet. I was raised by two Brooklynites whose Judaism was found in their heritage, not in their religious practice, and only my mother was active in my religious education, because her father wanted it. This consisted of Sunday school where I learned a smattering of Hebrew and a lot about the many—many—Jewish holidays, and the observation of a few of those holidays at home. The focus was either on food, presents, or loved ones who had died, not Yahweh. I worshiped at my grandmother’s table groaning with blintzes and matzoh ball soup, not at shul.

In college I spent more time with Grandma, listening more closely to her oft-repeated stories of our family. I also developed a broader historical and literary interest in Judaism after taking a course in Holocaust literature from writer and survivor Aharon Appelfeld. Nothing I learned, however, brought me closer to God or clarified my personal belief system.

Congregation Beth Shalom replaces traditional Star of David imagery with a nice bowl of Jewish penicillin.

When I lived in San Francisco, a dozen years ago, I made a weak stab at trying to find a synagogue to attend. It had to do with loneliness more than anything else, feeling isolated from my East Coast family and seeking a connection with other Jews. When I moved to Los Angeles, I found an unconventionally interesting temple, and began telling myself that I should chat with the (female) rabbi concerning how to become a member of a Jewish congregation, or even just check out services some Friday. The place was even within walking distance, which for an East Coast girl in L.A. should have been the shofar call that drew me to temple. And yet I never went.

A few years later, around the same time I was reading a lot of books by Stephen Jay Gould and other science writing, I read Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer and there I found my epiphany: when it came to belief systems, “skeptic” fit me just as well as “Jewish.” I joined the Skeptic Society and began reading and learning more about the subject. What finally tipped the scales for me was the increasing severity of my CFS and the likelihood that I would have to stop working. While struggling with secondary depression and casting about for something to hang onto as pieces of my life were slowly chipping away, I started thinking again about going to talk to the rabbi of that temple. And, again, I never did. But this time, I began considering why I believed I was interested in doing this, but never took action. When I decided I wanted to talk to a disability therapist, a few months later I was in therapy. Why hadn’t I gotten around to this yet?

That’s how I finally understood one day that I had been atheist for longer than I even remember. I didn’t choose atheism nor did anyone persuade me into it; I just realized that I did not believe in God. And then I found I was no longer struggling to reconcile my beliefs, my vague spirituality with my firm views on skepticism and science. Many people who “find God” say that when it happened, the world suddenly made sense to them. I had the same experience when I finally let go of my last vestiges of faith.

Do I still consider myself Jewish? Yes. I’m a secular, or a cultural Jew. It’s part of my identity that is entirely separate from my religious beliefs, but connects me to my family’s history. I light a yahrzeit (memorial) candle at Yom Kippur to honor the memory of dead loved ones, and I recite the Shema prayer on that day, because it connects me with my heritage; the fact that it is an affirmation of Judaism doesn’t, for me, conflict with my secular approach. (Here is my short classical arrangement, hosted at MacJams. That is me singing, so please try not to laugh.) Jews don’t have an afterlife, so even with religious education I never formed a belief in heaven or hell. The important part is that the lighting of the candle connects with the candle that burns in my heart for those people, as opposed to believing they literally live on in some way.

When I got married, we had a Jewish ceremony with a rabbi who runs a cultural center and not a congregation. I did in fact ask if there were any way he could limit the references to God in the ceremony, but he very respectfully responded that the ceremony wasn’t the true ceremony without those references. At this point I hadn’t even realized I was atheist, if you can believe it after the chutzpah of that request. But the rabbi made a wonderful case for the words that are said during the ceremony: that the same words had been spoken in Jewish weddings for thousands of years. Suddenly I felt acceptance and even awe—not of a spiritual being, but by the history that I was now going to be part of.

Yes, another wedding picture. Our ketubah.

My husband is not Jewish, by the way, which this Reform rabbi had no problem with and simply adjusted the ceremony as needed. Our ketubah, or Jewish wedding contract, doesn’t even mention Judaism, or God. It’s about our responsibilities to each other, and our commitment to making the world a better place. (This sort of thing is more and more common among younger Jewish generations, by the way.) These values are very much in line with Judaism, but I just don’t do it to please a deity. It honestly seems like a minor detail.

My lexicon has an atheistic equivalent for theistic terms. “God” translates to “the mysteries of the universe.” I accept that humans don’t know everything. But I don’t need to put a name or personification to those mysteries, nor do I believe that they can never be understood, even if not in my lifetime or centuries more lifetimes, or even the lifetime of our species. I agree that it’s a “miracle” that life exists the way it does here on Earth, but that miracle is composed of amazing coincidences—amazing, but not improbable in a universe that might as well be infinite as far as we can measure. Assigning that miracle and those mysteries to a Creator feels narcissistic to me.

Other things that get translated are such remarks as “I’ll be praying for you.” I know many atheists bristle at the notion, which I agree is fair when the translation is a snide “You’re going to hell,” as it can be. But when my friends express that sentiment to me, and it is genuine, I understand the translation to be “You are in my thoughts.” I’m touched that they are thinking of me, and whether or not that involves them and their God is utterly not my business, the same way they don’t make my atheism their business. I remember a Jewish acquaintance who was outraged when her friend sent a Christmas card with a picture of a baby Jesus on it. And I remember thinking “Really? The image on the card means more to you than the fact of your friend including you in her greetings?”

I do not give organized religion a pass. I’m saying that I am not threatened or offended by people who are, in turn, secure enough in their faith not to be threatened or offended by other beliefs and nonbelievers, even if we may disagree on many points. (I also understand I’m lucky to know friends and acquaintances like these, and not to be bothered by family pressure to be an observant Jew.) I wrote an early draft of this article some time ago and had always planned to post it at some point. Lately I’ve been inspired by conversations on both sides of the argument to think and write more clearly about my own position. I hope it doesn’t appear to discourage respectful discussion and criticism.