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lodessaI have long yearned to have faith. It seems so beautiful and comforting... but I just flat out don't have it.
Religion-wise my upbringing was patchy. Dad never showed any signs of spirituality or religion (although I've recently found of that some of his most lovely childhood memories are in church) and mom had this weird ambivolent relationship to Judaism, due to her issues with the patriarical crap imbedded in the tradition. So I went to a Jewish preschool, but then only went to temple about once a year after that until I was 10 or 11 and, either because the congregation had a new rabbi mom liked or because dad had finished his PhD and money was a little less tight, mom decided that it was time for us to do the whole sunday school thing. I hated it. Not only did it mean getting up early on Sunday mornings... the girls in my class were total bitches and I could not wait to get out. Then there was my cousins, who were spoiled little Jewish princesses. I probably wouldn't have realized that I had issues with Judaism (although it was never a big part of my life and it's not like I have faith in God or anything) if it had not been for my cousin Jocelyn and her zionism phase. Now I'm not "anti-Israel" but zionism annoys me like nothing else... especially when American Jews who have never lived in Israel refer to it as "we". So Jocelyn and I got into some fights, which my family was upset with me for... how could I not care about my people? The whole thing really came to a head though when I was about 17 and my sister was in a Purim skit so I had to go to the reading of the Magylia (or however the fuck you spell it). I don't think I'd ever actually heard it read outloud... or maybe the translation, but I was horrified. It wasn't about surviving oppression... it was about turning it around and killing the people who were going to kill us and their children and their friends and their friends friends. I was totally appauled and I said as much to my mother. Now despite her issues with it, our Jewish identity was important to mom. She loves the Yom Kippur evening service, and considers us ethnic for being Jewish. She always told me that Judiasm was important for the sense of community. She was not pleased at all by my disgust and the stating that I hated the Jewish mentality that followed. We had a huge fight... huge. She called me a self hating Jew and told me that it would be my fault when there was another holocaust and I died as a Jew even though/because I denied my identity as such. Now, my mom is hot tempered but she's a really intelligent, humanitarian, ahead of her time, person and her going off like this only confirmed my belief that the giant chip in the shoulder that was a huge part of the Jewish mentality really was sick and something I wanted no part in, that I wanted nothing to do with the culture. So that was sort of final... except mom always said to me that being Jewish is sort of like the Mafia and once you're born in you can't get out. So I referred (and still do sometimes) to myself as a non-practicing Jew.
The college I went was Catholic, the Lasallian Christian Brothers founded it and well... they are the least crazy religious order I could ever hope to find. Their commitment is related to God... but the commitment is to teaching and to helping the community through learning. The brothers I had as professors, where some of the most kind, intelligent, enlightened, non-scary-fundementalist-intolerant, people I've ever encountered. The school itself was not that religious, except for the crucifixes above the doors to every classroom, which creeped me out to start with but I soon stopped noticing, and the high precentage of catholic (or catholic raised) people in my classes. The second sometimes got frusterating when we were talking about suicide in some book (which was commited by a sympathetic character) and they were all "well suicide is a sin... it can't be anything but bad" and I was like "Could we look at it from a non-religious prespective?" and they were like "no". Let me again reiterate that this was fellow students and not my professors. Sadly it was usually a little hispanic girl... not to make a broad generalization. Anyway... the other Catholic feature of the campus was the chapel... which I found amazingly alluring. I wanted so badly sometimes to have faith, to be part of the beatiful ritual of Catholism... there are many times I almost went to mass. Even a stronger pull on me, however, was the statue of Saint Jude that was in a quiet courtyard behind the administrative office. Even before I knew who it was... the thing just spoke to me (someday I will have to take some photos of it) and then when I learned Jude was the Patron Saint of Lost Causes... it just made me yearn for that Catholic mystic sort of ritual even more. Wasn't my faith a lost cause worthy of Jude's assistance? But you see, in the end I just simply didn't have the faith.
Still, religion was interesting to me, and I actually almost ended up minoring in it (one class off). The tricky thing was trying to keep away from the christianity based religious studies classes... because generally the topic + students with religious beliefs + me = nothing remotely happy or good. So I took Intro to Islam (possibly the most valuable class I took in all of college), and Religion and Literature, and eventually... the only thing left that wasn't about Christianity was the class on Judaism. So remember... mountain sized issues with Judiasm. The professor of the class was a rabbi from a congregation about 20 minutes away, who was intertaining, very well educated, and made me understand Judaism in a whole new way... and really my relationship to it in a new way. One of the actual neat things about Judaism is that it is not a religion of faith like Islam or Christianity. It's a religion of practice. When I was in that horrible sunday school nightmare, one of my teachers had told me that in order to be a good Jew you didn't have to believe in God... you just had to act like you did. At the time I found it proof of hypocrisy but when I took this class I finally relized what she had meant... which was that actions are the important thing. God is an incentive to do right... but the important thing is the doing right, not the doing it because God wants you to. The class taught me a lot of other things... like how the Jewish tradition of questioning (which is another neat facet) aids the prevalence of Jews in academia and who win Nobel Prizes etc. He also just made me think about some of the aspects I hadn't though about... such as the enphasis on life in Judaism... which made me realize my problem with Christianity's focus on the hereafter. The class may not have fixed all my issues with Judaism(I actually never turned in the term paper because I literally coudln't make myself write it... and that is the only paper I didn't turn in... well ever) but it made me a lot more comfortable with Judaism... and sure about the non-practicing Jew idenity being appropriate. It also convinced me that I don't need any more than that... because the thing I really want out of religion is faith... and well that's just not that important it Judaism... which would make it easier for me... but also pointless.
So here I am. Faithless. Still sort of longing for faith... in anything. Still sort of wanting the ritual. I have the utmost respect for people with religious convictions (provided they are not the bigotry kind). My grandmother on my father's side is the model of what christianity is theorectically about and I admire that... and I've recently learned that on my mom's side my aunt and grandmother actually do belive in God which I had never realized... but I'm not them and I highly doubt I ever will be. Should I marry and have kids I would probably convert if religion was important to my spouse, but I doubt I'll ever have faith.
Religion-wise my upbringing was patchy. Dad never showed any signs of spirituality or religion (although I've recently found of that some of his most lovely childhood memories are in church) and mom had this weird ambivolent relationship to Judaism, due to her issues with the patriarical crap imbedded in the tradition. So I went to a Jewish preschool, but then only went to temple about once a year after that until I was 10 or 11 and, either because the congregation had a new rabbi mom liked or because dad had finished his PhD and money was a little less tight, mom decided that it was time for us to do the whole sunday school thing. I hated it. Not only did it mean getting up early on Sunday mornings... the girls in my class were total bitches and I could not wait to get out. Then there was my cousins, who were spoiled little Jewish princesses. I probably wouldn't have realized that I had issues with Judaism (although it was never a big part of my life and it's not like I have faith in God or anything) if it had not been for my cousin Jocelyn and her zionism phase. Now I'm not "anti-Israel" but zionism annoys me like nothing else... especially when American Jews who have never lived in Israel refer to it as "we". So Jocelyn and I got into some fights, which my family was upset with me for... how could I not care about my people? The whole thing really came to a head though when I was about 17 and my sister was in a Purim skit so I had to go to the reading of the Magylia (or however the fuck you spell it). I don't think I'd ever actually heard it read outloud... or maybe the translation, but I was horrified. It wasn't about surviving oppression... it was about turning it around and killing the people who were going to kill us and their children and their friends and their friends friends. I was totally appauled and I said as much to my mother. Now despite her issues with it, our Jewish identity was important to mom. She loves the Yom Kippur evening service, and considers us ethnic for being Jewish. She always told me that Judiasm was important for the sense of community. She was not pleased at all by my disgust and the stating that I hated the Jewish mentality that followed. We had a huge fight... huge. She called me a self hating Jew and told me that it would be my fault when there was another holocaust and I died as a Jew even though/because I denied my identity as such. Now, my mom is hot tempered but she's a really intelligent, humanitarian, ahead of her time, person and her going off like this only confirmed my belief that the giant chip in the shoulder that was a huge part of the Jewish mentality really was sick and something I wanted no part in, that I wanted nothing to do with the culture. So that was sort of final... except mom always said to me that being Jewish is sort of like the Mafia and once you're born in you can't get out. So I referred (and still do sometimes) to myself as a non-practicing Jew.
The college I went was Catholic, the Lasallian Christian Brothers founded it and well... they are the least crazy religious order I could ever hope to find. Their commitment is related to God... but the commitment is to teaching and to helping the community through learning. The brothers I had as professors, where some of the most kind, intelligent, enlightened, non-scary-fundementalist-intolerant, people I've ever encountered. The school itself was not that religious, except for the crucifixes above the doors to every classroom, which creeped me out to start with but I soon stopped noticing, and the high precentage of catholic (or catholic raised) people in my classes. The second sometimes got frusterating when we were talking about suicide in some book (which was commited by a sympathetic character) and they were all "well suicide is a sin... it can't be anything but bad" and I was like "Could we look at it from a non-religious prespective?" and they were like "no". Let me again reiterate that this was fellow students and not my professors. Sadly it was usually a little hispanic girl... not to make a broad generalization. Anyway... the other Catholic feature of the campus was the chapel... which I found amazingly alluring. I wanted so badly sometimes to have faith, to be part of the beatiful ritual of Catholism... there are many times I almost went to mass. Even a stronger pull on me, however, was the statue of Saint Jude that was in a quiet courtyard behind the administrative office. Even before I knew who it was... the thing just spoke to me (someday I will have to take some photos of it) and then when I learned Jude was the Patron Saint of Lost Causes... it just made me yearn for that Catholic mystic sort of ritual even more. Wasn't my faith a lost cause worthy of Jude's assistance? But you see, in the end I just simply didn't have the faith.
Still, religion was interesting to me, and I actually almost ended up minoring in it (one class off). The tricky thing was trying to keep away from the christianity based religious studies classes... because generally the topic + students with religious beliefs + me = nothing remotely happy or good. So I took Intro to Islam (possibly the most valuable class I took in all of college), and Religion and Literature, and eventually... the only thing left that wasn't about Christianity was the class on Judaism. So remember... mountain sized issues with Judiasm. The professor of the class was a rabbi from a congregation about 20 minutes away, who was intertaining, very well educated, and made me understand Judaism in a whole new way... and really my relationship to it in a new way. One of the actual neat things about Judaism is that it is not a religion of faith like Islam or Christianity. It's a religion of practice. When I was in that horrible sunday school nightmare, one of my teachers had told me that in order to be a good Jew you didn't have to believe in God... you just had to act like you did. At the time I found it proof of hypocrisy but when I took this class I finally relized what she had meant... which was that actions are the important thing. God is an incentive to do right... but the important thing is the doing right, not the doing it because God wants you to. The class taught me a lot of other things... like how the Jewish tradition of questioning (which is another neat facet) aids the prevalence of Jews in academia and who win Nobel Prizes etc. He also just made me think about some of the aspects I hadn't though about... such as the enphasis on life in Judaism... which made me realize my problem with Christianity's focus on the hereafter. The class may not have fixed all my issues with Judaism(I actually never turned in the term paper because I literally coudln't make myself write it... and that is the only paper I didn't turn in... well ever) but it made me a lot more comfortable with Judaism... and sure about the non-practicing Jew idenity being appropriate. It also convinced me that I don't need any more than that... because the thing I really want out of religion is faith... and well that's just not that important it Judaism... which would make it easier for me... but also pointless.
So here I am. Faithless. Still sort of longing for faith... in anything. Still sort of wanting the ritual. I have the utmost respect for people with religious convictions (provided they are not the bigotry kind). My grandmother on my father's side is the model of what christianity is theorectically about and I admire that... and I've recently learned that on my mom's side my aunt and grandmother actually do belive in God which I had never realized... but I'm not them and I highly doubt I ever will be. Should I marry and have kids I would probably convert if religion was important to my spouse, but I doubt I'll ever have faith.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 07:05 pm (UTC)like you, i just don't have any faith, no belief in god. none.
it seems impossible to me to conceive of any greater power.
huh.
what to do with that?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-01 12:09 am (UTC)... I like it.
we should totally have secret handshakes or something.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-20 09:58 pm (UTC)I think the term non-practicing Jew identity is appropriate, and you're far from the only one to use it. Judaism is so culturally based and so heavily entrenched in identity (2000+ years of persecution can do that to a people) that it does get passed down, and the child or even grandchild (as in my case) of someone who considers themselves Jewish will pick up on many of the traits and at least be familiar and have a connection to them, even if they don't share them or believe in the faith or even practice the culture.
I consider myself a cultural Jew, because I still tie myself to that background, I still remember the stories I was taught, and I still consider it a large part of my identity. To call yourself a non-practicing Jew makes sense, as you have the connection through your family but don't embrace the cultural aspects, least of all the religious ones. And identities like that, "labels" as they are, can help us understand where we are coming from and what we are looking for.
As for looking for—I understand your desire for rituals, connection, and faith, as you know, and I'll keep my flist up to date on my own explorations, even if they aren't with Judaism.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-20 11:20 pm (UTC)I have a friend whose family has been unreligous for at least 3 generations but still feels connected to the heritage culturally. Judaism is special like that.
I make rituals out of totally secular things in an attempt to fill that void left by my lack of faith.