Simmy Richman - Losing my religion
Religious people have their Damascene moments, but atheists
often have only the vaguest recollection of the point at which the scales
dropped from their eyes. Me, I can trace my disbelief in God back to two
distinct childhood memories. To understand those events in context, you’ll need
a little bit of background.
Where to start?
Here’s the problem when you talk about anything to do with
Judaism. It’s a religion, sure, but it’s mostly not that for many people who
are born into it. In the main – and I’m going to try hard not to generalise
here – the kind of Jews I grew up around called synagogue shul but didn’t go to
it, called the sabbath “shabbas” but did not observe it and did not, strictly
speaking, keep kosher. Neither did they show any of the outward signs that
would allow strangers to identify them instantly as Jewish. If they want you to
know they are Jewish, they will proudly tell you. They’re not hiding
anything. It’s just not fundamental to their everyday lives. You’re on a
need-to-know basis, and when you need to know (perhaps when they invite you to,
say, a son’s bar mitzvah), they’ll tell you that, yes, they are Jewish, but no,
they’re not really that observant.
I have no idea what the statistics would tell you, but from
first-hand evidence gathered unscientifically from my immediate surroundings
and beyond, I’m going to guess that around 75 per cent of Jewish people are not
the kind of Jews who go in for the religious observance/outward signs (yarmulkes,
dangly hair bits) thing. It is widely accepted and understood that the vast
majority of Jews will go to synagogue maybe two or three times a year (Rosh
Hashona and Yom Kippur are the biggies) and will make a show of keeping kosher
at home only to dine out at their nearest McDonald’s as and when the next Mac
attack strikes.
We are, I prefer to think, a complex and conflicted people
and for reasons too complicated and boring to go into, most Jews are of the
pick-and-choose variety, selecting the laws they wish to keep and finding
endless excuses to dispense with those that are too much bother. There are,
precisely, 613 commandments that the observant Jew must live by and, as with so
many other aspects of the religious code, it feels as if most of these are to
do with food. Don’t eat this, do eat that, don’t eat this until this much time
has passed since you ate that, and so on. The upshot of all this madness is
that my mum did what she could to run a kosher home and my dad interpreted the
texts to suit all practical purposes. read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/losing-my-religion-why-i-realised-that-i-could-no-longer-fake-a-tribal-attachment-to-judaism-10383423.html
