Godless
I’m a Godless Jew
My history with religion began, as with many, at birth. I was born in the home country of my Italian catholic father surrounded by his equally Italian catholic family. My American Jewish mother didn’t want to have me baptized, a wish that was not well received by my fathers family. My grandmother was convinced that my mother would be condemning her grandchild to purgatory ( or something equally dramatic). After what I can only assume was much crying and yelling my mother was eventually worn down and allowed them to baptize me. What did she care any way it’s not like she believed in a hell or purgatory, besides she had plans for my religious upbringing once we moved to the US anyway.
We moved to my mothers New England home town where I was often put under the care of my Jewish Grandfather who was an active member of the Jewish community in the area. We would go to services held at the Temple weekly and for high holidays. I attended hebrew school from kindergarten until about 3rd grade. I enjoyed the Torah stories but was relatively uninterested in studying the alphabet and the more academic side of it. Still there was some sense of community, some sense of belonging even if I didn’t get along with the other kids well (see last story). My mother was Jewish therefore I was born into it, I belonged there regardless.
The Rabbi who headed the school at the Temple began taking some notice of my sister and I. My sister was a pretty accident prone child and in a short period of time she had gained a scar from falling off her bike and a broken arm from falling off our swing set. I can only think that she had the best intentions when she called us into her office individually to talk about what was going on at home. My sister being very young, and not understanding the difference between a spanking and abusive beating, told her that my father hit us. He did hit us, just like his father and mother hit him when he misbehaved, that was how children were disciplined, it wasn’t great but it wasn’t considered harmful or abusive. The Rabbi ran with this information to the department of child protective services and everything changed. at this time in our lives my parents were struggling to get by, we were on our states equivalent of food stamps and there was always talk of “losing the house”. Suddenly we were no longer going to the Temple and there was a meeting scheduled to meet with officers to determine wether or not we should be left in our parents care. We were all terrified and my mom wouldn’t stop crying. I sat in a room alone with an officer while he asked me questions about my parents and home life. I remember I was afraid because I didn’t want to lie and say it was great and that we were never spanked but I also didn’t want to be taken away. They determined everything was ok and we got to stay with our parents. We didn’t go back to that Temple until that Rabbi left years later. Honestly I wasn’t fond of the school anyway so I was happy to leave and just attend services at a more orthodox Synagogue down the street.
There was a summer in middle school where I begged my mom to let me go to a two week sleep away camp with my best friend. I really wanted to go but it was a christian camp so it took some convincing for her to agree. She’d often let us go to church on holidays with our father but to spend a whole week immersed in christianity was another thing to consider for her. We did celebrate christmas as well as Hanukkah, after all. At that point I was pretty lost about how I religiously identified, there was trauma from my experience but also some ingrained Idea that I had to believe in God in one way or another. The two weeks at the camp were a lot of fun but also a lot of emersion and some brainwashing into the christian faith. I entered skeptical but malleable and left with jesus fish adorned friendship bracelets, christian rock band CD’s and a card promising my virginity to jesus until marriage, sorry Jesus. I tried to mold my new found faith to work into my confused Jewish and somewhat Pagan ideas I had been forming about spirituality. I made myself a little alter in my bedroom with candles where I would kneel and pray to God every night. That lasted for about a month before I started to feel like I was just performing, talking to the air. One night a clear thought crossed my mind as I kneeled for my nightly prayer, ‘I don’t believe in God’. I stood up and stared at the wall letting this thought sink in. I knew it was true, I didn’t believe I tried and I just couldn’t. I told my dad the next day, he stopped reading the paper and looked at me confused, then he asked if I was stupid, that was the end of the conversation. It didn’t change my mind though if anything it made me more extreme. I refused to attend church or Temple services, I even refused to continue studying for my bat mitzvah. I was Atheist, I wasn’t going to even say ‘God’ in the pledge of allegiance anymore. my parents weren’t happy but they didn’t have the energy to fight me on it either, so I was allowed to figure it out for myself. My only tie to religion was my grandfather, he was a holocaust survivor and I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from the history and heritage that went with that. I would still attend high holiday services to make him happy after all it was my heritage. Being Jewish is an ethnicity, yes it is, I’m not going to argue that point so you can do some research or just keep it to yourself if you disagree with me.
Then around 14 I woke up one night with an epiphany, I had figured it out! I had figured out what I believed and I wrote it all feverishly down in a notebook of poetry. My spiritual beliefs, what felt right to me, there was also some sudo science about the universe being fractals and a sixth sense of seeing energy fields colorfully mixed in. That’s before I ever read ‘The Celestian Prophecy’ so I was coming up with this all on my own seemingly out of nowhere, I didn’t even smoke pot at the time so it’s really beyond me where it all came from. But I wrote about an understanding of collective energy of humans and the earth, of souls and bodies and the cycle of life death and perhaps life again? To be honest parts of it still make much more sense to me than the idea of God ever has. It also dialed me back from the extreme of Atheism that never quite fit me and from then on I settled comfortably on being Agnostic.
A somewhat side story, when I was 16 my younger sister joined a church, It’s not really my story to tell but in short I didn’t like them. They were cultish, patriarchal and the pastor was creepy. They brought her into their fold and it took some years to get her back and she wasn’t unscathed, I will never forgive them.
My youngest sister attended the same hebrew school I had, at this point my family had rejoined that Temple. I was picking her up one day when that same Rabbi from years ago (she had rejoined the Temple) came out and approached my car to talk to me. I felt an instant jolt of anger rise in me as she got near I couldn’t even fake politeness, all I could do was stay silent and think about how she almost ruined my family as she sort of apologized. she thanked me for letting her say that but as I drove away I was pretty sure the only person that conversation helped was her, for me it just resurfaced old trauma.
By 18 I was completely separated from any religious institution, I didn’t even attend the high holidays at Temple anymore. I was living with my grandfather at the time and one night I came home around 10, he came into the kitchen to greet me. he’d often be awake at that hour so when I came home late we’d drink tea and have late night conversations. This night after a pause in conversation, he asked me with no real change in tone if I was religious. I was caught off guard by how casual he was with this question, also I was afraid of his reaction to my honest answer. I took a breath and told him the truth, no, I wasn’t but I was very proud of my jewish heritage. casually he nodded and said ‘Me either, whats important is that you’re Jewish’. This moment was profound, he had taken me seriously and even shared my feelings. It reaffirmed everything I had been trying to wrap my head around for years, I didn’t need to identify as religious if I wasn’t, I could still maintain my identity and heritage.
Religion, spirituality, faith, beliefs, however you identify its such a personal thing. The relationships we form with our understanding of the world around us and beyond, it’s so important to feel secure in it. It connects us and gives a sense of belonging that seems so inherently human to me. Even with no true religious affiliation I still feel a sense of deep connection that has a lot to do with how I have formed my own beliefs. God or no everyone deserves a chance to figure it out for themselves and decide where they land and wherever it is it’s valid, even if not everyone agrees.
