Judaism and Me

I have, as many probably know, never been particularly religious. However, for my entire life, I've considered myself a Jew. This is something I was just born into--I know that the religion most here are most familiar with (Christianity) emphasizes faith, but with Judaism you're born a Jew, and you remain a Jew even if you aren't particularly religious. I've told members of Chabad (an orthodox organization) that I was an atheist, and still welcomed me and seemed to have no particular objection. I know that they are an outreach organization, and that as an organization they don't encourage atheism; quite the opposite. But I do not believe a religious Christian organization would react in such a way, nor do I believe most Christians would consider someone who didn't believe in God to be a Christian.

While I was raised as a Jew, I was not raised as a particularly observant Jew. Make no mistake, I keep kosher, observe the holidays (usually), and all that. But my family were basically the only Jews in the area; the Midwest is very Christian. As much as I considered myself Jewish, I never felt much connection to other Jews, because there wasn't much of one. Still, my identity as a Jew has been very strong. It's probably the oldest part of my identity--even gender was something I don't think I really consciously thought about as much as early as I was thinking about my Jewishness.

Why, then, am I not really comfortable with Judaism?

It's hard to put into words because I'm not entirely sure why. And it's taken a long time to get to this point. But I feel that Judaism doesn't mesh with other parts of my identity, and other things I believe in--and I'm more committed to those. The discomfort I feel is just tension.

I heavily dislike hierarchy, and Judaism is unquestionably hierarchical. Even if we twist the Torah to emphasize egalitarianism between humans (and overlook the parts where it doesn't), praising God still makes me viscerally uncomfortable. The words turn to ash on my tongue as I stand there, saying words of worship to a deity I do not believe exists, creating a hierarchy I find abhorrent, and doing it all for a deity whose book of worship requires a great deal of interpretation to comply with my ethics.

Non-theistic religions might be able to get around this--spirits can be teachers or colleagues, not rulers, and cosmic forces can be, while powerful and awesome, as incapable of acknowledging worship or ruling over others as nature itself is. Some pagans I've talked to describe a similar relationship with their gods, too. But Judaism is a religion from a very hierarchical time, and the notion of God as ruler seems to be in its bones. God isn't an active ruler, of course, in modern Jewish thought. They're uninvolved and distant, if not disinterested. The concept of a personal god doesn't seem to exist in Judaism.

But they're still called the ruler of the cosmos, our god, king of the universe, et cetera et cetera. And saying that still makes my skin crawl.

The problem is only compounded by the fact that I'm a therian, and my religion exalts humanity above all other creatures and only deals with them to the minimal extent you'd expect a Bronze Age agrarian society to (besides telling us which ones to not eat, I suppose). How can I be comfortable with a religion that simply does not speak to part of me? I don't believe therianthropy is a spiritual thing, so I don't have to integrate that and Judaism. But the part of me that is cheetah is still neglected by Judaism.

A lot of the religions other therians practice do a way better job of speaking to this side of me, even when I don't believe them. This is entirely to be expected with eclectic pagans, many of whose beliefs seem to revolve around therianthropy. But even reconstructionist religions like Kemeticism seem to be more therian friendly. Maybe it's all superficial stuff since some of the gods were associated with animals; I cannot call myself an expert on Kemeticism with anything resembling a straight face. Still, even though I don't read much about them, and have my issues with them, I've felt more of an affinity for what I've seen of paganism than I have of Judaism. That isn't only due to therianthropy, either.

This is not, in my view, a reason to accept or reject a religion. The truth is the truth no matter how much comfort it brings us. I'm not an atheist because it's comforting to believe there's nothing but oblivion after death, that there are no friendly powers influencing the world, that most of the world is inanimate matter, and that magic isn't real. Absolutely none of that is comforting, but I seem to be incapable of believing them to be true--so I must reject all those notions, as pleasant as it might be to think otherwise.

But despite rejecting all the supernatural claims of Judaism, paying minimal attention to the practices (though I probably pay more attention to the parts that don't involve worship than many other Reform Jews, if only because I keep kosher), having only my family and a couple family friends as links to the Jewish community, and honestly finding the texts kind of dull, I can't help but consider myself Jewish. I was brought up to think of it as something at least partly ethnic. So it's something I just can't shake, despite the fact that I think I might get more, emotionally, out of secular paganism or just not linking myself to any religion at all.

I can deal with my situation, at least. I have been for years. But I wish I had something more final.

 

-- Citrakayah

Written March 2020