As an example, take this article on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s attempts to court Jewish votes. Anti-semitic? No, of course not. Containing a few sloppy turns of phrase that imply that Jews run the world, or at least American politics? Um… a little. Mostly it’s a decent, innocuous article. But there are a couple of wee troubling spots:

A week ago they were competing for African-American votes in the Deep South. But late on Monday Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama went head to head for another key demographic group: Jewish voters.

Okay, no real problem there. Sure, Jews are just 2% of the population, but you know, New York and Florida are pretty important.

The evening had begun with the annual gala dinner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in the US.

Um… N.R.A.? O.I.L.? I’m not saying that AIPAC isn’t a very important lobbying group, perhaps one that exerts unwarranted sway over American foreign policy in all sorts of distasteful ways, but “the most powerful lobby in the US”? Would that be because Jews run the world? I mean, only 2% of the population, but the most powerful lobby? How on earth could we have accomplished that?! Oh, wait, we control the banks and the media!

Except, apparently, the Guardian.

It does get a little better:

While Jews make up only 2% of the US population compared with the 13% of African-Americans, they provide many of the activists in the Democratic party and much of the finance.

Okay, we like gold, but we lean left. I suppose that’s okay.

About three-quarters of American Jews vote for the Democrats, partly because of an inherent liberalism and partly for historical reasons, in particular Franklin Roosevelt’s encouragement of minorities.

“Inherent liberalism.” I like it! The liberalism gene. But what happened to our Communist gene? Oh, FDR got rid of that.

In short, thanks, Guardian, for a confusing grab-bag of sloppy journalism and stereotypes.

Stark made his shocking admission as a result of a $1000 prize offered by the Secular Coalition for America for the identification of the “highest level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of nontheist currently holding elected public office in the United States.”

Agnostics? Christ, they can’t be that hard to find, can they? But no, apparently even being an agnostic is like the mark of Cain in the halls of congress. Then again, as Lenin once said, they are “shame-faced atheists.”

To complicate matters slightly, Stark is a Unitarian. I’m wondering if this makes him more palatable. In a statement to AP he described himself as “a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being.”

But I’m assuming there are plenty of other atheists in congress, albeit ones who identify primarily as adherents of various religions and keep their atheism a secret. Are any of the Jews Reconstructionists? If so, the theology of their founding rabbi is religious naturalism, basically Durkheim plus Dewey. Would they count? What about congressman Hank Johnson, who is a Buddhist? Then again, Buddhism doesn’t demand non-theism, it just doesn’t require theism, so perhaps he believes in a god.

Perversely, this is just the sort of thing that mitigates against any impulses I have to engage in various aspects of Jewish practice. Atheism seems semi-acceptable in the US only under cover of religion, so long as everyone can pretend that everyone else essentially believes the same thing (i.e. that God exists, even if “God” can mean anything from hairy anthropomorphic thunderer to vague non-personification of our better natures).

I have all sorts of impulses to do any number of Jewish things, largely for anti-assimilationist ethnic/cultural reason, along with a general attraction to ritual and its ethical content. But I only want to do any of it in the possibly contradictory spirit of unabashed godlessness. In the prevailing culture doing anything Jewy is ultimately taken to efface non-belief. And these days I think it’s as important to affirm ardent irreligion as ethno-religious identity.

I suppose Richard Feynman, a Jewish atheist, should have the last word with the title of one of his books: “What do you care what other people think?” Life is complicated, and prevailing cultures are often idiotic.

Both Fry and Hitchens do an excellent job of being ardent atheistic secularists, but Fry is just so much nicer and less shit-headed. I’d hate to credit his teenage G.K. Chesterton/Anglican phase with his niceness, but at the very least he understands that not all religious people are morons. While in the US he attends Anglican services, though in the spirit of going to a cricket match abroad, i.e. to find a corner of a foreign field that is forever England. He’s as ardent an atheist as Hitchens, without being a total bastard about it. Though Hitchens here is a very amusing bastard, and still comes across as smart and perceptive, rather than simply booze-addled and right-wing.

Kosofsky is a book designer, and it shows. He’s reprinted many early modern woodcuts from the original books, and the work itself is wonderfully designed. Much is based on one particular 1593 book of custom, updated for modern readers.

All of this makes me want to get further into ritual and liturgy. And again, I realize the central paradox of doing this as an atheist. The fundamental cliche of the difference between Judaism and Christianity is, of course, that in Judaism practice precedes belief, while in Christianity the reverse is true. Such cliches are always vast over-simplifications, though they contain grains of truth.

But what is the point of religious practice if you’re committed to a position that undermines its basis? As a believer, one might not understand Jewish belief, yet practice can lead you to that understanding. But if, as an unbeliever, you’re coming from a metaphysical position that eschews the affirmation of God, where then does practice lead you? Is there any point, if you actually value doubt as a positive thing?

The Book of Customs makes me want to have a deeper understanding of Jewish liturgy. The best way to do that would be through practice, by actually attending a synagogue. I’ll take it as a testimony to Kosofky’s text that it gives me this impulse.

Fry traces both his non-Jewish side (of his father, who descend from Dickensian paupers) and his Jewish side (matrilineal, naturally). His grandfather moved to Bury St. Edmunds from central Europe to help run a sugar factory. This includes a trip to Vienna and then Slovakia to find traces of the rest of his Jewish family, many of whom perished in the death camps. He finds the last remaining Jew in the small Slovak town where his grandfather once lived.

Super stuff. Stephen Fry is both a wonderful comedian and a deeply humane person. I’ve ordered one of his novels, Making History, in which a graduate student travels back in time to slip Hitler’s parents birth control. Good idea. Though I suspect it backfires.

According to state Republican Representative Sid Rosenbaum, Paine was “anti-Christian and anti-Jewish.” In a very specific sense, perhaps Rosenbaum is correct. As Paine wrote in the Age of Reason (1793):

“Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

But “anti-Jewish” or “anti-Christian” don’t exactly provide nuanced descriptions of Paine’s eighteenth-century deism, especially because today the former sounds the same as “anti-semitic.” Is it “anti-Jewish” to reject Judaism as a religion, along with a rejection of all other organized religions? Or does using such words indicate the degree to which America can’t really come to grips with at least some manifestations of its Enlightenment past?

Only six mourners came to Tom Paine’s funeral. Later, William Cobbett dug his bones up so they could be shipped back to England to be properly honored. Today no-one knows where they are.

I was talking with a philosopher friend about Buber, and he told me I had to read Rosenzweig immediately. He also said not to worry if I can barely understand any of it, and that if I can wring any meaning out of it then I’m basically coming out ahead. I like a challenge.

I have a soft spot for existentialist thought, particularly Albert Camus (with a wee bit of Sartre thrown in for good measure, at least the relatively easy to understand – compared to his other works – Existentialism is a Humanism). Buber blew me away because his is a specifically Jewish kind of existentialism. Apparently, though, Rosenzweig is the true giant here.

The interesting thing about Rosenzweig is that he initially resolved to convert to Christianity, but decided that to do so authentically he must come from a Jewish position. From a highly secular background, he decided to attend an Orthodox shul. There he found Judaism, though a particularly weird 20th century existentialist version that he outlined in The Star of Redemption. He wrote this on postcards which he mailed from the trenches of the first world war.

I’ll let you know if I make it past the first page.

The Philosophers’ Magazine, the people behind Battleground God, also have a nice little site called Do-It-Yourself-Deity. This checks your concept of God for its own internal consistency and compatibility with the kind of universe we live in.

Missing here, of course, are the God-concepts of many twentieth-century theologies, Jewish and otherwise: Mordecai Kaplan‘s religious naturalism, Paul Tillich‘s ‘ground of being’ God and, not surprisingly, Don Cupitt‘s shifty theological non-realism. But it does a good job of quickly dispensing with traditional theism.

Try it. It’s fun.

On a more positive note, although Judaism is not listed as one of China’s five official religions, the city of Shanghai has started to restore one of its two synagogues and is moving to allow worship at the other.

Perhaps those weirdly philo-semitic business books are having a positive effect after all.

1) Jewishness

My mother is Jewish, so I am Jewish. My father isn’t. I wasn’t raised in any kind of religious way. In fact, I didn’t have a bar mitzvah and it would be a bit of a stretch to say that my family was culturally Jewish (whatever that means). We did light Chanukah candles though (and look, I use the “Ch”!). But that’s about it. I also didn’t grow up anywhere near other Jews, making me the Jewish kid at school, without being particularly Jewish.

Later in life, I realized I knew way more about Christianity than I did Judaism (for various educational, cultural and geographical reasons). So I set out to educate myself (if not edutain myself). This took the form of reading a whole bunch of popular “introduction to Judaism” texts, not quite of the Judaism for Dummies level, but almost. After that, I delved a little deeper, particularly into theology that might fit a little better with my cranky atheism (see below). Martin Buber, Mordechai Kaplan and Harold Shulweiss in particular. I still have a love of Buber, but also problems with all three, which I may go into at some point.

It eventually struck me that you can only read so much, and that I might have to – gasp! – set foot in a synagogue. This I did, once, with a non-Jewish friend. I found it instantly compelling, yet freaky and intimidating. I then dabbled with being a High Holiday Jew, but that didn’t quite stick. I’ve returned to a local very progressive shul once or twice since, and am often on the verge of almost going back.

I realize that much of this might seem silly to someone raised in the Jewish tradition, but in a way I’m approaching all this almost as a convert. Yet one who is also a committed atheist. Which brings me to…

2) Atheism

First off, let me say that Richard Dawkins is a bonehead. Okay, now I’ve gotten that out of the way, I should say that I have a strong, personal objection to traditional theistic belief, i.e. the idea that there is a supernatural being who created the universe, and has some combination of omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniverousness. Well, okay, I don’t mind the latter so much.

But I also have extremely cranky objections to attempts to use “God language” in a non-traditional way. I’m strongly allergic to new ageness and flakiness, and admire philosophical rigour and consistency. I also believe the word “God” shouldn’t be infinitely elastic. And perhaps that we should ditch it all together. Then again, perhaps not.

Yet, paradoxically, I’m attracted to both ritual and tradition, and don’t think I could ever go the route of Humanistic Judaism where, to my mind, you just end up with a bunch of bad poetry.

See? I’m cranky.

I should also point out that I’m not interested in discussing whether or not the traditional God exists. I know where I stand as far as classical theism is concerned. I will happily talk about the use of God-language for people who reject traditional views of God, or about the degree to which someone who is an “out” atheist can or should be a practicing Jew. Similarly, I’d love to use this blog to discuss secular, non-practicing Jewish identity.

Comments and thoughts are welcome.