There’s an interesting article in yesterday’s Washington Post about how atheists talk with their children about terrible things like the Newtown shootings. It made me stop and think about my own beliefs – which, I think, are no different from those espoused by parents in the article. I touched on my “religious” practices in a post I wrote last week about why I did not attend the memorial service for a BNA colleague. In this post I’ll explore my own “religious beliefs” a little more.

First let me say, I identify myself as Jewish – no question about that. For many years Robert and I have been active in a small Jewish congregation in the Washington area, Kehila Chadasha – a “congregation without walls” that meets here and there, on a regular schedule, to celebrate holidays together and offer Jewish education for children and adults. We joined Kehila when our daughters were young to provide a more active Jewish environment in which they could learn the traditions we were raised with and become b’nai mitzvot if they wanted to. We’ve stayed active because Kehila is a close-knit community of families we feel close to and are comfortable with.

For me, at least, religion has nothing to do with it. I don’t believe in a “higher power,” with or without the miracles and unimaginable “explanations” for earthly phenomena (floods, tsunamis, spontaneous fires, plagues) that fill our history books, including the “holy” books. I’m not agnostic – I don’t question, I just don’t believe it. At Kehila’s services and holiday celebrations I’ve grown to love the music accompanying the prayers, which I sing because it feels good to join others in song. But I can’t bring myself to twist it all up into a “G-d” or force beyond “that’s just the way it is.”

And the food! Combining Robert’s family recipes with a few of mine, plus others we’ve explored from books and Kehila cooking demonstrations, we eat well – and, well, Jewish! Oh, we’ve embraced cooking from other cultures, and perhaps no holiday tops Thanksgiving for me with its lack of religious connotations – unless you consider our worship of food traditions on that day to be religious. But our year goes ‘round with the foods we love: plum cake for Rosh Hashanah, honey cake for Yom Kippur, homemade applesauce for Sukkot and with or without latkes at Chanukah, hamentashen not only at Purim but sweetening our lot all year ... and a Passover table with too many traditions to mention in a blog post about something else.

So yes, I am certainly Jewish, food-wise. And I think (hope) we used the Jewish holidays and teachings well in raising our children to treat other people with respect and dignity. I think there’s something in there, too, about personal responsibility – owning up to their mistakes, striving to be the best people they can, and caring for others. Remembering and forgiving, themselves as well as others. Caring for and safeguarding the natural world. I think those are the main ones, for me at least. That probably qualifies me as more than just “raised Jewish,” as some others have chosen to say.

I’m not sure yet whether I think there’s a conflict between my personal brand of Judaism and being an atheist. Perhaps others would dispute that, saying that the belief in “one G-d” is fundamental to Judaism. But there’s also the perspective that I don’t worship idols and don’t believe in the Christian trinity, which the Jewish one-G-d declaration has countered for centuries.

So, there it is – at least as far as I’ve taken it so far. Perhaps there will be more on this subject in the future. Or perhaps, for me, that is enough.