This is true for most of my family, as well. For us, to be Jewish is to connect with a familial history of having been Jewish, and nothing more. I wouldn’t even say we draw on Jewish cultural values in a big way; if we have “Jewish values,” they’re the values inherited from, say, American secular Jewish culture rather than from a millennia-long religious culture.

So, that someone like Evan would find the sentence “I identify as Jewish” bizarre is, to me, extremely bizarre, at least for anybody who recognizes that there is a substantial chunk of the Jewish population whose connection to Judaism is rooted only in heritage. I do firmly believe that it’s not meaningful for someone to identify secularly as a Jew if they don’t have that heritage, in the same way that someone cannot identify racially with a heritage they don’t have; but it’s important to recognize that some of us call ourselves Jewish not by virtue of adherence to religious practice, but rather solely by virtue of identification with cultural heritage.

In fact, I take the significance of this identification to be something externally imposed more than anything else: As Jon wrote, “[having standards for acceptance] is a luxury that Jews can only afford in relatively safe times. Our enemies have never made such distinctions.”

My identification as Jewish is most deeply rooted in the fact that throughout most of history I would have been labelled as Jewish no matter what I said; that I would have been sent to a concentration camp if I had lived in Nazi Germany in spite of my secularity; that even today I would fear being beaten for talking about my Jewish heritage if I had grown up in Malmö rather than in a major city in the U.S. For me, and for many of the secular Jews I know, identifying as Jewish is tantamount to publicly recognizing that this past is still very much with us, and to standing up to that past, to saying “There is no accepting us as people without accepting as people with this heritage, with this culture—without accepting us as Jewish people.”

As an aside, I want to address something that’s come up in a few of the more religious Jewish readers’ responses: namely, that one is a Jew only by virtue of being born to a Jewish mother or converting. I have no problem with this as a doctrine for religious Jews, but I’m extremely wary of applying it to secular Jews. My mother happens to be my Jewish parent, so it’s never been an issue for me, but I hate seeing this kind of exclusion among other secular Jews. The fact of the matter is that, as I wrote above, secular identification with Judaism is largely the result of external labelling, and since a lot of the people doing the external labelling didn’t care at all which parent was Jewish, neither should we.

To identify as a secular Jew is to have Jewish blood and to choose to embrace the label for yourself as a sign of resistance—and nothing more.

One more story, from Maia:

I was adopted as a baby into a Jewish family and was “converted” at two months old by a Conservative rabbi. We did the mikveh and the baby naming and all that. Same with my older brother.  

I am now basically a reform/secular Jew, in that I enjoy all the rituals/holidays but I’m not particularly drawn to the theology or keeping kosher etc. My brother is more observant, but when studying with ultra-orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, he was told that he was not Jewish because his conversion wasn’t done by an Orthodox rabbi. Very upsetting, to say the least.

Even though I am not an observant Jew, when I got married (to a lapsed Catholic), we had a Jewish wedding ceremony and agreed to raise our kids Jewish. His family understands this generally, but I have struggled to explain why I’m uncomfortable celebrating Easter or Christmas with them. Basically, their question is, if I’m not actually concerned about the theological differences between Christianity and Judaism, why do I care if we celebrate Christian holidays as well?

The best explanation I can come up with is that it’s helpful to view Jews as you would various Native American groups—that is, as members of a particular tribe. This means that there is both an ethnic/nationalist component to the identity as well as a religious/cultural component.

Now imagine that this tribe is expelled from its homeland and scattered throughout the world. What remains? As the group fractures, the rituals and religion are kept alive but because the tribe is scattered throughout numerous countries, the ethnic identity is muddled (except, of course, when it is used as a point of discrimination).

This means you end up today with ethnic Jews who don’t practice any of the traditions, religious converts who have entered into the “tribe” by agreeing to adopt the belief and ritual system, and everything in between.

For me, it’s fair to say that I don’t adhere to all the laws and rituals of the Jewish tribe, but they are still the framework within which I learned about Judaism and eventually chose how to express myself as a Jew. For me this means that I don't want to celebrate Easter—not because it’s Christian per se, but rather because it is not Jewish and, thus not part of my identity, ethnically, religiously, or culturally.

Finally, I agree that it’s terrible that Jews of any stripe would be unwelcoming to converts, but every religion and ethnic group has their own internal strife about who is “authentic” and who isn’t. The truth is, these discussions don’t have a “real” answer; they just serve to highlight what is important to a particular person about his or her own religious identity.

That’s a good note to end on with this Jewish discussion, unless someone has an exceptionally new experience or angle to share. We’ll post more of your stories on other religious choices soon.

At the age of six, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. My favorite toys were dinosaurs.  My favorite movie was about dinosaurs. My favorite TV show was Paleo-World, which my parents would let me stay up an extra half-hour on Monday nights to watch. From this “research” I knew that the dinosaurs had died out 365 million years ago, which I understood to mean “a really long time before people existed.”

Now back to Sunday School. When they introduced the story of Genesis, they said it was about how the world was made and how we came to be. I was extremely excited, because I knew that somewhere in between the creation of the world and the creation of man, there were dinosaurs. I was about to hear a story about dinosaurs. I couldn’t wait.

But then a funny thing happened: God made the world, and then God made man.  No dinosaurs.

I asked our teacher where the dinosaurs were in the story, and while I don’t remember what the answer was, my little mind didn’t find it particularly satisfying. It was clear to me that dinosaurs were real, and if this explanation of world history did not include them, then it must be wrong.

At that moment, I ceased to believe anything they said in church. I came to view them as liars. This germ of skepticism has stayed with me my entire life.  Everything I have since learned about history, archaeology, physics, cosmology, biology, and religion has been in some sense aimed at trying to answer the question, “Why aren’t there dinosaurs in Genesis?” On this matter, my 30-year-old self and six-year-old self are in perfect agreement, because Genesis is wrong.

I started by looking up “religion” and found what the book classified as the eight main world religions at the time. I pretty much immediately counted out the monotheistic/Abrahamic religions for two reasons: 1. not gay friendly and 2. I have always struggled believing that if there is some higher power, it was just one being. The structure of a team of deities always made much more logical sense. After reading up on Hinduism and Buddhism, they got the cut once I realized that Brahma was kind of confusing at the time and I’m too materialistic, respectively.

I can’t remember the other religions, but I really soaked up the belief system of Daoism. And when I say Daoism, I mean both the philosophical aspect of the Yin and Yang, as well as everything in the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), and the religious side too, which admittedly is derived more from the Chinese folk religions than anything Lao Tzu said.

By the time I graduated high school and entered college, I was trying to read up on anything I could about Daoism and started wearing a sweet Yin and Yang necklace (did I mention this was the early ‘00s?). I went to undergrad in Michigan’s Bible belt—everyone basically seemed very religious, and specifically Protestant, so during that first year people would totally ask what kind of Christian I was, or where I went to church, etc, and being asked that a lot and not wanting to go into a whole “no being agnostic is not the same as atheist” I really did realize that I am a Daoist.

(Side note: I learned early on in college that even the most conservative religious person would never question or try to convert me, but respected me in a way I know they would not respect an atheist, because I had some type of faith. Maybe a bit of a religious privilege? Not sure, but that always fascinated me.)

It was an unplanned move to be vocal about this new religious choice I’d made. Since then, I’ve thought about if my heart was truly in my religion or if it was just some fad, like pooka shell necklaces. But I’m very happy to say that it’s not been some random choice, but really was the path that was meant for me.

A couple last things (I know this got long, sorry!) in reference to some of the themes I think this series is touching on: the ready availability of information today and how my age group views science, logic, etc versus religious dogma. To the former, I would not have originally discovered Daoism if not for my World Books, but my faith would not have grown without my ability to have the internet to research Daoism, its traditions, holidays, and deities. The internet has really enriched my religious experience, something that would have been prohibitively difficult if I had come of age at any time before I did.

As to the latter theme—how my age group views science versus dogma—I’m a lawyer, so I think in terms of facts and logic all the time and I don’t question evolution or any scientific theory, whether or not it puts into question some myth within Daoism. I think the tricky part that those of us who are religious in this day and age have to do is re-think our beliefs to see if they are congruent with scientific reality. I’m just very lucky that Daoism is actually quite a free-wheeling and poorly defined religion in comparison to, say, Christianity or Islam.

If I’ve objected strongly to Christianity, it has been because Christianity is deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif. One of its main tenets is, ‘I, a miserable sinner, born in sin, who have sinned all my days, etc.’ Our way of living and behaving under this punishment is completely atavistic.

He expands upon his objection to Christianity and its effects, thinking of his idol, August Strindberg:

It was just that [Strindberg] expressed things which I’d experienced and which I couldn’t find words for. I was stuffed with inhibitions—that’s something we mustn’t forget in this connection. I had difficulty in speaking, sometimes I even stammered a little, as I still do at times to this day. I also found it hard to express myself in writing—a tremendous resistance. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t sing. I played a little, but wasn’t much of a hand at any musical instrument, either—I found it hard to read the music. I couldn’t dance. I was shut in every way.

I identified strongly with these words, and became even more obsessed with my personal narrative, as well as the effects of mandatory religious devotion on children.

My dad and step-mom were “reached out” to in the park where I played as a first grader. Until this point, my father wasn’t religious at all. He wore his hair long, was a devout vegan, he self-published an autobiographical comic, and looked like an extra from Slacker.

At first, he was outraged and offended at the invite. His (then) girlfriend was more receptive and started going to their church. She was drawn in by their seeming niceness and well-behaved kids; these folks emitted undeniable confidence.

After attending many church functions and completing their set of Bible studies, she was “born again” and became a Christian / “Disciple.” She promptly moved out of our house with the new conviction that to live with a man before marriage (read: premarital sex) is a sin in need of repentance.

My dad was heartbroken, unfulfilled by his art, unresolved over his failed marriage to my mother, and was moved in observance of his ex’s extreme change. When it became clear that he would permanently lose her if he did not convert, my dad followed suit.

He was transformed into a completely different person. One of the core beliefs of the church is living for your “treasure in heaven,” taking pride in possessing a strict outsider attitude towards the temporal world. With his newfound doctrine, he passed judgments on his extended and immediate family. He burned many bridges, losing friends from within the art community.

I was denied access to anything deemed “impure,” anything declared ungodly or “worldly.” Any piece of media that I watched, read, listened to, looked at, etc. was to be screened. This meant censorship of movies, TV, music, books, internet, questionable company (anyone outside of the church), extracurricular activities, teachings on evolution, overnight field trips … anything that contradicted their beliefs was a crude waste of time.

When you have someone consistently telling you that the things that you enjoy are sinful, evil, superficial, unimportant, negative, you may start hearing and believing, as I did: you are sinful, you are evil, you are unimportant. I felt that I lost my father to Jesus Christ, and it was not safe to be myself.

I went along with everything, believing what I was taught. I think I wanted to “win” my dad back—his approval. I was baptized at 13. My dad was thrilled with the choice, which in retrospect was not a choice at all. After all, I was a kid only getting one side of the story, being told that this story was The story.

I tried very hard to be the best little Christian. I invited my schoolmates to church, reached out to strangers at the mall, read the Bible and prayed daily, attended summer camps, Friday “devotionals,” Tuesday bible discussion group, Wednesday “mid-week” church service, and regular Sunday service. I had a “discipler” with whom I was to check in, reporting any sin, sharing “good news” of successful outreaches and getting life advice (approval) regularly.

When I left these beliefs behind at 15, the majority of my knowledge base was nullified. Having been programmed to devalue the secular, I was left with crushing depression and anxiety. My reason for living was revealed to be false logically, scientifically, and so on.

I left home after a falling out at 19, as it became too hard to live in their household as a non-believer. Since then, I’ve been trying to understand myself (and them), trying to deprogram.

These years following my departure from the church have been tumultuous. I am now 25 and have moved eight times. I’ve broken up with a few boyfriends who really loved me. I have had nine different jobs. I have a good amount of credit card debt. You could say my personal life has been unstable, and that I struggle with impulse control.

This year, I’ve been trying a new form of therapy: DBT, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. In a recent session, my therapist wrote down two phrases and suggested that I look at them everyday until our next session, taking note of any feelings that arise:

1. I have to hide my interests and authentic self or else I’ll be rejected and unloved.

2. I have to prove my interests and authentic self or else I’ll be rejected and unloved.

She articulated the constant internal conflict that I feel which contributes to extreme self-hate, depression and anxiety. I am always seeking love and wanting to share myself and to be validated because I was not validated or loved in a healthy way in my childhood.

At the same time, I’m crippled by potential or perceived rejection: Anything not overtly positive is understood to be negative. I understand this now to be hyper-vigilance as a result of excessive criticism and control. My behaviors and symptoms are defense mechanisms, acting as a form of PTSD.

I was deprived of so many experiences and pieces of media, and I feel triggered when I don’t know or haven’t done something. I feel like a perpetual alien, always playing catch-up, feeling shame for not knowing the *thing* everyone else knew ages ago.

I’ll end with another Bergman quote, as there are no neat conclusions:

My basic view of things is—not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don’t exist any longer.

I was a soldier (who had spent four years in the Marines) deployed overseas after 9/11. My responsibilities as a squad leader were to make sure my men were ready for their mission. I could teach them to shoot, get them in shape, and inspect them before every mission, but I couldn’t help them when their dark hours came.

On the day we deployed, one of my young, married soldiers who had a two-year-old “had his heart ripped out” when his wife said she was leaving him and taking the kid. He was destroyed and depressed, and I didn’t know how to fix him.

About halfway through the deployment, one of my soldiers had a nervous breakdown on patrol. He threw his loaded weapon down and refused to be a soldier anymore. I later found out that his wife and six kids were struggling at home. I reacted the wrong way and missed the opportunity to help. I had nothing inside to give him.

And then tragedy hit. One of my older soldiers had three sons at home, and the oldest died due to swallowing his tongue during a seizure. The captain of our unit and I had to bring this soldier in, sit him down and tell him that his son had died. He was absolutely devastated. We told him that he had 30 days to go home, bury his son, take care of his family and come back to the mission. I had no hope for him.

These situations led me to start reading a small pocket Bible my not-yet father-in-law had given me. I started in Ecclesiastes hearing how a great king had chased every frivolous pursuit and found nothing could satisfy him. It said, “everything is meaningless,” and “there is nothing new under the sun.” The king’s pursuits of wisdom, wine, women, wealth, work, and worth had left his soul empty. All of that resonated with me, so I kept reading.

When I got to the Gospels, the person of Jesus intrigued my mind and inspired me beyond anything I’d ever known. His insight into the condition of the human heart and his words stirred in me a desire for truth.

When I read Jesus’ response in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me,” the exclusivity of his claim, power of his person and reality of my new relationship with him all came together. I believed he died and rose again, taking my sin with him, and I called him Lord.

The choice to follow Christ as Lord has made all the difference in my life.

In a previous reader note, a U.S. veteran lost his religion after seeing the horrors of Iraq while a fellow veteran stuck with his faith. Update from another reader, Dwight:

Coming to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to be born again and to become a Christian, is NOT a religious choice. Christianity is not a religion, and if you think that’s all it is, then the chances of you being saved are slim and none.

Being a Christian, being saved, is all about having a personal RELATIONSHIP with the Creator of the universe, with the God who became human flesh at the same time as being God and came to earth to die for the sins of man and to reconcile man to God the Father. The Lord isn’t looking for religious people; He’s looking for people who will have a personal relationship with Him as Redeemer, Savior and Lord.

Being religious is of no value and is a man-made thing. God is much higher than religion. Religion is man looking for a higher authority, power or God; Christianity is about a relationship and it is God coming to man, not the other way around.

A series of intense mystical experiences forced me to reconsider. Not everyone had those types of encounters, or perceived the world in the same way—and that was OK. I embraced Hellenismos, a polytheist religion centered around the pantheon of ancient Greece. Modern Hellenismos has no creed. Instead of orthodoxy (right belief), it emphasizes orthopraxy (right practice) through reciprocal relationships with both Gods and other people.

Letting go of the “one truth” idea has allowed me to become a more tolerant, community-focused, and socially-oriented person. Part of that involves the values of my chosen faith, but it also stems from rejecting the underlying attitude I imbibed as a child. That stuck with me long after leaving the church, but this is a world of relationships, not black-and-white dichotomies. Figuring that out has allowed me to become a more whole and authentic person.

For more on the polytheist perspective in the 21st century, check out “Hellenismos – a living, modern religion,” a Patheos post by Cara Schulz:

One of the criticisms that neo-Pagans make about revived or reconstructed religions such as Hellenismos is that we live too much in the past and that our religion isn’t a living, evolving and relevant spirituality. That we are slaves to the past, treating our religion as a museum piece.

Frankly, sometimes this can be true. Sometimes we do spend too much time with books, losing ourselves in the minutia of the past. It can be difficult to see the relevancy of rituals and concepts from 1500 years ago as being valuable and vibrant in a much different time, place, and culture.

But this is how we see it—why reinvent the wheel when you can put some air in the one you’re given and get back on the spiritual path? There were reasons why our ancestors interacted with deities in the way that they did. Because it worked. It’s spiritually fulfilling. It makes sense. It allows for a deeper connection with deities and the world around you. It has meaning and depth and beauty. It is timeless. It vibrates in our very souls.

But the key is to regularly engage in rituals, observances and practices. To adhere as close to what the ancients did, in order to learn from their wisdom and experience, and then to translate that into a slightly more modern form that is still ‘true’ to its origins.

Schulz points to this wedding ceremony as an example of one of those rituals:

I was so lost when she told me that. I remember going for a walk, with many thoughts, not knowing what to do or what to think about. I was broken.

I went through a lot over the years. I didn’t trust anyone, I protected my heart from ever getting hurt, and when I did let someone in, my heart got broken. For the next 23 years, my life was still the same: broken. I got married, had kids, financial problems, numerous fights with my wife—to the point where she wanted a divorce. I didn’t want to lose her and the kids, but most importantly, I was tired of the person I was. I was tired of carrying my past on my back, and I was tired of trying to fix everything.

Then I went for a walk and, not knowing what to do next, got on my knees and started talking to Jesus. I told Him I was tired of my life and my past, tired of trying to fix everything in life. I told Him, “I’m tired and I give You my troubles, I give you my life, forgive me, I give you my heart,” with tears pouring out of my eyes.

Something happened that day... I asked my wife for forgiveness, I forgave my past, and I became a Christian. It wasn’t a choice of what religion to follow; it was a moment I had with Jesus that changed my life. He gave me a new life and filled my heart with His love that no religion can fill. He doesn’t want religion; He wants our heart. God wants a RELATIONSHIP.

I now know my purpose in this world, and I know where I’m going. My heart is at peace. Not because of what I did but because of what He did (on the cross). I now encourage anyone, no matter what you are going through in your life, to go for a walk and turn to Jesus, not religion.

After years of reflection, I’ve concluded that I will never stop wanting to believe in god, and that Jesus is the expression of god I choose to take seriously. However, I’m still in conflict with the institutional church (or the many institutions Christianity has begotten), because I haven’t found a congregation where I’m comfortable with the spirit and amount of doing-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you that’s going on, in addition to the common preoccupations of established Christian congregations. Reading Rachel Held Evans has provided me with a lot of perspective during the course of my searching. Nevertheless, I lack a Christian community, and I know it impoverishes my faith.

I also think there’s a human tendency to want to believe in some deity and to want to belong to at least one group. I think the greatest gift of Christianity can be the offer of membership in a tribe that is unselfish and welcomes any and all. It disturbs me when a Christian group is exclusive and excluding. I have found a renewed faith in believing that all should be welcomed by Christianity rather than believing that god will do good things for me. I hope the atheists and agnostics out there are finding communities where they are loved and accepted, too, and are welcoming to others.

Update from another reader, Ted:

Human beings are intelligent. They can’t help endlessly wondering about everything that surrounds them. My religious choice ended up between the comfort of faith or the reality of science. In truth this problem never goes away. Does the end of physical life mean the end of my existence and awareness of life? Does faith give me a way out of this problem? Yup, it does. So being confronted by this problem I will look for an alternative form of experience that transcends the  problem.

Enjoy life everyday you have it, practice self respect, listen more, talk less, care for others, stop complaining. See you in heaven ... maybe not.

I was fascinated by the depth and breadth of philosophy and esoteric teaching in the Kabbalistic universe. Mostly I was listening to audio teaching and reading books from the Chabad Chassidic world. I have now been studying Kabbalah for 11 years and considered converting to Judaism, but I’ve never done so, nor do I feel that I need to at this point.

I have recently been reading about Zoroastrianism and other lesser-known ancient religions of the Middle East and I am realizing that there is so much beauty and knowledge out there that I don’t ever want to limit myself to any one “Way.” I have gathered that the one takeaway from all that I have learned is that every person matters and we all have a role to play in the ultimate outcome of a utopian future that we create every day when we choose to love others and ourselves and look to bring beauty into the world through acts of lovingkindness (in Kabbalah called Tikkun Olam).

I really hate to see so much division and hatred that has happened throughout history done in the name of religious zeal, whether it was the Crusades or modern-day ISIS. I am now and plan to continue to always search and learn more about what makes us similar and brings us together as human beings rather than what divides us.

Sincerely,
Forever Searching

If you also have a relationship with Kabbalah that you’d like to talk about, please let us know.

I found myself habitually disillusioned and turned off by certain aspects of the faith, and I had a prescient sense that somehow, someway, this lifestyle would not extend much further than my adolescence. I didn’t quite have the knowledge or guts at the time to admit that I would reject the religion of my childhood—I thought it would be malleable enough to change with me—but I knew that it was unsustainable in its current state.

Dogma would rub me the wrong way. I doubted. I resented the treatment of women. (At a young age I once asked my mom why women couldn’t be deacons. She was blindsided by the question.) I was highly judgmental of the lack of critical thought and inquiry. I didn’t want to be associated with something so unabashedly anti-intellectual.

The final blow that led to my leaving organized religion behind came when I was about 17 years old. It was Sunday night and the church was voting on the budget for the upcoming year. The money that filtered into that atypically large church astounded me. The salaries! The power bill! The juice and animal crackers for children’s church!

As I scanned each line item I came to “landscaping” and nearly gasped when I saw the amount of money we spent on weeding flower beds and pruning shrubbery. I compared this to the category marked “benevolence,” which included services such as a food pantry for needy families, and noted that we allocated not even half the resources for benevolence as we did for landscaping.

This church was, to borrow a tired metaphor, nothing more than a social club. It left a sour taste in my mouth that lingers to this day.

I bee-bopped through my twenties largely indifferent to organized religion, much to my parents’ disappointment and pain. To paraphrase Amy Poehler: “Good for them! Not for me.” I thought that I was over it, that I had long ago reckoned with piety and found it wanting.

Imagine my surprise when, at the age of 26 and desperate to end my unhappy marriage, I found myself regurgitating the teachings of the church. Though I had moved away from religion having any major role in my life, I hadn’t quite let go of the teachings that had been ingrained in me from a young age. While I was miserable in my marriage to the point of suicidal depression, I thought it was wrong to end one’s marriage based on happiness alone, for this was the message sent to all members of the congregation: Your happiness is irrelevant in all walks of life, most especially your marriage. It had been years since I heard it last, but it had left a lasting mark.

My parents were in between a rock and a hard place, as it were. They bore witness to my slow fade, the ways in which I was deteriorating before their very eyes in both body and spirit. But to reject the teachings of their faith in order to support their daughter in this most obvious choice she needed to make proved to be a great challenge for them and therefore a great burden for me. I desperately wanted their permission and blessing to leave my husband. I wanted some sort of an acknowledgement that not only was leaving an okay thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.

While I did eventually garner enough of their support to feel buoyed throughout the separation and divorce, I never quite got them to the point of seeing that it was right.

My divorce presented me with some uncomfortable truths regarding my relationship to religion. The first was that I wasn’t as liberated as I once thought myself. While on the surface I was going about my life in a secular fashion, the old-time religion was still deep down there, resting peacefully until the time came for it to pop back up and remind me of the stronghold it still enjoyed over me. Ties that bind, indeed. I was to have my work cut out for me.

The second uncomfortable truth I came to acknowledge was that religion is not innocuous—indeed it’s often, if not always, the exact opposite. The things I was taught as a child did great damage to me and hindered my development as a self-actualized human being. I’d thought that the Evangelical doctrines were innocent enough from an individual perspective. I was wrong.

These two realizations pushed me off the fence I’d been perched on for almost a decade. I weighed my own experiences and the things that I had read and learned throughout my twenties regarding religion and decided that it is not innocent, it is not blameless, it does not have a monopoly on morality and ethics, and perhaps, just maybe, we would all be better off without it.

My dad was Jewish; my mom was Christian. They met in Nazi Germany and fell in love there. My dad and his siblings and parents escaped to Britain and the U.S.; my mom survived the war in Germany.

My parents reunited after the war when he came back as an American soldier and joined his family in the U.S. once he was allowed to marry an enemy. During my young childhood, I was immersed in my dad’s family, but his parents had both died by the time I was six and we moved away from the extended family.

Although my mom half-heartedly tried to interest me in religion (mostly because other families sent their kids to Sunday school in the 1950s), it didn’t take for very long. By the time I was 13, I had learned what all the whispering among adults had been during my childhood: the Holocaust—who died, who escaped, their lives before and after. It impacted me very hard.

As I got older and started to date, religion took on a new importance. Jews were concerned that I wasn’t Jewish enough but generally accepted me; Christians considered me a Jew. Culturally I was drawn to Jews, and most of the guys I dated were Jewish. The one Christian I dated seriously dumped me the moment he found out my dad was Jewish. I saw it in his eyes immediately. He just couldn’t tell his family (his dad was an Episcopal priest) that he was dating me. I never dated a Christian again.

I went on to marry a Jewish man whose family was as unreligious as my own. When our children were young I thought about converting for their sake, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it and my husband had zero interest in pushing them toward any religion. I had grown up in a cultural world that was heavily Jewish but religiously pretty agnostic. Those were my own tendencies and still are. It’s just not possible for me to pretend to believe what I don’t believe.

I also am repulsed by the people who believe that there is only one way to be Jewish and that is to be an ultra orthodox Jew. They remind me of those Christians for whom Christianity is limited to the most conservative fundamentalist sects and who want to limit the entire realm of Christianity to their own narrow beliefs.  So I’ll stay agnostic and remember the culture of both of my parents fondly even if I do see myself as more culturally and ethnically Jewish than Christian. Theirs was a very special union and reminds me that love can conquer—if not everything, an awful lot.

Here’s another Boomer reader, Mike, who, like darker-skinned Dylan, doesn’t look like most Jewish people—but in the opposite way:

I was born a Protestant and then my father died of polio. My mother re-married to a Jew and so at the age of 2, I became a Jew too. I got a Jewish-sounding last name. I lived in an increasingly Jewish neighbourhood, so the majority of my friends were Jewish and so I just went along as one. Not to be racist, but I did notice I didn’t seem to have the appearance of a Jew (blonde hair, blue eyes).

I never really did feel 100% acceptance, but I went along playing the role expected of me. I was even Bar Mitzvah’d, and this made my step-dad happy, as he fit in properly with the rest of his chosen Jewish community. My mother went along acting her part, which helped me do the same.

My upbringing always had me question this religious thing, being born into one ideology and then converting to another but never feeling accepted, feeling like an outsider. But I went along and felt I could continue to pull this charade off until one time at Synagogue during Yom Kippur time during yet another Israeli conflict. This rabbi, who was very accepted by the congregation, started talking about how the congregation should come together to support Israel in wartime and they passed the hat around to “buy weapons to kill Syrians.”

This is when I took pause to consider this whole religion thing. Something yet again just didn’t add up for me.

My last confirmation that these feelings of conflict and confusion were confirmed to me when the very Jewish high school and graduating class decided to have a reunion. I will never forget that when I received a letter from an old friend requesting “that we get together for lunch and that he would even call some OUR NON Jewish friends”!

I declined the invitation, and I went back to living a peaceful and fulfilling life in the community of the world around me. I was astounded yet amazingly relieved that I had escaped that world. To this day when I hear John Lennon’s “Imagine,” I still smile, knowing that we can independently find that world.

If you’re interested in more reading on the subject of Jewish identity, Abigail has you covered:

I don’t actually have a very good personal story for you. My own story involves giving up the Reform Judaism in which I was raised and pursuing an orthodox Jewish conversion. (My father is Jewish, not my mother, so only Reform Judaism considers me a Jew.) Dramatic though that choice has felt at times, it has come on so gradually that I cannot place a finger on the beginning or any particular turning point.

What I did want to tell you, though, is Rolling Stone magazine published a really thorough and incredible article by Ellen Willis in April 1977 which talks about this phenomenon of liberal Jews turning orthodox (“Next Year in Jerusalem”). Maybe you already know about it, or maybe it is of no use to you, and at any rate it is a bit dated now, but I just wanted to note it because a lot of what it talks about is still happening among American millennials.

Update from an old compatriot of mine, Max:

Hey Chris, long-time reader from back in the Dish days. I swear this isn’t intended as self-promotion (not least because I didn’t write anything I’m about to link to), but seeing all of the stories from Jews of mixed ethnic background made me feel like I needed to share.

I work for an organization that has been providing material assistance to Jews of Color (“JOCs” in our parlance) who are organizing themselves for greater recognition and leadership in American Jewish communities. They’re also pushing those majority-white communities to invest more heavily in confronting racism against people of color generally.

Last month, a lot of leaders in this growing movement held a national convening in New York. I thought some of your readers might be interested in seeing some of the output from that convening, which was covered in several Jewish media outlets, most thoroughly Jewschool.

I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, although as the son of a convert of German descent, my blond appearance also results in frequent, irritating comments on how I don’t “look” Jewish. (A tip for readers: just never, ever say that. Just don’t.) But although it’s outside my realm of personal experience, forming relationships with Jews of many ethnicities has been eye-opening and drives home for me how much work our communities have if we are going to be welcoming places for everyone who identifies as Jewish. I hope readers who are struggling with this will connect to Jewish Multiracial Network and the other organizations that hosted the national convening.

And if you’d like to connect with Notes to share your own personal struggle, the door is always open.