Your essay really spoke to me. I think the last time I put foot in a shul was when my father died and I wanted to say yahrzeit on the high holy days. I had never been religious, but I was hoping that performing a ritual in a communal setting would be a spiritual experience.
Because I wasn't a member of the congregation, and didn't want to pay a fee, I wasn't made to feel welcome, however. And so I've been disaffected from Judaism as a practice for several decades. It's easy to be Jewish without being spiritual in New York city, where I grew up, and I just got out of the habit of thinking about religion when I moved to Arizona.
Recently, however, I started writing about my mother's family in Vienna. It didn't make me more observant, but it did make me connect with the idea of Judaism as a matter of life and death, whether you choose to observe or not. That's certainly different from the typical American experience -- as you describe it so well.
Your essay really spoke to me. I think the last time I put foot in a shul was when my father died and I wanted to say yahrzeit on the high holy days. I had never been religious, but I was hoping that performing a ritual in a communal setting would be a spiritual experience.
Because I wasn't a member of the congregation, and didn't want to pay a fee, I wasn't made to feel welcome, however. And so I've been disaffected from Judaism as a practice for several decades. It's easy to be Jewish without being spiritual in New York city, where I grew up, and I just got out of the habit of thinking about religion when I moved to Arizona.
Recently, however, I started writing about my mother's family in Vienna. It didn't make me more observant, but it did make me connect with the idea of Judaism as a matter of life and death, whether you choose to observe or not. That's certainly different from the typical American experience -- as you describe it so well.