Link (Archive)
I didn’t much fancy doing that, so I played what I thought was my trump card. “So sorry to tell you this, rabbi,” I said, thinking I’d better break it to him gently, “but I’m an atheist.”
“So am I!” he said brightly.
This took me aback, but only for a second, as it fits my sense that all Jews are really atheists. Jewishness is much more about culture and tradition and ritual than it is about God. This may be true for other minorities, but not for the majority religion, for one simple reason: Christians — at least Church of England ones — have never been persecuted. When Jews, or any other minority, talk about identity, it always carries with it associations of survival. The old joke Jews make at the start of any big Jewish festival — and will be making this week as they sit down to the Seder, the meal that celebrates Passover — is: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat. It’s funny, but it points to something Protestants in the UK cannot feel: at one time these rituals could only be conducted in secret and their continuance fought for in the face of eradication.
There is perhaps a relationship between this and something I read last week, which is that a quarter of churches hold no Sunday service. It is a stark thing to consider on Easter Day. But the emptying of churches now may, paradoxically, have something to do with Christianity’s historical dominance. Christianity is the child of Judaism. It went on to completely outclass its parent in popularity because it contains a very clear and relatable idea of God. Jesus, the cross-breeding of God and man, is a brilliant conceit — it creates a worship that is also a kind of empathy, a unique combination of adoration and identification. In contrast, the God of the Old Testament is a kind of cantankerous mist. The literalness of Christianity’s vision of God is part of its appeal.
The same literalness made my Catholic friend Frank Skinner once say to me he was terrified of “burning in hellfire” for committing the sin of adultery (technically — he was divorced at the time).
But success — at least in a country where no one is compelled any more, either by force or indoctrination, to believe in the primary religion — can breed complacency. Conversely, people hold on more fervently to religion in the face of persecution.
In his televised history The Story of the Jews Simon Schama talks about the exile of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and says this about how the diaspora survived: “There were some things that could not be taken from the Jews. Their language, their music, their poetry, their richly spiced, gorgeous cooking. And above all, of course — inside their heads, inside their hearts, inside their little books, inside all the things designed for portability and endurance — their religion.” They survived because of their tenacity, their closed-community systems, their ability to move geographically when they needed to. But the expression of their survival was the religion.
Which may be why I — a fundamentalist atheist, as I call myself in my new book, The God Desire — still sometimes perform these rituals. I may not fancy going to light my local rabbi’s menorah, but in our house we celebrate Passover and Chanukkah. Saying all that stuff in the prayer book makes you feel more Jewish, and there are times, threatened times, when you need to feel that, regardless of the reality or otherwise of Hashem (God). Protestants in the UK, never having known what it might mean not to survive as a community, do not — I assume — feel this particular psychological urgency.
I used to say that being a Jewish atheist meant I don’t believe in God but I do believe in Larry David. Which means that for me being a Jew is more about comedy than prayer. But David’s masterpieces, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, with their obsession with the minutiae of human experience, have been described, correctly, as a kind of “dark Talmud”. (The Talmud being the enormous record of oral arguments about the meaning of Jewish laws and the Old Testament, a book in which minutiae has never been more minute.)
The religion hangs around. Being a cultural Jew still involves knowledge of — interacting with, being ironic about, having a comic take on — the religion. Sometimes the irony falls away. A friend of mine — a man of science, an atheist — whose son died tragically young sang Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, at the funeral. In English the words — which begin, “Magnified and sanctified be Your name, O God, throughout the world” — are, for me, meaningless. It is the usual endless, OCD-ish repetition of praise, the desperate hope that if you say something enough a fragment might get through the ether. I do not find it moving.
But with the Hebrew you don’t have to know what it means. Yit-gadal v’yit-kadash sh’may raba: the sound carries the association of the ancient alphabet, which I can read because I had to learn it at my Jewish primary school. At the burial of a son, just the sound — the ancient music, the sonic pain — connects you, the atheist Jew praying and the atheist Jew listening, with centuries of tradition and suffering and defiance. I knew I would do the same in my friend’s terrible place.
This is all in the service of saying that I’m an atheist who knows what religion means; how it comforts and sustains and tells us key stories about ourselves, without the necessity of literal truth. I am as possessed as anyone else by the God desire — a need to feel there is something greater than ourselves, something that will survive us, that gives our lives meaning.
Religion may no longer preside over society, but that desire persists, and we find it satisfied now outside religion. Football, for example, fills a God-shaped hole. It makes you feel connected to something outside yourself. It is, in a small way, eternal. It has songs and colours and uniforms and high priests and objects of worship. And it provides identity, which, more than ever, is what we all seem to seek. But it is only one of many, many ways — think, perhaps, of that long, reverent queue past the Queen’s coffin last September — in which we find new ways to worship.
I am as much in need of wonder and magical thinking and eternal yearning as the next atheist, but perhaps just happier to admit it. Which may be why in our house we also celebrate Christmas and Easter. Who cares about God when there’s chocolate to be eaten? Besides, no one is going to tell me that the Bunny isn’t real.
Why I’m a fundamentalist atheist
Since we’re coming up to Easter, let me start with an anecdote from last Chanukkah. In early December I got a phone call from my local rabbi. I wasn’t even aware that I had a local rabbi. Nonetheless, he’d somehow got hold of my number, and launched straight in with a request for me to come and light a big menorah — that candelabra thing you’ve seen in Jewish houses, only a giant version — that was going to be standing outside the synagogue this year.I didn’t much fancy doing that, so I played what I thought was my trump card. “So sorry to tell you this, rabbi,” I said, thinking I’d better break it to him gently, “but I’m an atheist.”
“So am I!” he said brightly.
This took me aback, but only for a second, as it fits my sense that all Jews are really atheists. Jewishness is much more about culture and tradition and ritual than it is about God. This may be true for other minorities, but not for the majority religion, for one simple reason: Christians — at least Church of England ones — have never been persecuted. When Jews, or any other minority, talk about identity, it always carries with it associations of survival. The old joke Jews make at the start of any big Jewish festival — and will be making this week as they sit down to the Seder, the meal that celebrates Passover — is: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat. It’s funny, but it points to something Protestants in the UK cannot feel: at one time these rituals could only be conducted in secret and their continuance fought for in the face of eradication.
There is perhaps a relationship between this and something I read last week, which is that a quarter of churches hold no Sunday service. It is a stark thing to consider on Easter Day. But the emptying of churches now may, paradoxically, have something to do with Christianity’s historical dominance. Christianity is the child of Judaism. It went on to completely outclass its parent in popularity because it contains a very clear and relatable idea of God. Jesus, the cross-breeding of God and man, is a brilliant conceit — it creates a worship that is also a kind of empathy, a unique combination of adoration and identification. In contrast, the God of the Old Testament is a kind of cantankerous mist. The literalness of Christianity’s vision of God is part of its appeal.
The same literalness made my Catholic friend Frank Skinner once say to me he was terrified of “burning in hellfire” for committing the sin of adultery (technically — he was divorced at the time).
But success — at least in a country where no one is compelled any more, either by force or indoctrination, to believe in the primary religion — can breed complacency. Conversely, people hold on more fervently to religion in the face of persecution.
In his televised history The Story of the Jews Simon Schama talks about the exile of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and says this about how the diaspora survived: “There were some things that could not be taken from the Jews. Their language, their music, their poetry, their richly spiced, gorgeous cooking. And above all, of course — inside their heads, inside their hearts, inside their little books, inside all the things designed for portability and endurance — their religion.” They survived because of their tenacity, their closed-community systems, their ability to move geographically when they needed to. But the expression of their survival was the religion.
Which may be why I — a fundamentalist atheist, as I call myself in my new book, The God Desire — still sometimes perform these rituals. I may not fancy going to light my local rabbi’s menorah, but in our house we celebrate Passover and Chanukkah. Saying all that stuff in the prayer book makes you feel more Jewish, and there are times, threatened times, when you need to feel that, regardless of the reality or otherwise of Hashem (God). Protestants in the UK, never having known what it might mean not to survive as a community, do not — I assume — feel this particular psychological urgency.
I used to say that being a Jewish atheist meant I don’t believe in God but I do believe in Larry David. Which means that for me being a Jew is more about comedy than prayer. But David’s masterpieces, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, with their obsession with the minutiae of human experience, have been described, correctly, as a kind of “dark Talmud”. (The Talmud being the enormous record of oral arguments about the meaning of Jewish laws and the Old Testament, a book in which minutiae has never been more minute.)
The religion hangs around. Being a cultural Jew still involves knowledge of — interacting with, being ironic about, having a comic take on — the religion. Sometimes the irony falls away. A friend of mine — a man of science, an atheist — whose son died tragically young sang Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, at the funeral. In English the words — which begin, “Magnified and sanctified be Your name, O God, throughout the world” — are, for me, meaningless. It is the usual endless, OCD-ish repetition of praise, the desperate hope that if you say something enough a fragment might get through the ether. I do not find it moving.
But with the Hebrew you don’t have to know what it means. Yit-gadal v’yit-kadash sh’may raba: the sound carries the association of the ancient alphabet, which I can read because I had to learn it at my Jewish primary school. At the burial of a son, just the sound — the ancient music, the sonic pain — connects you, the atheist Jew praying and the atheist Jew listening, with centuries of tradition and suffering and defiance. I knew I would do the same in my friend’s terrible place.
This is all in the service of saying that I’m an atheist who knows what religion means; how it comforts and sustains and tells us key stories about ourselves, without the necessity of literal truth. I am as possessed as anyone else by the God desire — a need to feel there is something greater than ourselves, something that will survive us, that gives our lives meaning.
Religion may no longer preside over society, but that desire persists, and we find it satisfied now outside religion. Football, for example, fills a God-shaped hole. It makes you feel connected to something outside yourself. It is, in a small way, eternal. It has songs and colours and uniforms and high priests and objects of worship. And it provides identity, which, more than ever, is what we all seem to seek. But it is only one of many, many ways — think, perhaps, of that long, reverent queue past the Queen’s coffin last September — in which we find new ways to worship.
I am as much in need of wonder and magical thinking and eternal yearning as the next atheist, but perhaps just happier to admit it. Which may be why in our house we also celebrate Christmas and Easter. Who cares about God when there’s chocolate to be eaten? Besides, no one is going to tell me that the Bunny isn’t real.
Last edited:
