What does it mean to be religious?

This post originally appeared in my old blog about a year ago.


I have seen people throw the words "religious" and "secular" around quite a bit lately, especially in reference to Judaism, and I have asked if they can explain what these words mean.  Of course, they cannot, and there's a reason for that.  They don't mean anything.

I have asked a number of the Jews I know whether they would call themselves "religious" and they find the question too difficult to answer.  That is because the Hebrew language really has no word for, nor a concept of religion.  Most Americans' ideas about religion are based on their knowledge of Christianity, which  essentially sees itself as a "faith" or system of belief.  One is a Christian because one believes in the religion called Christianity.  One is a Muslim because one believes in the religion called Islam.  One is a Buddhist because one believes in the religion called Buddhism.

I can't say much about Christianity, and even less about Islam or any other religion, but being Jewish in not about accepting a set of doctrines.  Unless one converts to the Jewish religion, one is a Jew because one's mother was a Jew, and her mother before her was a Jew, and her mother before her, going back into the mists of time, either to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel or to some ancestor who became a Jew and so merged his or her family's history with that of the Children of Israel.  The great-great grandparents who came from the little Polish shtetl in steerage, passed through Ellis Island, settled on New York's Lower East Side, joined the garment workers' union and the Arbeter Ring, subscribed to the פֿאָרװערטס, and ate kosher pastrami on seeded rye with a half sour pickle every day didn't need to establish their Jewish credentials for anybody, and if they ate treyf every day of their lives and never set foot in a synagogue, they knew they were Jewish enough.

Many American (and Israeli) Jews might describe themselves as "culturally Jewish," whatever that means.  They might say they celebrate the holidays and follow the ethical teachings of Judaism but ignore the religious  commandments.  But where does one draw the line between culture and religion?  Is following the Jewish dietary laws a religious choice if one's decision to do so is based on social motivations and not on any belief in God?  Religion, language, and diet are all aspects of culture.  Someone once told me that if one takes the religion out of Jewish culture, all that's left is the hole in the bagel.

Even if one does practice the Jewish religion, there are different varieties of that.  One might apply the word "religious" to anyone who belongs to or attends a synagogue regularly, be it Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Orthodox.  Or one might apply it only to Orthodox or "Ultra Orthodox."  But what of the man who participates in daily prayers and who keeps strictly kosher, but whose personal theological views run more toward agnosticism or atheism?  Or the "deeply spiritual" New Age practitioner of her own yoga prayer rooted in Buddhist meditation and Kaballalistic tradition?