
The double life of Hasidic atheists - swolchok
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-double-life-of-hasidic-atheists/
======
modeless
I find myself jealous of these people. For the price of a little hypocrisy,
you get to be part of a very supportive community. You get structure for your
life, a large number of social gatherings, and a big pool of potential friends
and romantic partners. I almost considered going to church just for that
reason (back when I was in college and friends with a lot of devout
Christians), but I couldn't stomach the hypocrisy of going to church as an
atheist.

Perhaps somebody could start an "atheist church", but the concept is
unpalatable to me. I don't want atheism to define my life in the same way
belief defines the life of religious adherents. I don't want to attend atheist
classes or listen to an atheist preacher or be around evangelical atheists. I
just want a large community of people who stick together, follow a common
moral code, support each other, and have regular social events.

~~~
seanp2k2
TL;DR especially in large metro areas, there are lots of other groups doing
fun stuff, so I don't think (church - theism) is necessary (but it is an
interesting idea).

Churches aren't the only way to meet people. Festivals are great if you're in
California; there's basically at least one a month if you're looking. If
that's not your scene, there are tons of various meet-ups around. Not quite
the same as religion, but some are really organized and dedicated.

Group exercise was my thing for a few years; cycling groups are great because
you get to spend lots of time outside getting in [better] shape, and the
people are generally friendly / interesting in my experience. Sailing is
really fun too if you find the right club. "Yacht club" might not immediately
sound like something you want to be involved in, but Cal Sailing Club at
Berkeley marina, for example, is different. It's a co-op ($100 per quarter for
membership, they have their own boats) with a really friendly and community-
oriented atmosphere.

~~~
sliverstorm
Festivals etc aren't quite suited. Studies have shown that friendship etc
forms best when you both "have" to be there, and regularly see eachother at
these events. I'm not describing this eloquently, but basically Sunday church
and weekday K-12 education are both _prime_ substrate for forming strong
friendship, while random run-ins at festivals and concerts are decidedly not.

Considering the decline in church attendance in young adulthood, and the fact
that you don't attend grade school anymore, small wonder strong friendship is
harder to come by.

------
ars
One interesting thing is that even if they did tell people they were Atheist,
but continued observing Judaism with action, nothing much would happen.

They would not be shunned or anything.

Judaism is much more concerned with actions than thought, it's also more
concerned with this world than with heaven.

There is a saying from the Talmud that "a person who acts without belief will
eventually come to believe". Meaning that's it's perfectly fine to do the
action without the intent, even for years, even for their whole life. Not just
OK, but actually encouraged.

(They saying applies also to smaller things than belief, for example someone
who gives charity not to help someone, but because they like being praised is
still lauded for their action. Eventually they will come to give charity to
help someone, rather than for what they get from it.)

~~~
davemel37
"Judaism is much more concerned with actions than thought"

This is at best an out of context understanding and at worst a complete
distortion of the Jewish faith.

"Service of the heart" is the core obligation of Judaism. Every single morning
and evening Jews say the Shma which states the primary commandment of Judaism
is to "Love G-d with all your heart, all your soul(personality), and all your
resources..."

Maimonides has his twelve tenants of faith, which are all about belief and not
at all about action.

Love and Faith are about connecting with and understanding G-d.

All the actions and commandments are tools for reaching spiritual connection
and understand G-d with more clarity.

It is almost entirely a spiritual based faith...

The quote you reference, which for the life of me, I cannot recall as being
accurate...certainly only means that behavior can influence belief.

We can form habits by behaving a certain way and we can come to believe
certain things that are consistent with our behavior...The idea that Judaism
is more concerned with action over thought is patently FALSE!

That being said, you can make the argument that some Jews today are more
concerned with aesthetics than with true belief...but that is a shortcoming in
their faith, and hardly a representation of what Judaism or the Torah teaches.

All that being said, a well rounded, Torah observant Jew, regardless of their
denomination will have a healthy balance of faith, moral compass, and action
that leads to living an optimal, healthy, happy, meaningful life to the
fullest.

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't know if this is your intent, but you have in an instant completely
flipped Judaism from something interesting to this agnostic, to something
completely dead-end and not worth pursuing.

A compromising approach is accessible. A hard-line "nothing less than absolute
and total devotion is even worth considering, and therefore fundamentally not
worth your time" is not. Where is the unsure, dubious, or curious individual
to even _begin_ , if all that is even _acceptable_ is absolutely unwavering,
unshaking, unhesitating prostration?

I realize teachings don't care what is accessible and what is not. I'm not
trying to tell you what should be taught. But, just, if you ever wonder why it
is shrinking instead of growing- FYI.

~~~
davemel37
I must have failed to communicate clearly. Let me explain. The fundamental
purpose of life according to Judaism is about striving towards personal
perfection and growth(Tikun Olam).

Striving towards being the key terms.as long as you are trying, you are
serving your purpose on your own level. This is actually what ars was talking
about...it's better to act without belief than to not act...my only point was
not to lose focus on the end goal.

If I had to explain it without religion from the simple perspective of seeking
truth. I would say," since intellect is driven by will(we only learn something
if we want to, we only seek the answer to a question we care about, etc...)how
can we seperate out our personal bias and desires and subjective needs from
the absolute truth we all so desperately seek?"

Almost all the mitzvos in the Torah and ritual activities Jews partake in are
about selflessness and finding ways to root out personal bias so you can see
the truth. If you have to pray before biting into an Apple, you are
essentially putting G-ds will ahead of your own desire to eat.

By nurturing this sensitivity and willingness to seek truth from outside
yourself and your own research, you can be more objective and find absolute
truth.

Think about a science experiment where you start with only one hypothesis. You
can easily find evidence to confirm your hypothesis, but it won't prove
anything scientifically because you didn't compare hypothesis to see if the
evidence can support other hypothesis as well.

In order to maximize on personal relationships, life, etc... You need to root
out your personal emotions and bias as much as possible...

That's all Judaism is about... rooting out subjective bias to seek truth in an
effort to achieve personal growth.

This requires a willingness to trust others before you and recognize that if
you only behave based on what you fully understand you will be acting on bias.
So, we do lots of things we don't quite understand trusting our parents,
grandparents, etc...as we seek to understand more and more.

------
rdtsc
> The last time she showed signs of non-conformist behaviour, her husband
> consulted the community leaders. They sent her to see a mental health
> specialist, who medicated her. ‘The mental illness card has been used often
> in cases like mine,’ she wrote. She has since seen another mental health
> specialist; he gave her a clean bill of health.

That is pretty brutal. "Mental health" was often used by opressive regimes to
discredit and punish dissidents. In the Soviet Union they would do that to
religious figures (Orthodox Christian priests and political dissidents). The
card then was flipped. The religious figures were basically considered
"mentally ill" for believing that God exists, and they would be subjected to
heavy doses of medications in order to "snap them out of it" in hopes they
would see the truth. Of course, the true underlying reason was to remove them
from public life so they don't spread those ideas, and as a side-effect
torture to punish them so others may learn their lesson from it..

~~~
ars
It's more likely that he really did think she had a problem and was trying to
help. Not that he was trying to abuse the medical system to get his way.

~~~
hueving
It's doubtful that a person in a position of that power and responsibility is
that stupid.

~~~
salgernon
I've been forever scarred - in a good way - by the James Burke series "the day
the universe changed". In I think the penultimate episode he explains as we
watch a dramatization of a witch being tried and burned at the stake that the
people perpetrating the horrible act truly believed that they were doing a
good thing. That their reality included witches and Devils and gods and that
they were doing this woman a favor for her immortal soul.

It sounds rediculous to us today but sending someone to be medicated because
they don't adhere to your particular belief system seems right in line with
that kind of thinking. (To say nothing of religions that practice exorcism,
Rebirthing and eschewing gluten. )

Personally I wonder what beliefs we hold today will be absolutely appalling to
our descendants 400 years from now. Probably eating meat (and I say this as
someone that is in now way pro-veg, and I eat meat all the time - I just
suspect we will find that our current working theories of animal behavior will
prove that we are morally responsible for great pain in other sentient
beings.) because our society keeps it acceptable in our perceived (or imposed)
reality.

------
rumcajz
Also see "Caught in the pulpit", about preachers turned atheists yet unable to
quit. One of the authors of the book is Daniel Dennett, one of the most
inspiring rationalist contemporary philosphers.

[http://www.amazon.com/Caught-The-Pulpit-Leaving-
Belief/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/Caught-The-Pulpit-Leaving-
Belief/dp/0615927904)

------
__david__
It's interesting how this mirrors other religions. I've read forums where
Mormons openly talk about losing their faith and there's a lot of people that
just decide to fake it because they love their spouse and their kids and they
don't want the inevitable rift to tear apart their family. And there are
definitely stories from people who ended up confessing to their spouse,
resulting in the spouse divorcing them and the community rallying around the
spouse, with former church friends just cutting off contact.

That's basically their entire lives—with that much at stake, it's no wonder
people just pretend. And (most) Mormons aren't nearly as orthodox as Hassidim
(anecdotally it seems the friends and family cutting off contact thing is
mostly Utah Mormons—places where the Mormon population is lower don't appear
to have as many of those types of issues, though there are definitely outliers
in both cases)

From what I've heard, Jehovah's Witnesses also have a very hard time—even
family members are encouraged to shun a person who has been disfellowshipped.

Peer pressure can really suck.

~~~
joshdance
I am a Mormon and cutting off contact and shunning someone is definitely an
outlier. That is not what we believe nor teach. In fact in the most recent
worldwide training (called General Conference which happens every 6 months)
there were two trainings, or talks given about reaching out to and supporting
those who had left the church. Believing in Jesus Christ means we try and act
like Him. And it is clear what he would do. “What man of you, having an
hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in
the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” (Luke
15:4). Of course individual actions and reactions will vary and shunning and
ostracizing might unfortunately happen a lot, but that is not at all what the
Church teaches or hopes for.

------
ronenlh
I am in that boat and the description was one on one of what happened to me. I
also got the paradigm shift from Maimonides. My community believes in
geocentrism because it is written in Maimonides halachik works, and his
philosophica works are semi-prohibited to study. One i saw in the latter one
that he paraphrased Aristotle in his geocentrism, and in all his "science" I
saw that I was in the wrong side of thruth, since my Rabbis weren't "truthful"
regarding where our truth cones from. Then all the other questionable premises
fell like a house of cards and so the entire dogma. I can step into a
synagogue without a raging internal monologue about the solar system.

------
guard-of-terra
Heh he heh.

In Russia, in sociological surveys there's this recurring result that 20-30%
of those who say they are Orthodox Christian also say they don't believe in
God. Another 20-30% don't believe in Heaven or Hell.

Go figure what's in those people's heads.

~~~
krapp
Religion is as much about conforming to cultural and social norms as anything
spiritual. Church is more important than family and country in some places,
and not easy to just walk away from.

------
JesperRavn
_> [Athiests who reveal themselves] risk losing their children, especially in
New York State, where custody is often given to the more religious parent._

Interesting, I wonder why that would be? Is it because American courts are
biased towards religious people in general? But in that case, wouldn't a
liberal state like New York be less biased? Could it possibly be because of
bias of courts in New York towards the Jewish community?

~~~
ars
It's an inaccurate statement. More accurately the courts award custody to the
parent that did not change in religiosity.

In this case it's the more religious parent, but it can be the reverse in
other cases.

~~~
mercurial
> More accurately the courts award custody to the parent that did not change
> in religiosity.

Why?

~~~
patmcc
Stability is generally rewarded - sudden drastic changes to a primary parent's
living situation, religion, employment, etc. is not seen as great for
children. Also, sudden shifts in behaviour can happen because of serious
mental illness (not saying that's true here), which courts would
understandably be worried about.

If a family was mostly happy, healthy, and stable, and one parent decided to
leave the family and make drastic changes (to a new
religion/community/city/whatever), the safe thing would probably be to leave
the kids with the piece of the family that hasn't drastically changed. Most of
the time, anyway.

------
shmerl
Materialistic rationalism is so outdated. Have these folks heard of Kant? Even
Jewish thinkers (Hasidic and non Hasidic alike) viewed him with respect.

------
JackFr
[http://rabbisedley.blogspot.com/2012/08/richard-feynman-
meet...](http://rabbisedley.blogspot.com/2012/08/richard-feynman-meets-
rabbinical.html)

