We're both Jewish [View all]
I am the daughter of Jewish parents who were children of Jewish parents who were children of Jewish parents. I went to Sunday School, flirted with a Bas Mitzvah but didn't get one. I toured Germany and Austria, visiting a vandalized synagogue in Augsburg and Dachau. And I "lost God". I literally left the religion during the Yom Kippur service in 1984. And now I am an atheist. But I'm still Jewish.
Compare my situation to that of a dear childhood friend.
He discovered after his parents' deaths that he was adopted. His (adoptive) parents raised him as a Conservative Jew. As an adult, he took the Ancestry DNA test and not one drop of Jewish blood. That raised flags. He found his biological parents, both non-Jews. My friend is modern Orthodox. He immigrated to Israel and lives in a West Bank settlement. He went to the Israeli rabbis to see if he still qualified as a "Jew" notwithstanding the bris and the bar mitzvah, Jewish wedding, raising a Jewish family. They deemed he was Jewish according to Israeli law (and Jewish law).
So here we both are: I'm born Jewish and have no faith and my friend was born non-Jewish and more Jewish in his life than I could ever expect to be. His faith is sincere and unfaltering.
We're both Jewish.
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