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For People Who Identified as Atheist and Became More Observant. How Do You Describe Yourself? Believer? Post-Atheist? God-Fearing Atheist?
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I don't think it's very organized or very uniform. It's just a pattern I've noticed with younger jewish people - especially Jewish women and queer people - over the last 5 years or so. I think the best way to put it would be, like how much of queer cultural discourse, research and study from within the community is done online via forums, social media, Reddit groups, video essays, group chats, and meeting at conventions and events the same is happening with this movement.

It's not a movement driven by Rabbi or academics but by individuals themselves coming to these places and finding others that share similar ideas but disagree on certain points debating and building a general understanding of one another while still accepting the differences in practice and belief as wholly valid interpretations.

In a lot of ways it's far more like the way Judaism evolved and was discussed amongst the literate of the First Temple and Second Temple periods where a Rabbi was simply someone who dedicated a lot of their time and work to Torah study as opposed to other pursuits and eventually became a mentor, doctor, lawyer, and educator amongst their local community than a rigid and academically structured title or role. Keep in mind with this comparison that Priests - Kohenim - were a totally separate thing from Rabbi at the time and held a very different role in religion and society.

In some ways modern Rabbi are closer in training, work, and social status, to Kohenim than what Rabbi were when the Talmud and Tanakh were compiled.

I was atheist for a while, but I'm now very connected with my culture and history and traditions. That includes religious practice and study.

I find myself fitting into what I see as newly forming and less organized streams of Neo-Traditionalist and Ethno-Cultural Judaism. I'd say the split in this I've observed is: - Neo-Pagan Judaism (Reconstructionist Yahwism) focused on revival of pre-babylonian theology and practice. Resurrecting Judaism as it was before the first colonial conquests as a way of reclaiming identity from the history of oppression and as an opposition to antisemitism and exclusionary & mysogenystic mystical sects (such as Hasidic & Kabbalah mysticism). This seems to be driven mostly women - especially queer women - and takes on a much more holistic view of texts including study of works that were excluded from the final Babylonian Talmud and Tanakh. This group tends towards a polytheistic interpretation with a Monolatrist or Theological Hierarchy of worship structure (Y-W- at the top and all other angels, demons, and Israelite deities subservient agents or specific aspects of Y-W- but still of divine power and capacity).

  • Cultural-Historical Reconstructionist Judaism: A stream that is primarily focused on uncovering the non-theological history of our people, and learning all aspects of our traditions, how they began, why they were preserved; which traditions weren't preserved, and how Halacha has evolved over time - especially with the influence of Rome, Roman Law, and the Diaspora. Many people in this stream are non-practicing, and atheist or agnostic.

  • Non-epistotheological Judaism: Often people who wind up here describe themselves as agnostic but it seems to go deeper than that. In this group appearance tends to be almost identical to the Cultural-Historical Reconstructionist stream. The big difference is instead of just not really worrying about religious practice or being atheist the people in this group take the stance that it is not possible to prove the existence or nonexistence of divinity or Y-W-. In this group a lot of people are somewhat practicing as they can or feel it improves their lives, and take a lot of joy in studying which elements of Judaism that are from Cultural roots and which are from Theological roots, and then using that knowledge to improve their understanding and means observance in a modern society.

I would say all of these are really part of one mahor stream, with the sub-variations being just on what level of mysticism and epistotheology the individual practitioner adopts for themselves.

I'd describe the group as "Decolonial-Revival Judaism" as the largest trend among all of them is learning what Judaism was like before the Roman oppression, Diaspora, and 2000 years of Pogroms and Genocides. It also has an attitude of "Fuck letting evil oppressors change my culture and religion to suit their needs, and fuck assimilation; I'm proud of my history and I will re-discover my ancestral history and religion."

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11 months ago