from white, California, Midwest-transplant, German/Norwegian, Lutheran/Protestant family (the type you would see on a suburban sitcom) with kids’ names like a sound-of-music knock-off (Greta, Fritz (III), Hans, and Kurt). she grew up well-off (doctor dad) and went to church growing up, got confirmed (or whatever it’s called). when I was young, she went to church on Sundays and took me with her. I seem to remember her bringing my dad only occasionally (maybe easter/Christmas type-of-thing). when the songs were going she’d sing from the pews, and her alto harmonies were always easy for me to pick out. as I mentioned, I went to Sunday school when I was little, and then at some point started going to the main service with her. the church was one of those big, Arizona-beige, air-conditioned giants (but not quite a mega-church) that had all sorts of ancillary buildings strewn across the “campus” and then one, big central sanctuary where the services were held. I remember we were often a little late (which I didn’t mind) and the pews had this rough fabric. from what I remember, things started with a sermon, and there were projectors that would put up certain scriptures on the walls while the guy (always a guy) up front was leading us through some sort of analysis/lesson. I remember being 1. bored, and 2. hungry. like I said, most of the time (if not all of the time) my dad was not there, so it would just be my mom and me. typically she would be at least a tiny bit dressed up, and as for me, I’ve got no idea, but I probably at least had to comb my hair. anyway, we would get in, shuffling forward during the end of the opening singing, and then the sermon-ish portion would start and I’d start wanting to sleep. So, often I’d lay down. with my head on my mom’s lap. when we’d have to stand for things I’d grumble a little and get up, and then as soon as we could sit, I’d lay down again. when it came time for the offering, certain people would get up and start making their way along the pews. each section had two people and they’d send some round-ish, purple-ish, velvet-ish bags with wooden handles down one row and up the next. I remember being interested to see who put money in the bags. sometimes my mom did, and sometime she didn’t. I was also always fascinated by how dark and soft the bags looked inside, and the way their handles would alternate directions as they were passed down the rows. toward the end of elementary school I remember getting increasingly frustrated with the messages at the church. they would make mocking comments about evolution, and make grand statements that rang empty for me. It was a big church but I don’t remember knowing anyone, and so it always felt anonymous. like nobody cared who you were. it was like walking into a mall and finding yourself in the same food-court with the other people who’d stopped there during their shopping trip. you all were there in the same place, likely for similar reasons, and yet you shared no immediate interest in each other. that type of coldness is how I remember this church. it was in a fancy part of town and though I don’t remember a lot of explicitly snoody things, I do remember that feeling of anonymity and social frigidity. anyway, at a certain point I just stopped going. I think I would have been 12-ish, middle school age. from what I remember, I don’t think there was any big discussion/argument/issue. I just told my mom I didn’t want to keep going and I stopped. at least that’s how I remember it. my mom kept going for a few years, but less frequently. I think that the anti-evolution stuff + the social vibe was a bitter taste in her mouth. that said, I don’t know that her choice to stop going to church had much to do with any shift in her faith. to be honest, I don’t know exactly what my mom believed. from what I could gather, she believed (and likely still does) in some sort of Christian god, some sort of Christian jesus, and some sort of divine, saving grace. I think that her adult faith is tied to her experience of being kicked by a horse when she was pregnant with me. Her long recovery, intense stress, and in-the-pits season of life was intense to say the least. I remember her telling me that she had some sort of spiritual experience while she was going through all that. some sort of awareness of god, but I don’t know the details. she was taken in by the sisters across the street who are a group of nuns (the evangelical sisters of mary) who live on and run a small campus (caanan in the desert) that is linked to a larger, international network of similar campuses whose “mothership” (so to speak) is in Germany. from my understanding, this particular organization began after world war II as a form of german Christian atonement for the horrors of the holocaust. thus, they have a special interest in celebrating Judaism, though I don’t fully understand their relationship (faith-wise) with Judaism. all this to say, they were lucky neighbors for my parents (a german Christian and a jew) to have at a critical moment in their lives. they had just bought my childhood house from an original homesteader resident (aka white settler), and were in the midst of a remodel that went wrong in every which way. my parents were on shaky ground financially and then my mom got kicked by a horse in her 6th month of pregnancy. ribs cracked, lung punctured, spleen ruptured. full-blown emergency. then a long period of recovering and waiting for me to be born (but trying to prevent me from being born too soon). at one point her diaphragm opened up and her stomach migrated into her chest cavity and she needed to have chest surgery. more time in the hospital. all this to say, shit times, and lots of stress about the maybe-baby (me). when I was finally born, and I was ok, there was the feeling of a miracle. I can understand why.

I think he fits the classic jewish-with-an-emphasis-on-the-ish type of mold. both of his bio-parents as well as his step-dad were jewish. my understanding is that his step-dad was actually the most religiously jewish of all of them, going to temple, knowing some Hebrew, etc. my dad never got bar mitzvahed, though, and he definitely doesn’t have any religious, faith-based connection to Judaism. in terms of memories of/attachments to Judaism when growing up, he told me that he remembers when his mom and step-dad got married, he was amazed by the glass getting stomped as a part of the ceremony. he also remembered going to temple a few times with his step-dad and not understanding any of the Hebrew. when his jewish friends were going to Hebrew school, he remembers being like “what’s the point…they don’t even know what they’re saying…they’re just learning the sounds…” When I came around, the primary way that my dad brought Judaism into my life was 1. through cinnamon-toast matza, 2. fried matzah (aka matzah brei), and 3. through having a menorah at Hanukkah, though to be fair, this very well could have been my mom’s doing. I remember we’d have a little nativity scene and a menorah next to each other on a little table near the Christmas tree. None of us knew much about Hanukkah let alone the prayers, so we’d get help from a friend who worked with my parents. Additionally, and most importantly, I remember him explicitly telling me that I could believe whatever I wanted, in other words “my love is not conditional on your faith.” this was important to hear as a young person. I vividly remember sitting in the hot-tub with my dad one night and him saying that there are a lot of religions that for the most part are all trying to tell you how to be a good person, but that you could be a good person without those religions too. while it’s maybe a rather simple observation, it struck me and helped me to think about how people (children) just like me are living in all parts of the world with their own traditions/frameworks/beliefs, and that none of them (us) were wrong for being who we were. sort of mushy. very broad-brush-strokes. but it was a helpful and formative moment for me. I also think that while my dad was not religious in any actively spiritual way, he did situate his jewishness as an oppositional identity to mainstream American Christianity. in other words, while he didn’t have a fleshed out articulation of what exactly he believed, let alone how that connected to Judaism (in the religious sense), he was sure that he was not a mainstream American Christian (i.e. why do we have to have “god” in the pledge of allegiance? type of stances). One of the things about mainstream (white) American Christianity (or at least the type I was exposed to as a young person growing up in north Phoenix), was its tendency to claim universality. It’s comfort occupying (and claiming) space within the political and social status quo. it’s assumption that they were the “normal.” if that bothered me, it certainly bothered my dad even more. to be honest, I’m not sure where his frustration, and at times animosity, stemmed from.

SPACE ROCK QUESTIONS [original questions here]
Answered by Dad

1. Do I believe in god…..

I don’t believe that there is some god or something adjacent to god.

2. What does god mean to me?

I think there may be some thing or someone up or out there that may have created things, but not anyone that is looking over each one of us to make sure we are doing right or acting right. I don’t think we should act or do right to satisfy a god. Instead, we do it to be a good person

3. There is no relationship between belief and certainty in my life now. I don’t think of these 2 in the same sentence.

4. What does belief mean?

I don’t have a religious belief that one has to follow. I do believe that if one is a good person, it may come back to help you in the future. Be nice to others, and others will hopefully be nice to you. I don’t believe any organized religion has to teach this belief. Unfortunately, there is a big question as to whether the others will be nice to you, but it is worth a try.

5. I don’t believe in god, and I am not convinced anyone can tell me anything that will make me believe that there is a god, and one god is better than the other. That one must follow a certain religion to be treated best by “the god” of choice.

6. Not for me

7. I have been to church with friends and family in the past and my wife most recently. It seems crazy to go to these sermons to hear how Christ is going to save you and he is the savior. I just wish these believers would think how it sounds to those that either don’t believe or don’t believe in Christ. It is a turn off for me to go to these services. I want to stand up and point out the hypocrisy. I believe there are many people that believe in their religion (Buddhists, or Hindus, Sikhs, etc) that don’t have Christ. If you believe that you have to believe in Christ to be saved…. What happens to all these other people?

8. I don’t believe my understanding (or lack of it) or relationship with god has changed over my life. Possibly, when I get closer to death, I will pray that I don’t go so soon.

9. I don’t pray, except when I hit a tennis ball and hope it goes in, I pray that it goes in, but I don’t pray to anyone or anything that it will go in. I just hope it goes in. I do feel that praying to an upper being may be useful if you believed in one, but I just don’t believe there is one.

10. I never learned to pray.

11. My parents did not bring me up to be religious. They offered that I could learn about religion, but they were not going to be the one to teach me. My brothers and sisters were non religious growing up, and all of us remained not religious, except for my sister. She became a born again Christian, and feels Christ is her savior. We don’t talk about it. We agree to disagree.

12. There is no contention in the family if one does not believe in it. As mentioned above, I don’t talk about it to my sister. My wife has gone to church in her life, and sometimes believes it is important, but I believe she has seen some of the hypocrisy of the church and she does not attend often. However, she felt strong enough about religion to have our son (you) baptized. I did not argue about it, I just went along. If it makes someone happy to believe in something, let them believe. I don’t think it harmed you in anyway to have this baptism done, so why not? To this day, I am not sure what it did.

13. I had been introduced to Judaism when growing up and went to church with some friends. I just never believed in all of the rules and passions that the different religions bring forth.

14. My faith or spiritualism has not grown. I have become more cynical and less trusting of people who say they are religious. I see this as a banner that people hide behind and often mislead people in their honesty.

15. I had a child (you). I did not push religion since I don’t know of it. I am not against having you learn of the different ones and you make your choices as to what you want to follow. However, I will continue to tell you my opinion about religion.

16. I have never dated someone that was ultra religious, so it has never come between me and a partner. I think I would be turned off by someone who was religious, so it would never get to that point.

17. It doesn’t

18. This is too heavy for me. I don’t believe so it really has no relationship to all these things mentioned.

19. Be kind, Enjoy life, you only get to live once.

20. I don’t believe in souls, or maybe I should say I don’t know what to believe in souls. Maybe they exist, but if I don’t know about them, or can influence what they do, why should I worry about them. It is like religion. If people want to believe in it, let them. As long as it does not affect me. Be kind, Enjoy life! You only get to live once.