Introduction time

[joele]

I was born into a progressive Jewish family, though my father's relatives were orthodox and so I was sent to an orthodox Jewish school for primary school. That involved 1-2 periods of religious studies every day, on top of Hebrew studies. The teaching/attitude in the orthodox community was far from egalitarian, to say the least.

The progressive community on the other hand, that my father was rather heavily involved in (which in turn meant I was too growing up) was very different. We had female rabbis, gay marriages in synagogue before the state recognised them and open admission the torah was not handed down from god, but merely a chronicle of humanities (well Judaisms) search for 'him'.

The progressive movement actually sounds mostly OK overall, at least on the surface, but it was very confused, some rules/laws they want to follow because god said so, but they had already undermined god commanding anything. If the book is really just the search for god, why do they even start with the assumption there is a god at all? Just make it a community group and stop with the whole god thing. Add to that the intense zionism in the community and all the blind-spots that come with that and it never felt right.

I think I bounced in and out of religion until my 20s, never really being able to 'believe' in god much to my father chagrin, but wanting/trying to and wondering if something was wrong with me.

Long story short I also went to an Anglican high school, so had the displeasure of learning about Christianity too.

I think I finally walked away when my partner, who had said she would never convert (which didn't bother me), become interested in Judaism and started the conversion process. We went to classes together for the good part of a year, I kept questioning the rabbi and eventually just couldn't take it anymore and finally walked away for good.

So that was the end of trying to have a relationship with YHWH, one of the children of El and Asherah (Elohim) and god of war in the Canaanite pantheon, before his adoption by the Israelites and subsequent upgrade to the one 'true' god of the Abrahamic faiths.

I am an agnostic atheist in the sense that I cannot prove the negative and rule out the existence of any gods, but neither do I see any evidence whatsoever to justify believing in one. That said I know enough about the history of YHWH to be confident of the fact that his cults are false.

I joined the previous incarnation of this forum back in 2014 and I'm mostly just glad I am in the position to be able to host this version.