Gwen Glazer | Washington, D.C. | Jewish

To set the stage, let's begin with an image of Judaism a la fifth grade: You're in a classic basement classroom of a synagogue. Its clicky checkered linoleum floor and paint-peeling walls are outdated to say the least (although at the time you didn't notice consciously and later you'll find it nostalgically appealing). There are exposed pipes and scratchy old blackboards and lots and lots of collective boredom, an almost-tangible ether in the hallways.

In this classroom, Sunday School is a horror, pretty much — not an active but a passive one involving a lot of apathy and time-killing, skills that have been honed from the first day you stepped into your first Sunday School classroom. (Note: your mother says this is revisionist history and that you didn't hate it that actively for that long, but hey, it's your memory.)

This morning's jailer is generally agreed to be the best, nicest teacher at Sunday School. Mr. Goldstein also teaches night classes in Yiddish in the same basement room. Mr. Goldstein is probably 60-ish, of medium build with average hair, and very kind. He looks like God.

You have learned a bit of Jewish history and culture. You have learned a little about God by this point, although He doesn't enter into your Hebrew school curriculum that much; by fifth grade everyone is gearing up for full-swing Bat/Bar Mitzvah preparation. There used to be a bunch of stories that never seemed too relevant to Hydrox cookies and waiting for the clock to strike noon to signal your freedom — but you gleaned from those stories that God was not female and He did have a white beard and live in the sky, although no one ever really said that specifically.

You have learned a heck of a lot about the Holocaust. You have learned to be quicker at sounding out Hebrew words — it cannot be considered reading because you don't know what the words mean, but no one seems to mind much. You have this suspicion that the words thmselves don't actually have meanings anyway, that they're more like a code to figure out something a very distant person once knew.

I know that this is far, far form a universal experience, that I am the only person who would tell this particular story — even the five or six other people in my class would probably not remember it this way. And it's not a condemnation of those teachers (especially Mr. Goldstein, because we loved him). They were doing the best they could, and our Sunday School prisons were built by our own hands. I later found much in Jewish education — history, language, even a little Talmud study — that I could have begun to uncover then, and who knows, maybe the seeds of my later interest were planted during that time.

But I still spend time with that image from childhood because I know so many Jews, especially young people, who are wrapped up in definitions. Specifically for me, the question becomes if it's okay to practice ritual without believing — really believing — in the Jewish God who supposedly laid down those rules. Are you still Jewish if you don't? Because when it comes down to the Jewish definition of God, I'm not sure. I understand the history, the morality, the familial ties. I understand the power of ritual and cultural continuity. This cafeteria-style Judaism that I have personally adopted seems to studiously ignore whether or not you believe in God, and that's kind of a relief.

I think, maybe, that you don't have to believe in God, and definitely not the biblically Jewish concept of God, to be a practicing Jew. That must seem perfectly ridiculous — not to mention blasphemous — to devout Jews. But it's kind of nice, I think.

There is so much beauty in Judaism, in its melodies and histories and foods. There is pain, too, in so many of its stories. Usually there is both, and that seems like one of the simple truths of Judaism to me. Sometimes it seems like the only one.

I had about seven other drafts of this essay that tried to be substantive, to cover some real ground. I tried to talk about Jewish symbols and themes, religions' mandates on truth, institutionalized prayer in schools and government, the Holocaust, Zionism, Jerusalem. But when you come right down to it, all the modern-day trappings that go along with Judaism don't necessarily have anything to do with God. They don't even begin to answer the question "why are we all doing this?"

I don't think the answer is in that classroom; Mr. Goldstein probably doesn't know. But I wish I could just ask him the question, just to see what he'd say.

E-mail Gwen Glazer at grglazer@netscape.net.

— graphic by Jeffrey Avila