Good news, everyone! I just read about this and I’m so excited I nearly spat out my spicy tuna roll:

South Park Creators’ Mormon Musical Set for Off-Broadway

Free tickets might inspire me to shower the musical with lots of PR on this blog, hint hint…

That’s not why I’m doing another post on Mormonism, though. It’s no secret that in the past year, I’ve read Under the Banner of Heaven and started watching Big Love, so this all-American religion, and particularly its fundamentalists, have piqued my interest like analogies pique my interest.

This Jew has only met a handful of Mormons in my life. Most of what I knew about them before this past year, and certainly my introduction to Mormonism, comes from the Great Brain books, which I loved. They were very funny memoirs of non-Mormon kids in Victorian Utah, featuring a greedy child prodigy up to no good. I never knew anything about “plural marriage” from these books (they were, after all, books for kids), but learned that Mormons don’t drink alcohol or caffeine and had a unique relationship with Native Americans. I thought maybe you ex-Mormons out there would want to know how other people learn about Mormonism.

Back to the point, here is another personal story of an ex-Mormon. Joshua Allen wrote about leaving Mormonism on the Facebook group Ex-Mormon Atheists and Agnostics:

“I sent my letter in at the end of January, and I got “the Dodge letter” this week. It’s pretty annoying being expected to jump through hoops that I know I don’t have to jump through. It’s like one last pathetic attempt to prove that they still have power over you. It’s ultra stupid.
I am still awaiting a visit from the local goons and anticipating my final release letter…I wrote about my experience SO FAR, here:
http://theicidalmaniac.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/what-kind-of-religion-wont-let-you-quit/

If you are in this situation or thinking about sending the letter, read that link. It’s more funny than annoying, what they do, so the blog post makes for lighthearted reading.

Buon Apetito!”

His link is worth reading in full. Does a resignation process simply take your name off the list of proselytizers, just like removing your name from telemarketing lists?

I get the impression that despite his bluntness and effort, Joshua is still not free.

Not My God focuses on persecution and hatred of atheists. I’m not saying that I equate anti-atheism rhetoric with segregated bathrooms under Jim Crow laws or genocides. What I am trying to say is that many people in the US hate atheists, all else being equal. I’ve heard time and time again of people saying that they didn’t believe in God– without sarcasm, without “and neither should you,” without any fanfare– and getting rejected or attacked. Sure, atheists make fun of religion and have blasphemy challenges and the like– nowadays. Even when atheists are just simply atheists, that’s apparently bad enough. Here is a comment that illustrates this beautifully:

“I live in the bible belt and am 17. I have been an atheist since I was very young and for my entire life I have been made fun of, treated diffrently and attacked because of my beliefs (well, actually lack thereof, but whatever) and about 4 years ago I tried to tell my parents. My mom told me she wasn’t going to let a devil worshiper live in her house (she knows what atheism means; she was just using that as an insult), so I instantly told her it was a joke and she has yelled at me for it ever since. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Rationalatheist has a page on this topic.

Here’s another great example from Dawkins’s forum:

“I am 16 years old and a sophomore in high school. My parents divorced when I was 2 and my mother knows I do not believe in God. My father, on the other hand, is a heavenly devoted Christian (Methodist). I have never really believed in God but till I was around 14 my dad kept asking me if I believed in God, or if I accepted Jesus. I always lied and said “yes.” I always felt if I responded no, he would “physically” hurt me. I know he would mentally, for sure. For the past 2 years I have never answered his questions and he always tries pushing religion on me. As of the past 4 or so months, I have really started researching religion and arguments against Christianity and other religions. I have also taken some interest in Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Now my father has not asked if I believe in God lately, and in my opinion he knows that I don’t believe and is afraid to ask. I really love my dad I love him a lot. I do pity him tremendously because of how much religion affects my life. Every Sunday he gives his congregation over $300 and tells my mother he is broke and can’t help out with my bills etc… It’s a bad situation. Every month or so I go to his house to visit for the weekend and we go to church. I’m considering next time I go down there to lay out to him that I don’t believe in God and tell him I do not want to go to church. Hopefully, something tremendously bad won’t happen and I can make a good stand against his stand on religion to put his views in perspective. Now that I am 16 and have outgrown my father, I think if he out lashed physically I could stand my own and if he started yelling at me I could just hop in my car and go home. Wish me luck……”

I’m always intrigued by stories of the younger set, especially knowing how much harder it is when you are at the mercy of your parents.

I don’t often hear from atheists who are politically/socially conservative. I know they’re out there, albeit probably much fewer than their more liberal counterparts. I’ve heard at least one atheist say that he’s a truck driver, voted for Bush twice, etc., and no one would guess that he’s an atheist. True, I wouldn’t have.

I’m a liberal myself, although it does disconcert me to a degree that I agree with conservatives on a few issues. (Affirmative action, for example. What’s up with that?!) There are many different kinds of conservatives out there– not all of them the bible-thumping, abstinence-only sex ed promoting, NASCAR-loving, Franklin Mint buying, Republican rednecks I’ve grown to know and loathe. Emphasis on the bible-thumping here.

My guess is that conservative atheists being more prominent would counter the dislike many religiosi have of atheists as elitist, ivory-tower, Ivy League eggheads, since conservatives, even when they’re Ivy educated, are rarely disparaged like that. I’m a little skeptical of the term “elitist.” In the case of Obama’s campaign, for example, “elitist” was simply a disparaging way of saying “smart and educated.” To quote Homer Simpson, “Phthth, eggheads, what do they know?”

Let me hear from you conservatives. Probably, you’re mostly libertarians, but maybe a lot of you are rednecks (and proud of it!), and I don’t mean that in a way that’s necessarily degrading. I’m a comedian and a huge fan of my colleague Jeff Foxworthy and his like. Point is, libertarian atheists are already prominent– but what about the latter: the social conservatives?

I found this site, The Atheist Conservative, which had little to say about atheism and was more a rant on Obama. It made relevant points, but its endorsement of Ann Coulter made me say, “Done!”

There are other sites for conservative atheists. The socially conservative ones had a negative stance on abortion, for example. I personally think abortion should be safe and legal, but the point is I’m particularly interested in the atheists who oppose it and similar platforms.

I want to hear from you, guys! Tell me about yourselves a little. I promise not to be a stereotypical latte-slurping, laptop-toting, Obama-hugging, Prius-driving, NPR-listening (uh, I’m not sure where to stop with this)– well, just write in and say hi.

I have missed this blog! Between winter holidays, Andy getting badly injured, planning a wedding and miscellaneous happenstances, I haven’t posted in a while, though I religiously (heh, heh) have posted every Thursday.

It’s no secret that I have big love for the HBO series Big Love, which I discussed in my posts about Mormonism. The opening credits end with Bill, the husband, meeting each of his three wives in heaven. (Do they get every third night with him in heaven, too, or how does that work?) Maybe it’s because I’m getting married, but recently I paid attention to that part and it choked me up a little.

Big Love Intro

All right, so Andy and I won’t meet in heaven. That may not really be a loss for me, as I don’t remember ever believing in heaven. Jewish theology doesn’t discuss the afterlife much, and in any case, there is no hell in Judaism. (Hell is other Jewish people.) This is another point in favor of Judaism: no hell. Thanks, guys!

Many atheists tell me that atheism is a positive thing– they don’t need to feel “watched” and judged all the time. They won’t be punished in the hereafter. Still, there are quite a few who tell me that they lament the loss of a loving god and not going to heaven. They are sad that this life is all they will get and that they won’t get to join their loved ones after they die. It is indeed a rude shock to think that you’ll spend an eternity in paradise only to conclude that such a place doesn’t exist.

Skeptic extraordinaire Michael Shermer’s stock response to his feelings on life after death is “I’m for it.” Many people may want an afterlife, but I suspect these people haven’t really thought it through. I would rather die tomorrow than be forced to live forever. Would you really want to go on forever and ever (and ever and ever) after the earth ends, the universe ends, and you’re just floating in nothingness, with nothing to occupy you but your thoughts?

What do you think? Do you miss the idea of an afterlife, including an eternity in the Celestial Kingdom with your spouse (or spouses)? Are you glad you’re not going to hell? Are you glad you’re not going to heaven? Did Christians ever portray a really compelling heaven, for that matter?

Hi Diddly Ho Atheisterinos,

One clarification to a previous post. Rodrigo added to my post about him:

I was not a victim of sexual abuse instead  I consider myself part of a silent majority  of people who were or sadly are still being terrorized with visions of hell to the point of psychological distress. In his book Dawkins’s  (if I recall correctly), talks about a woman who suffered both kinds of abuse as a child now all grown up she  believes that although the sexual trauma was a horrific one, it was one that with time she managed to heal while the fear of an eternal world of punishment  was more difficult to erase from her psyche.  In no way I’m minimizing the horrors of sexual abuse but I’m just pointing out that the belief in hell can be a powerful negative force with extremely damaging consequences and unlike other forms of physical abuse the psychological kind can be sometimes harder for their victims to recognize.

Those of you who read my sample chapter on Janet (which was also published) have read the story of a PK (preacher’s kid) who experienced one of the worst things that could happen to a child. Her father urged her to pray to forgive the man who sexually abused her, something she was not able to do. This was a pivotal moment in her path to atheism.

PK Luke Muehlhauser contacted me to post his story here. Follow the link for the full article and comments section.

Ah, the life of a pastor’s kid!

I grew up in Cambridge, Minnesota – a town of 5,000 people and 22 Christian churches. My father was (and still is) pastor of a small church. My mother volunteered to support Christian missionaries around the world.

I went to church, Bible study, and other church functions every week. I prayed often and earnestly. For 12 years I attended a Christian school that taught Bible classes and creation science. I played in worship bands. As a teenager I made trips to China and England to tell the atheists over there about Jesus.

I felt the presence of God. Sometimes I would tingle and sweat with the Holy Spirit. Other times I felt led by Him to give money to a certain cause, or to pay someone a specific compliment, or to walk to the cross at the front of my church and bow before it during a worship service.

Around age 19 I got depressed, But one day I had an epiphany. I realized that everything in nature was a gift from God to me and God delivered me from my depression.

My dad and I read lots of this Christian self-help stuff. We shared our latest discoveries with each other and debated theology.

I moved to Minneapolis for college and was attracted to a Christian group led by Mark van Steenwyk. Mark’s small group of well-educated Jesus-followers were postmodern, “missional” Christians: they thought loving and serving others in the way of Jesus was more important than doctrinal truth. That resonated with me, and we lived it out with the poor immigrants of Minneapolis.

The seeds of doubt

By this time I had little interest in church structure or petty doctrinal disputes. I just wanted to be like Jesus. So I decided I should try to find out who Jesus actually was. I began to study the Historical Jesus.

What I learned, even when reading Christian scholars, shocked me. The gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death, by non-eyewitnesses. They are riddled with contradictions, legends, and known lies. Jesus and Paul disagreed on many core issues. And how could I accept the miracle claims about Jesus when I outright rejected other ancient miracle claims as superstitious nonsense?

These discoveries scared me. It was not what I had wanted to learn. But now I had to know the truth. I studied the Historical Jesus, the history of Christianity, the Bible, theology, and the philosophy of religion. Almost everything I read – even the books written by conservative Christians – gave me more reason to doubt, not less.

I started to panic. I felt like my best friend – my source of purpose and happiness and comfort – was dying. And worse, I was killing him. If only I could have faith! If only I could unlearn all these things and just believe. I cried out with the words from Mark 9:24, “Lord, help my unbelief!”

I tried. For every atheist book I read, I read five books by the very best Christian philosophers. The atheists made plain, simple sense, and the Christian philosophers were lost in fog of big words that tried to hide the weakness of their arguments.

I did everything I could to keep my faith. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t force myself to believe what I knew wasn’t true. On January 11, 2007, I whispered to myself: “There is no God.”

The next day I emailed my buddy Mark:

I didn’t want to bother you, but I’m lost and despairing and I could really use your help, if you can give it.

I made a historical study of Jesus, which led me to a study of the Bible, historical and philosophical arguments for and against God, atheist arguments, etc. It has destroyed my faith. I think there is almost certainly not a God…

I’m fucking miserable… I told my parents and they sobbed for 30 minutes. Can you help me?

As always, Mark responded with love and honesty. But he didn’t give me any reasons to believe. He said he believed mostly for the “aesthetics of belief” and his “somewhat mystical experiences of Christ.” He wrote, “In a way, I am a Christian because I want to be one, and the logic flows from there.”

I also wrote a defiant email to an atheist radio show host to whom I’d been listening, Matt Dillahunty:

I was coming from a lifetime high of surrendering… my life to Jesus, releasing myself from all cares and worries, and filling myself and others with love. Then I began an investigation of the historical Jesus… and since then I’ve been absolutely miserable. I do not think I am strong enough to be an atheist. Or brave enough. I have a broken leg, and my life is much better with a crutch… I’m going to seek genuine experience with God, to commune with God, and to reinforce my faith. I am going to avoid solid atheist arguments, because they are too compelling and cause for despair. I do not WANT to live in an empty, cold, ultimately purposeless universe in which I am worthless and inherently alone.

I hope that I find a real, true God in my journey of blind faith. I do not need to convince you of that God, since you seem satisfied as an atheist. But I need to convince myself of that God.

Matt responded to my every sentence with care, understanding, and reason. But I still tried to hang onto my faith. For a while I read nothing but Christian authors. Even the smartest ones just made lots of noise about “the mystery of God.” They used big words so that it sounded like they were saying something precise and convincing.

My dad told me I had been led astray because I was arrogant to think I could get to truth by studying. Humbled and encouraged, I started a new quest to find God. I wrote on my blog:

I’ve been humbled. I was “doing discipleship” in my own strength, because I thought I was smart enough and disciplined enough. [Now] having surrendered my prideful and independent ways to him, I can see how my weakness is God’s strength.

I’ve repented. I was deceived because I did not let the Spirit lead me into truth. Now I ask for God’s guidance in all quests for knowledge and wisdom.

I feel like I’ve been born again, again.

It didn’t last. Every time I reached out for some reason – any reason – to believe, God simply wasn’t there. I tried to believe despite the evidence, but I couldn’t believe a lie. Not anymore.

No matter how much I missed him, I couldn’t bring Jesus back to life.

Later…

I don’t recall how it happened, but eventually I found out that I could be more happy and moral without God than I ever was with him. I “came out” as an atheist to my family, friends, and church. They were surprised, but they still loved me. They were much more concerned when two elders of my church decided they were Catholic. I bonded with them briefly because the three of us were suddenly outcasts.

I had stubbornly resisted my deconversion, but these days I am excited to accept reality, no matter what it is. I remember when I finally realized the problems inherent to my precious Libertarianism. I was not dismayed or resistant; I was thrilled.

This comfort with truth unleashed my curiosity about Christianity and religion in full force. In my studies I uncovered lots of false facts and dishonest arguments from Christians and atheists. Each discovery only deepened my hunger for knowledge, but also my realization that humans know very little, and with little certainty.

Looking back

Looking back, I feel lucky that I left God for purely rational reasons instead of emotional ones. Indeed, all my emotions were pushing the other way.

But that’s probably not the norm. I bet most atheists today have lost their faith for irrational, emotional reasons – or else they were raised as atheists. When I went to the premiere of Bill Maher’s Religulous – one of the few blatantly atheist films released in America – almost the entire crowd was gay. I remember thinking they were probably atheists because the church rejected them, not because they knew the logical fallacies of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

In many ways I regret my Christian upbringing. So much time and energy wasted on an invisible friend. So many bad lessons about morality, thinking, and sex. So much needless guilt.

But mostly I’m glad this is my story. Now I know what it’s like to be a true believer. I know what it’s like to fall in love with God and serve him with all my heart. I know what’s it like to experience his presence.

I know what it’s like to isolate one part of my life from reason or evidence, and I know what it’s like to think that is a virtue. I know what it’s like to earnestly seek the truth but still be totally deluded.

I know what it’s like to think that what I believe, or what my loving pastor says, or what my ancient book says, is more true than what reason and evidence say. I know what it’s like to think faith is a strength, not a gullible weakness.

I know what it’s like to be confused by the Trinity, the failure of prayers, or Biblical contradictions but to genuinely embrace them as the mystery of God. I know what it’s like to believe God is so far beyond human reason that we can’t understand him, but at the same time to fiercely believe I know the details of how he wants us to behave.

That was my experience for 22 years, and I am grateful for it. Now I can approach believers with true understanding.

One of the things that struck me most reading this was when Luke wrote that he didn’t have the strength to be an atheist at first. This reminds me of two friends: one, a somewhat-religious Jew (read: looks for loopholes) told me that he would be an agnostic were he honest with himself, but didn’t want to be cut off from the community.

I reminded him that a) he had many friends and loved ones that weren’t religious Jews or at least wouldn’t shun him, and b) we weren’t living in the ancient Middle East when being shunned was a death sentence.

Another friend, who is superstitious and Catholic (talk about living a stereotype) told me once that it was harder to believe in God than to not believe. I said, “I love you, but you are just wrong! Of course it’s easier to go with the flow and do what’s expected of you. Do you know how hard it can be to go against the status quo, and how non-believers risk being hated? If it were easier to not believe, not many people would believe.”

Here I am doing comedy in the talent show at The Amazing Meeting, James Randi’s skeptic convention.

Here in the Not My God penthouse, I focus on stories of atheists that are particularly difficult and moving for the purposes of illustration and because this obviously makes for a more interesting book. So if anyone out there thinks I cherry-pick the extremes, yes, I am, but that’s sort of the point.

I found this story on Dawkins’s Converts Corner.

“For many years I was a victim of religious child abuse without realizing and it took me a long time to be able to escape from the psychological terrorism of the Catholic church.

“Nowadays I’m an animation filmmaker and visual storyteller. Recently I started to work on a little personal project about overcoming the fear of hell. It evolved into a sweet non-religious book about tolerance and more than anything it helped me heal some scars from my childhood days.

“I thought I would keep that little project to myself but all that changed after reading ‘The God Delusion.’ The moment I read the chapter on child abuse I became determined to share the little fable to the world. The book is ‘I’m Not a Little Devil,’ part of what I hope will become a storytelling movement that explores the negative consequences that religion has on young kids. So far the response has been very positive. I wanted to thank you guys for inspiring me to put this tale out to the world and I hope you help me spread the word of it. A future world with no religion is in the hands of children. I definitely hope this book contributes to that change.
Rodrigo
www.nodevils.com”

I’m hearing a lot about how the Catholic priests “only” abuse children as often as anyone else. Whether that is true or not, and I tend to doubt this because of the vow to celibacy required, the church’s greater sin in sheltering child rapists is almost as bad as the rape itself.

Even if the priests are no more likely to abuse children than anyone else, for such a thing to happen in the realm of religion somehow makes this a much worse crime. Survivors could easily think god sanctioned this abuse, for example.

As to Hell, it’s at times like this I’m glad I was raised Jewish: no hell. No fear of hell.

In my search for interviewees for Not My God (the book itself, not just this blog), I went for a diverse crowd, including a diverse group of ages. Kids/teenagers are particularly valuable. Yes, they are the future, all right, but growing up in the information age provides them with an enormous cohort effect. I’ve mentioned that they are more fortunate than I was in that I was all alone as a young atheist, whereas the internet gave the younger generation all that they needed to connect with other atheists, young and older alike. Thank Darwin times have changed. Obviously, coming of age during New Atheism is important.

“Younger adults are the least religious out there,” says Christian Smith, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, in the On Point podcast Religion, Morality and Youth. Dr. Smith
interviewed young people in a longitudinal study and published the results in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. This is very relevant to Not My God.

Greg Epstein of Harvard was also a guest on the podcast, having just released his book Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, which I haven’t yet read, but is certainly on my list.

Many of the comments on the podcast seemed to be in favor of religion in providing guidance and hope. Some weren’t, though. Bearing in mind the podcast was about Humanism and not specifically atheism, here is one listener’s experience that I found unique:

“I grew up in a non-practicing Christian household. My grandmother, who was a Sunday school teacher, taught me Freud’s teachings, to understand the reasons behind people’s actions and to read religious texts before choosing what to practice and to apply those teachings to everyday life.

By the age of 10 I had read the Bible, Koran, and the Torah as well as Rumi, Marcus Aurielis Meditations and several other religious texts.

At the age of 11 I chose to become a practicing Voodoian, at age 16 a practicing Goddess Worshiper under the Hindu religions and then I became a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18. Needless to say I am an extremely spiritual person but a warrior against Organized Religion and Religious Dogma.

I am a Humanist. I speak only the truth, I try to do good without God and find those like Richard Dawkins’s arguments interesting. One does not have to be an atheist to believe in reason and one does not have to be religious to be spiritual.”

Here in the Not My God penthouse, I’ve realized that I’ve been doing this blog for almost a year. Praise Darwin! I’m acknowledging the milestone a little early since I’ll be in Germany meeting my new nephew soon and probably away from the blog.

I’ve certainly learned a lot about the subject matter and gotten a lot to think about through this book project. I conceived Not My God in the first place around Darwin’s 199th birthday party when I heard through Boston Atheists about a teenage boy in the area who was an atheist and lived with his grandmother, who was religious, and he knew she would kick him out of the house if he let her know he was an atheist. That got me thinking that there must be many stories like that. I also knew that if this could happen in the Boston area, it must be many times worse in the Bible Belt. I wanted to illustrate how Americans hate and persecute atheists, and how this is relevant in the New Atheist movement.

Through networking, I found potential interviewees and selected 20 that I thought should be included in the book; I interviewed two of these and wrote sample chapters. The stories and characters were so much larger than life that people assumed I had written fiction.

Thanks to all of you who have contributed your stories or thoughts to this project. I realize that, anonymous or not, it takes a lot of chutzpah.

The most important fodder I’ve gotten from this blog is the debate that maybe atheists deserve to be hated. I admit that there is a lot of truth behind that point of view and I can’t reconcile it.

Back to the subject matter, here’s something from Dawkins’s Converts Corner:

“I am 42 years old and was born into a multi-generational Mormon family–a descendant of polygamists on both sides of my family. Like so many others I was taught that it was a sin to ‘delve into the mysteries’ that god had not yet revealed. All literature that told Mormon history from an objective perspective was labeled anti-Mormon and of the devil. I began my departure from Mormonism last year after stumbling across some objective information regarding the history of the church…

“So, Dr. Dawkins, I am on board. This has got to stop. I have three little girls under 5 years old and my soon-to-be ex-wife wants to raise them in the cult. Now that I have broken free, I must now wrestle my daughters free from the grips of such a destructive cult. My family reminds me that so many of my ancestors gave so much for the faith–some crossed the plains pulling handcarts. I find it sad that they were deluded into the pain and suffering and polygamy. The indoctrination and brainwashing is incredibly powerful and difficult to penetrate with reason.

“In all cults, those who leave are labeled as bad, deceived, evil, etc. So it is with me. My wife, many in my family, and former friends all believe I am the bad guy. I read Raven about Jim Jones and the People’s Temple cult. It is a great book, and a fascinating example of cult dynamics. It helped me recognize the same dynamics at play in my religion. There were striking parallels between Jim Jones in isolated Jones Town and Brigham Young in isolated Utah in the 1850s.

“The good news is that I am now living life for the miracle that it truly is. I was in many respects waiting for heaven instead of living life. I recently was asked by a Mormon how I could be an Atheist. I explained that it was not really that far from Mormonism. Mormons believe that all other churches are false, so there is only one more to disprove. Thank you for helping me to shake off the anesthetic of familiarity and to see this world for the amazing place that it truly is.

David Arnold, proud Atheist
Las Vegas, Nevada”

Divorce lawyers, how do you handle this one?

From December, ‘08

Thanks to everyone who made my 30th birthday so special. I had a wonderful time as I enter this new decade of life. L’chaim! Even better, I found out that I’m getting another niece or nephew this June– I’m going to be re-aunted, as my friend Chris said.

Here’s an article that I hope to publish (for money), but is something I’m slow to do. Nu, it’s relevant to the site, so I’m posting it anyway, even though I realize that if I do publish it formally, it might be considered a reprint.

Making Aliya

I recall sobbing with my head on my desk at Hebrew school. Me, age eleven, skinny as a rail with scraggly hair just beginning to grow out again after two years in a crew cut.
My teacher Yaffa came to console me. “You will like Israel,” she had said. “I’m from there. Is it so bad?” If it was so wonderful, why had she moved to the United States, I am inclined to ask in retrospect. At the time, I was too inconsolable to question her.
“I don’t want to go,” I said. “I want to stay here. I want to stay home.” I must’ve sounded younger than I was.
My mother had traveled to Israel with Young Judea before she started college at U.C. Berkeley, where she had met my father. She had worked on kibbutzim that year, full of hubris in building a nation. Always somewhat Israel-centric, I remember growing up with her telling me that the Israeli army was the most powerful in the world and if they had wanted, they could destroy NATO; that Israeli women were tough; that the Jewish people had to stand together and build themselves up as a people.

Still, Mom could hardly be described as devout. Indeed, Mom often editorialized about her more religious Jewish friends, describing them as meshuggah. I have, as an adult, described her religiosity as “quarter-assed conservative”: for example, she wouldn’t eat bread during Pesach, so she would keep it in the freezer all week. Other foods forbidden at that time, such as rice and legumes, were fair game. A devout Jew would have taken pains to remove these foods from the house entirely without trying to cut corners. In more recent years, she went to synagogue less and less and even started to eat pork and shellfish.

Mom had taught English as a foreign language in Israel the summer when I was ten, during which I stayed with my dad in Boston. She returned to the States glowing about her trip. I remember asking my mother if she would move to Israel and she told me no.  She must have been saying that to lull me into a false sense of security because in the spring, she announced that she and I would be moving there for a year.

To put it lightly, I did not welcome the disruption in my life. I was about to start junior high—a major transition. I had noticed boys and one in particular, a friend with whom I fell in love. I was ready to start French and had even bought a minuscule French dictionary for a dollar at Wordsworth in Harvard Square. The Simpsons had just landed a series, which excited me as I had been a big fan of them since they began shorts on Tracy Ullman. I had friends that I loved and was starting to feel at home and grounded after a childhood riddled with moves and school changes (people today often ask me if my parents were fugitives or stalkers; at least these would have been valid reasons for their playing gypsy).
Mom made jokes about how I was so miserable. “You think it’ll be just like Hebrew School,” she said. “You’ll get off the plane, and a teacher will say, ‘here are your books.’” To dull my sense of outrage, if not actually change my mind, she sent me to therapists, who had the same wisdom: you both have very different needs. This was not the sort of problem therapy could solve, but the therapists were at least able to draw attention to the fact that my mother wasn’t necessarily right in her resolve. It was a crusade my mother would continue after the move to Israel, enlisting therapists, friends and, in one case, a rabbi to show me the light: that Israel was my destiny (incidentally, I never heard a rabbi swear so much). In the mind of my mother and her allies, it made no sense for me to want to stay home in the U.S. Less often heard was “that poor kid”—someone who realized what I was going through.

I wanted to do something, anything to cancel this banishment. I finally had to accede that this was just one year and then I would get my life back.
It was a tumultuous year for me, perhaps more so for Mom. My only thoughts were of my mother’s betrayal and my going home. I was young, on the cusp of adolescence, in a strange culture with a language I did not speak too well. It certainly didn’t help that my mother sent me to summer camp soon after our arrival, which evolved into a complicated traumatic experience for me– and religion played a large part. To my mother’s dismay, I was not willing to cooperate or snap out of my willfulness. A child is at the mercy of her parents, and not cooperating is a weapon of the weak: if you don’t like the results, then don’t do this to me. It’s as simple as that!
I extorted my mother in this way. I wanted to go home. I figured she might regret her move when she saw how miserable I was. With the 1991 Gulf War looming, I thought she might give in; instead, she made jokes about American diplomats “fleeing,” thinking that they were weaker than Israelis, which was probably true. Like real sabras (native Israelis), we carried our gas masks and created a sealed room. I wrote letters to my friends at home telling them it wasn’t as bad as it sounded on CNN. Mom seemed to think the whole thing was an exciting adventure. By then, we were living with Mom’s boyfriend, a likable compulsive cleaner, and I thought I might be the only kid in history whose parent used a war to justify shacking up.

As I counted the months until I could go home, if I had believed in God, I would no doubt have prayed and asked Him to free me from His will that I should live in His Holy Land. Amen.
When Mom demurred in the spring about returning home, her cousin, an older man of few redeeming qualities, told me without empathy that “promises were made to be broken.” I told him my mother would not do that to me, but soon she informed me that she would not be returning and that she wanted me to stay, as well. I stood my ground, furious at her betrayal, and made plans to live in Philadelphia with my father and my new stepmother …but that is a different saga.
What if Mom hadn’t returned to Israel when I was ten? What if the Gulf War began that year? What if something, anything, had weakened her mission to live in a land seven thousand miles away? And globally, what if history had not given Jews the horrible circumstances which necessitated the state of Israel?
I never did get my old life back. I did not forgive my mom for quite some time. The details of my year abroad are too many to describe here, but suffice to say that religion in part hurled me, against my strong wishes, to a life I did not want and was beyond the realm of normal experience for an American kid. Not many Americans decide to simply move to a country on a lark for no practical reason. And not many of those choose to remain expatriates.
“Promises are made to be broken.” It’s a difficult reality to be proven by your own mother. I think back to that scared, scrawny kid and how no one would listen to her.