Click below for the recorded version of my first PechaKucha night, at the Opalka Gallery, Albany, New York. PechaKucha is a presentation format with strict parameters: 20 slides, 20 seconds of narration for each. So if I seem to be speaking extra slowly or suspiciously quickly at certain points, that’s why. Thank you, Jesse, for the musical assist. And… Continue reading What God Can Learn from Santa, or How to Lose Belief But Keep the Gifts
Category: Atheism
Grace for an Atheist Table
As an atheist, I have always loved Thanksgiving. It’s the perfect holiday: national but not nationalistic, it celebrates consumption but not consumerism. And it provides all the benefits of a religious holiday (food! family! fellowship!) without reference to a Supreme Being. Or so I thought. Until, curious, I looked up the facts — a terrible… Continue reading Grace for an Atheist Table
Atheist at a Funeral: A Contemplation in Four Hymns
1. “Be Thou My Vision” During the first hymn, which I′d never heard before, I practiced sight-reading, trying to anticipate each rise and fall in pitch as I studied the hymnal. It was an absorbing mental game, a relief from thinking about the last time I saw Helen, when she had been twisted and slumped and barely responsive.… Continue reading Atheist at a Funeral: A Contemplation in Four Hymns
Wishing You a Truly New Year
Every year in the synagogue of my childhood, we started our Hebrew lessons over again. There were too few of us to divide into two classes, so every fall, to accommodate the (doubtless) one new student, we’d begin back at the beginning with the alphabet, pronouns, a few basic nouns, and an article or two. Needless… Continue reading Wishing You a Truly New Year
Adventure Saturdays & Other Traditions
Years ago I instituted a family tradition called Adventure Saturdays. Every Saturday during the summer, the kids and I had to do something new: go to a new park or museum, try a new watersport or pool, and so on. When I was in a particularly orthodox mood, we couldn’t even stop along the way… Continue reading Adventure Saturdays & Other Traditions
The Halloween Parade Conversation of 2006
I’ll never forget the first time I came out to a stranger. Another mom trapped with me at a first grade Halloween parade. I think I was driven to honesty by sheer boredom; coming out was like biting the inside of my cheek to keep myself from nodding off. The topic was preschools. When I… Continue reading The Halloween Parade Conversation of 2006
Brave
Did you ever get a compliment that humbled you because you knew you didn’t deserve it? I just did, in an email from someone who read my commentary in the Times Union on Greece v. Galloway. He said I was brave. It was sweet of him to say, but I disagree. It takes no courage to write… Continue reading Brave
Standing Up to “The Pledge”
We were asked to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I stood. I looked across the middle school “cafetorium” to the singing group assembled for the award ceremony, curious what Jesse would do. At dinner just a week before, we had talked about the mixing of religion and government. I told the kids that the… Continue reading Standing Up to “The Pledge”
Greece v. Galloway v. Me
In expressing the majority’s decision that the town of Greece, N.Y., is constitutionally permitted to begin its meetings with prayer, Justice Kennedy said something I agree with. Not the opinion as a whole, just one thing: “Even seemingly general references to God or the Father might alienate nonbelievers or polytheists,” he writes. He’s right. Years… Continue reading Greece v. Galloway v. Me
Am I Still Jewish?
Last week I mentioned an odd question I was asked by a Virginia gentleman. “I know you were raised Jewish,” he said, “but are you still Jewish?” Our conversation took a different direction, but the question lingered in my mind. Am I still Jewish? I have, after all, been distancing myself from Judaism for some… Continue reading Am I Still Jewish?