I am that I am

Something never felt right. i don't know what it was what i always felt it. I never believed that religion in general, and Judaism in particular had the answers it was proposing. I remember in second grade we were being taught about the messiah. i vividly remember hoping that it would come in my lifetime because i didn't think i was worthy to be resurrected when the dead arose. What bad did i do in before i turned seven was beyond me but the brainwashing was taking effect, but yet...Fast forward my bar mitzva, my classmates all went up to Lein their entire Parsha. i didn't. i just did maftir/Haftorah. There was something holding me back from taking all this seriously.  A year later i would ask my teacher a question that ate at my brain for years: if god created us than who created god? My teacher in his infinite knowledge answered: for god to tell us it would be like teaching a toddler Gemara. I accepted his answer but wasn't satisfied.

The erosion of my religiosity continued during high school. i never prayed when the time came. i never attempted to do anything religious except learn the necessary books to pass that tests. i remember getting into stand up comedy and finding George Carlin. this guy changed the way i saw religion. obviously, he criticized Christianity for being a money making brainwashing cult but i was smart enough to realize that this could be applied to my own religion. i was too young and scared to drop my religion but in my head i wasn't religious and i was never going to be religious. the train had left the building and it would take three years for the momentum to shatter my religious chains. At the same time, my grandfather got a stomach cancer. within a few months he went from working at the lumber yard to laying on his death bed thankfully it was quick but it wasn't  painless. I sat next to my grandfather in shul and he'd basically force me to pray mirroring other authority figures who force feed a totalitarian ideology and make you do it too. i didn't mind, i enjoyed my time with him in shul and got to hear stories of his time during the Shoa. i loved the guy with all my heart and saw him disintegrate into nothingness. the day he died, it was the first or second day of Chol Hamoed Pesach, he asked his wife, my step-grandmother, to bring me to his bedside. I knew what i had had to do. five hours later he died. the next day i went to a Mets game and ate popcorn. that generational continuity that religion relies on was severed for me and it represented a new era.

I had a teacher, R' Zucker, this guy was as blunt as possible. All my questions i asked about the faith he answered me using the classic philosophers with a Jewish twist, naturally he loved the rambam. this guy was Ashkenaz but he still ate Yemenite Matza.  He practiced a no frills judiasm and didn't believe in Kabbalah, he held special vitriol from the Zohar since he claimed that R' Shimon Bar Yochai didn't write the book since it was written in medieval Aramaic with some Spanish and Portuguese. Not conceitedly that is the first place where it showed up. I respected the man, i tried mirror my religiosity like him. Maybe i can be "religious" without believing the bullshit? This new view in Judaism sustained even in Israel.

I was 18 when i went to Israel; for the year to learn Torah. i learned a little Torah but never took it seriously, but I remember a bookcase section in the Beit Midrash that i was always drawn to: the History of the Jewish people. Now since Bershit is considered part of Jewish History, one of the first books i read was a book trying to retell the creation story through the scientific lens. Looking back it was the last compromise i made between modernity and religion and the fragile union lasted throughout that year in Israel. Another book i vividly recall on reading was an encyclopedia of the Taanim (writers of the Mishna) and the Amoroim (writers of the Gemara). All that history reading paled in comparison to what i felt living among my people. 

Aside for the everyday drinking, It's safe to say that those once in a month trips we used to take around Israel was the highlight of my year. We used to go to places like Matzada, the supposed location of the Mishkan, and a battleground where the Shaul and David fought the Philistines seeing our history on our land made a lasting impression on me,  I was born in a time where our people can walk the land that gave birth to us, see the history and speak the language our forefathers existed (even though it isn't the same Hebrew). there was a connection I shared with my people, my history, my culture all on my land. No religion in the diaspora can ever recreate that.

when i came back from Israel i stumbled onto atheistic books and the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris had continued what George Carlin started: they took wrecking balls and demolished the the fragile union to bits. Now those who knew me during this time knew that i was militant in my opposition to the cancer that is religion. i left not stone unturned and admittingly i was too intense in my condemnation of this totalitarian theology but as i got older i realized that these people were brainwashed. from a young age, they were crammed with bullshit and was told to follow it so you can go to heaven given that their entire family was religious too a too blunt 23 year old wasn't going to convince them what they were doing was done. i thought as long as they didn't to force it onto other people let them be. Ultimately i realized that religion is a direct result with our fear of death and it will never be eradicated unless death is.