Is “bagels-and-Seinfeld Judaism” a thing?

And other questions posed to me after a prior column

I was chuffed¹ that Phoebe Maltz Bovy, a writer I admire, came across my post from a few weeks ago, “Grose Agonistes,”² in which I addressed a Times newsletter post by Jessica Grose and challenged her to look more deeply at the “organized religion” that she abjures. I commissioned and edited Bovy’s 2015 profile of political scientist Corey Robin, which was not only a great piece but had one of the all-time great headlines (which I am pretty sure I did not write), “Straight Outta Chappaqua.”³

I really like Bovy’s reply to “Grose Agonistes.” In the main, I disagree with it, but it exposes a serious flaw in the writing of my piece, and I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify what I meant. You should go read Bovy’s piece now. But for those of you who don’t, here is a crucial section:

There’s something to be said for believing people when they tell you who they are. This comes up a bunch in terms of gender and pronouns. There, the respectful thing to do is to call someone what they wish to be called, and not what you think—either for abstract political reasons, or for ones based on how they come across to you—would suit them.

So, too, I think, with religion. If someone tells you they’re secular (or in this case, tells this to the New York Times readership), then this is not up for debate. You’re allowed to privately think that this person would enjoy becoming more observant, or indeed that she’d be living her best life as the Hasidic mother of 10. But unless someone specifically comes to you and asks for spiritual guidance, the answer is to let things be.

Bovy is criticizing what she sees as the “homework” I have given Grose, a proud cultural-but-not-religious Jew; I had written, addressing Grose, “The series I hope you’ll do next is one in which you do religion… for, say, six weeks. On Friday nights and Saturday mornings, go to synagogue. Then, during the week, have coffee or tea or bagels with rabbis and cantors, rabbinic students and laypeople, Jewish nursery-school teachers and other people who are somehow making the communities run.”

I get why this rubs Bovy the wrong way, as Grose’s fellow cultural Jew. (You can hear her critique of me more fully on her podcast, which she graciously invited me on.) Let me clarify, say it better here than perhaps I did there.

The “series” I was proposing as a follow-up to the series that Grose had announced (a forthcoming series about people who have left religion, or who are “losing” religion) is meant to be a journalistic series. That is, Grose has announced a big survey, based on statistics and anecdotes she is gathering, about the absence of religion. I was trying to say that, given what I take Grose’s interests to be (interests she has expressed in multiple pieces over many years of writing), she’d be the perfect person to write about manifestations of religion, about its presence rather than its absence.

Why? Because we often write well when we lean into our discomforts. Grose has written that she has a distaste for “organized religion.” But there’s no indication that she has spent much time (since her teenage years) with organized religion. That is entirely defensible as a human, and as a Jew, but it strikes me as a missed opportunity for a journalist (one who is now choosing, as part of her work for the world’s most influential newspaper, to write about religion). She is interested in religion, but turned off by organized religion—so I think that tension could yield great writing, in the same way that I think the best journalism on Trump voters often comes from people who viscerally loathe Trump’s voters, but are sent by editors to go interact with them.