Why an Atheist Would Study at Pardes for the Year

[The comments below are based on some remarks I made during the closing lunch at the end of the year at Pardes. I had the briefest notes written beforehand, but I did my best to reconstruct my comments. Also, this is only one tiny part of the answer of why I came to Pardes, but I'll write up the rest of it later.]

During my time at Pardes, some of you may have heard that I don't believe in God.
Many people are surprised by this, and they ask why an atheist would want to study at Pardes.
To me, the surprise is that someone would ask a question like that.

To me, Judaism isn't about serving God. I've heard from people that said that if they believed that God didn't "write" the Torah (however they might define God's role in the process), then they would walk away from Judaism.
I've also read some Yeshua Leibowitz, where he talks about his vision of Judaism, solely devoted to serving God, and frankly, it sounds horrifying.

So why, then, was I at Pardes this year? To start with:
I read ancient and modern texts in Hebrew, a language that has been the tongue of the Jewish people for thousand of years, and that I had never studied before.
Dayenu.
I also read the Chumash for the first time, and this was after two years working at Hillel and teaching 9th graders at a Reform Synagogue in St. Louis.
I also had an opportunity to live in Israel, which helped shape my feelings and beliefs concerning the Jewish people.
Finally, I was able to study modern and ancient Jewish philosophy.

But to me, Judaism is about improving my self and improving the world, and even if the God of Judaism doesn't exist, I can still use Jewish texts as a source to help me improve my life. In fact, many of our conversations in Mishna, Turning Points in Jewish History, or the Seminar in Jewish Thought didn't mention God at all. And when we did talk about God, such as in Spiritual Practices or in an hours long discussion in Chumash about why Genesis uses the phrase "we" when God is talking about creating man, I still found much wisdom and benefit in these discussions.

But for me, Judaism has never been the one only true answer. Because I don't view Judaism as divine, it allows me to find some wisdom and benefit from Judaism while rejecting other parts of our past teachings and turning to other sources in those cases. I think many people go through the same process when they decide what part of halakha they are comfortable adhering to, rejecting other parts of Judaism because it doesn't align with their own personal beliefs or morals.

I wanted to add a final point about the goodbyes and thanks that we were just giving to DLK in class. I wanted to tell DLK that as wonderful as he had been, I felt like what made Pardes great was that I had learned as much from my fellow students as I did from the teachers. At first, this felt like a slight to him, but I realized that what really made DLK (and the other teachers) so amazing was that they didn't only teach us the material, but they taught us to be teachers ourselves, and for that I am most grateful.

For the many of us who will be returning to the United States and finding a way to keep Jewish learning in our lives and remain active in our Jewish communities, I think one of the struggles might be to relate to people who have a fundamentally different opinion about how they practice their Judaism or view their Jewish identity. Although it may have been a surprise for some people that an atheist would want to come to Pardes, the American Jewish community is full of people who don't consider God a key part of their Jewish identity (if at all), and I would hope that one of our goals would be to help those people understand the benefit and wisdom that can come about from studying classic and modern Jewish texts.