My path to leaving Lubavitch

I can’t pinpoint the day when I stopped believing in God. But some time during college I realised I simply didn’t believe anymore — just as children stop fearing the dark gradually and imperceptibly. I realised there was no one above peering down at me and judging me or keeping a tally of my merits and demerits. It was just me and billions of other people trying to live our lives on this pale blue dot of a planet, to use the astronomer Carl Sagan’s phrase.  

It’s as if you’re walking with someone along a trail and eventually realise that no one is walking beside you. You are alone, and the sensation of the other presence was all in your head. You were told that it was there, so you believed it; you accepted it without question. You wanted the companionship, so you imagined the other entity into being.  

But all the wishing in the world and all the hoping couldn’t change the simple reality that you had been alone all along. There was no “Aha!” moment when I realised I no longer believed in God. I only came to realise that my belief was gone when one after noon in a Mexican restaurant I felt comfortable ordering non-kosher chicken. I no longer feared a lightning bolt tearing through the sky to strike me dead. It was anticlimactic. I just sat there listening to Marc Anthony sing Y Hubo Alguien and munching on my arroz con pollo.

Growing up with a mother who was a talented chef and surrounded by tons of kosher restaurants and pizza shops, I didn’t for the most part envy or fantasise about non-kosher food, except for Wise Onion Rings (which were technically kosher but not kosher enough for Lubavitchers) and the large soft pretzels sold at the ice skating rink at Prospect Park. Their aroma was heavenly, but they were strictly off-limits.

The kosher restrictions started to really bother me when I was travelling abroad and I realised that these restrictions created a substantial separation between me and the local population.