Hoax or Hasid: Why stay in a religious community after you’ve stopped believing?

Not in Heaven · Jul 23, 2026 · 39m

As darkness fell last night, Jews around the world sat on synagogue floors and listened to the chanting of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, marking the beginning of Tisha B’Av. Traditionally the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, it is a day of mourning for the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people over the centuries—chief among them the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the devastation of Jerusalem.

While the community survived and continued going through the motions of worshipping the god of their forefathers, surely many Jews—in the generation that saw the Temple…