I guess I'm still not getting it. How can a person go to worship if they don't believe? How can sit and recite prayers and attest faith to a God that you don't think exists? I tried it once and I felt downright dirty, sneaking, fake and a liar. It felt like I was mocking the believing people that were sitting/standing there with faith in their hearts. I just can't bring myself to it.

Oh, I'm sure it horrifies you that I married out. It certainly did to my grandmother. And I feel guilty about it (of course!). But you love who you love and those that you love you forgive. I could never ask my husband to compromise his faith and convert. I respect him too much and love him too deeply. Granted I question him all the time about how his actions don't match Church dogma. And he backed me completely when I refused to say in our marriage vows that I would raise our children in the Catholic faith. I cannot honestly have any part in that since I am not Catholic nor will I ever be, so how could I teach someone else how to be Catholic. I guess it would horrify you even more to know that two generations back his family converted from Judaism to Episcopalian and then to Catholicism and they even changed the spelling of their last name (Weiss to Wise). Yeah, that's probably some self-hating going on there. I'm not fan of the Catholic Church, but I refuse to paint all Catholics as the "worst of the worst". People of any faith can be bad people, and good people can come from any faith. Strangley enough, I think my husband would be happier if I was a believing/practicing Jew, I think he finds my complete inability to have faith disconcerting. I really don't know where the cult thing comes into play. My stubborn nature says that all religions are cults, so I can only hope that the kids take after me and question everything (except their mom).

More confusion here. How can the fact that Dershowitz's child married a non-Jew make Dershowitz not a Jew?

Anyway, I'm probably one of the secular jews that you dislike. But I'm not sure what I should call myself. I have nothing against the Jewish faith or my Jewish ancestry. I just don't believe in God. I was born a skeptic and the idea of a Sumpreme Being has always been contrary to my nature. I feel sad about that because it seems that religious faith can be very comforting and comes with the benefits of a build-in community. However, I've just never felt it. I highly value my upbringing as a Jew; I think it's made me more sensitive to the feelings of outsiders and minorities and made me feel connected to my family...but just not to God. I can't in good conscience practice a religion that I don't believe or feel. My husband is a practicing Catholic and I was very clear that I would never convert (if I found God it would be the God of my childhood and family). I don't think my lack of faith in the fault of Judaism, since when I've gone to church with my husband, I feel nothing (other than boredom and the urge to argue with the homily). Yes, I'm in conflict over what to do about any children we have. I've agreed that my husband can take them to church but they also need to know about my Jewish background and if they expressed an interest in going to synagogue that we would fully support that or if they wanted to have no religion at all. I don't know if that makes me some sort of traitor, but I guess I'd rather be that then appear to believe something that I don't and be a liar to myself.

Nothing in the book review actually addresses a cure for AIDS. It addresses the various types of prevention, but that does nothing for those people that are already infected. Is the title just completely misleading or was there part of the book that addresses local cures to AIDs? It doesn't really sound like these local preventation measures are all that radical or even different from what is promoted in the US. We are told to be monogamous or abstinent and when we have sex with partners of an unknown status, use a condom. Isn't "zero grazing" equivalent to monogamy? And is anyone shocked that there are people that profit from other people's misery?

If you are reading any of these letters, please let us know what the LW's decision is and how it turns out.