Religious? A visual model...

Coming from a Conservative Jewish background, I am expected to go to services every week. Saturday morning if possible, Friday night at the very least. Since I came to Penn, though, I have become extremely unmotivated to go. Saturday mornings are one of my few chances to sleep in, and on Friday nights I always seem to be occupied by something else. When I talk to my family on the phone, they often ask me whether or not I have been going to Hillel. I tell them that I really have not been going very often, and they immediately respond, "Try to go sometime." They are apparently under the impression that the more times I attend services, the "more religious" I will be. They see a "Religious" hierarchy that corresponds to an "Observant" one.

I am beginning to see things differently.

A few days ago my roommate asked me if a friend of ours was an Orthodox Jew. I quickly responded, "No way. She's a Reformed Jew." And then my tongue slipped, and I heard myself say, "I'm Conservative. I'm more religious than she is." I took that remark back immediately after I said it--once I realized that the distinction is not so clear-cut. Being "religious" is more about personal views and beliefs and less about the sect with which a person identifies himself. Regardless of how strictly a sect interprets the laws of a religion, it does not make any single sect more or less religious.

I realized that being religious is not a hierarchy. It is not a direct relationship between one thing and another. The rule is not "If you do this, you are more religious. If you do not do this, you are less so." Instead of being a straight column, the idea of "religiousness" should be a scattered diagram. A person's level cannot be determined by one factor alone, but rather a combination of personal morals, ideas, and thoughts on what constitutes "religious behavior." If a person sees himself as religous, then he is religious because he is adhering to his own rules, his own interpretation of the laws of religion.

There is no way to make a linear representation of this situation. Instead, it should be signified by a scattered graph, showing the presence of numerous factors in the determination of one's religious level. A person is not restricted to just low or high, there are many positions on the graph of religion.