Old Jewish Joke

There is an old joke about the Jewish atheist who is excited to meet the Great Heretic of Prague. He arrives at the great man’s house on a Friday night and is immediately told to shush while the Heretic lights Shabbat candles. Then they sit down for the Shabbat meal, during which the Heretic says the motzi over the bread and the kiddush over the wine.
The atheist visitor can’t take it anymore. “You’re the Great Heretic of Prague and you follow the Shabbat commandments!?”

“Of course,” says his host. “I’m a heretic, not a gentile.”

The joke is about the gap between Jewish belief and Jewish practice, and the old chestnut that belief in God is less important to a religious Jew than performing the mitzvot, the commandments. In truth, the most observant Jews tend to be the most God-fearing, but the joke celebrates a worldview that I only recently learned actually has a name: fictionalism.

Fictionalism, according to the philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz, means pretending to follow a set of beliefs in order to reap the benefits of a set of actions. In a recent New York Times essay, he asks why he continues to fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover when he doesn’t believe in God. The short answer, he writes, is this: “It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said; it keeps me connected to a community that I value.”

This reminds me of my Great-Aunt Ilush Grossman. She was a  most religious childless widow, what we call Jerusalem Haredi. Once I visited her and accepted one rotten chocolate-covered raisin while she was praying and smelling a silver incense holder. She must have felt my wonder because she made a pause and said "Why do I keep these things? Because my parents did so." She was over 90 and very alert. I am sure she did not "believe". I saw her days before she died, she had a terrible blackened face having fallen at night, and she was afraid of death but never mentioned any metaphysical thoughts. In fact, I suspect all my Belz Haredi family are unbelievers.