Continuity

An argument that OJ apologists often throw at skeptics is that we must stay frum in order to keep our tradition alive. If you "frei out", become secular, it's a slippery slope down to them being even worse: prostitutes, or Christians or something.

I find this argument flawed on a number of levels.

Firstly: the slippery slope argument is not really valid. In some cases, sure, successive generations become less and less religious. Some of my family members are from very assimilated backgrounds. But I have seen so many families where the kids are much frummer than the parents: it's part of the general move to the right, and the success of the kiruv clowns. At the end of the day, though, people make their own choices. They're influenced by what their parents did, but there are many other factors at play, so it's not correct to predict that kids will be less connected than parents. And of course once you're looking at tradition, rather than religion, it's easy to see that many families keep the tradition without being strictly halachic -- and have for generations.

Secondly, and more selfishly: I don't believe in the underlying premises of Judaism. I think there are many positive aspects of it, and I would like to pass those on to my daughter (and any other children we may have). But I'm certainly not going to bend over backwards to force her into a system that I myself don't believe in, and that it would be a struggle for me to indoctrinate her in. It's like trying to make your kid eat broccoli if you don't like it: eventually it's going to become clear that you were being a little hypocritical about it.

Once you don't believe, Jewish continuity is a different beast. Instead of maintaining our link to Sinai and moving forwards towards Mashiach, for me all it is now is a link to heritage. Tradition is important. It's cool to belong to a group of people with ancient origins, and to still follow some of the traditions (well, versions of them). But ultimately I'm going to put my happiness, and my family's happiness first. If my daughter wanted to marry someone non-Jewish, I wouldn't be sitting shiva.

Our tradition is only valuable subjectively. It's not worth keeping just because our ancestors did it. To me, it's only worth keeping if we gain something positive from it. And if in 1000 years, it dies off because no one care anymore, I think it will be sad, but not tragic. I'd love it to be there (preferably in an improved form) but if it wasn't, I'd point to the flaws in the system rather than guilt-tripping individuals.