Abandoning Eden

This blog, abandoning eden, is meant to chronicle my departure from the orthodox jewish world into a secular existance. The title should be pretty self evident...I grew up in the insular world of orhtodox judaism, and was not friends with someone who was not an orthodox jew until i got to college. Although throughout high school I was questioning my jewish upbringing, it was not until college that I began the long and painful process of leaving my jewish life behind. It was the knoweldge I gained through my studies of sociology, and my exposure to feminism, that led me abandon this world almost completely. This is the place where I will post about that process, and the issues I have to deal with now as a result of it, specifically the familial strain I have been experiencing as a result of my beliefs, and as a result of dating someone (henceforth refered to as B) who has the same belief system of me (a life lived by morality instead of religion) but was not born jewish.

For the past 6 years I have been keeping a livejournal, which entries have often included reflections on this process (especailly in the past year). My first goal for this blog is to go through 6 years of entries on my livejournal, and repost the ones dealing with leaving judaism onto this blog. The earlier posts will not be as reflective (after all, I was pretty young), but I'm going to try and find the ones that represent my life at that time

And I guess a bit about me...I'm a phd student in sociology, 25 years old, female, and I live on the east coast. That's all you really need to know at this point.

And I also need to give props to Jewish Atheist, whose blog inspired me to collect all my thoughts on this process in one place.