Yes! I am honestly so glad to hear non-Jews saying it, because Jews say it a lot and it never gets much traction outside of those circles. I made a post like that and got a bunch of Jews saying “yes this” and a bunch of edgelord culturally-xtian atheists saying “uh sweaty actually Judaism is just xtianity lite and is responsible as much if not more so for all the shitty things I hate about Catholicism/evangelicalism/my personal denomination.”
I’m in a weird position between these worlds because I left fundamentalist xtianity and converted to Judaism, and even though I don’t believe in the things that hurt me anymore, I still have the trauma from it, and it’s really hard to process that/find likeminded people when a lot of them are blanketly anti-religious. Judaism, like a lot of religions, is an ethnoreligion, and it is inseparable from culture. Someone can be a Jew and be totally secular or atheist. When people say stuff like “I wish all religion would go away,” they’re advocating for cultural genocide, not just of Jews but of a lot of indigenous groups that have kept their religious traditions despite imperialistic universal religions like xtianity and Islam trying to deliberately destroy them (it is important to include Islam in this as far as world history, and it would be inaccurate and a disservice not to, but that also must be balanced by the fact that in the West Islam is a minority and is not to blame for what xtianity has done). With universal religions that seek to convert people, there is a distinction between religion and culture, because that is the only way they can convince people to go along with it. That is not a distinction that exists in many, maybe the majority, of world religions. These people do not understand this, because they only know xtianity and assume it can be directly transposed, but it can’t.
The minor comment I have as far as what’s written already is just a warning that “Abrahamic” is 99% of the time not an appropriate term. The problem is not that the term itself is bad, like how “judeo-xtian” is a bad term created with bad intentions, but because most of the time people use it, they are using it as a blanket term in a situation where a blanket term is not called for, and doing so still reinforces the perception that there are a lot more similarities between the religions that fall under this heading than there really are. Generally, you can just say whatever religion you’re really talking about, which is usually xtianity. I think people also are often afraid to say xtianity out of fear that they’re not being inclusive, and I am here to tell you that it’s 100% ok to just say xtian, and you will be correct most of the time, and in this case it’s still way less harmful to be accidentally not inclusive than it is to perpetuate the belief that they are basically interchangeable with some aesthetic differences.
I am glad that non-Jews are saying this. Non-Jews should be saying this. I’ve seen a few blogs with bios that say stuff like “ex-Catholic, not anti-religious” and that’s a good thing. But there are still quite a few people in the ex- circles (as well as the majority of atheists who feel the need to be vocal/proselytising about their atheism, which I also point out is just the same exact xtian belief that there is a Single Right Way and everyone else must be made to conform by whatever bullying is necessary, dressed up in different clothes) who do not understand this. I get that they are dealing with trauma there, but that is not an excuse to harm minorities. I have trauma, too, and I like to think I deserve to be able to talk about it with people who have similar experiences without the constant stress of having them be antisemitic. You can be angry at the group you came from and what happened to you; no one is saying you can’t. Just don’t be a jerk to minorities.
It is also helpful to you. Being raised in these kinds of groups gives you more unconscious beliefs/philosophies than just explicit religious belief. Being able to understand that things like guilt, your views about morality etc come from your religion/culture (and the religion that influenced that culture, even if you are not part of it) and are not objective truths about the world is extremely difficult to teach and pretty much has to be learned on your own, and it has the capacity to be powerfully healing, but you will never get there if you can’t first accept that not all ideologies are the same. So being able to identify the true source and cause of your pain and anger is important to you as well as to not hurt minorities.
