Through in-depth interviews with 9 adult Jewish nonbelievers, this study explored the onset of their nonbelief and the degree of their spiritual well-being and compares these results with 9 Iewish believers. Findings indicate a need to revise current theories of religious dezleloprnent and also suggest the potential value of counseling intervention for these nonbelievers.
Although it is generally understood that a Christian is one who maintains a belief in the divinity of Jesus, being Jewish has historically been a matter of maternal bloodline rather than faith (a Jew is a Jew if his or her mother was Jewish). Except in the special case of conversion into Judaism, Jewish law (halakhah) does not even require that a person believe in God to identify him-or herself as a Jew. In the United States, this anomaly in Jewish legislation has given rise to a phenomenon that Woocher (1985) has called "civil religion." Similarly, a small but growing Jewish denomination (Humanistic Judaism) now describes itself as both religious and "nontheistic" (Wine, 1978).
Despite this limited acceptance of Jewish nonbelief, Jews do not lightly admit to being either agnostic or atheist (Burk, 1987). The larger Jewish community still expects that Jews should at least present the appearance of believing in God, regardless of their personal faith positions (Kozodoy, 1996;Plaut, 1991; Sonsino & Syme, 1986). As both a rabbi and a counselor, it has also been my experience that although some Jews have indeed rejected what they perceive to be religious faith, they are at the same time reluctant to discuss their lack of faith in public. As a consequence, there is very little understanding of the nonbelief phenomenon among members of the Jewish community, and whatever insights the nonbelievers may have about the process of faith development remains largely undocumented.
Even in the general population, the literature identifying possible predictors to nonbelief is limited. Caplovitz and Sherrow's (1977) data showed that rebellion against parents correlated with apostasy among adolescents, but this finding has not been replicated (Hunsberger, 1980). Hunsberger (1983) found that apostates were more likely than nonapostates to have been