I totally understand the desire to keep discussion of religion to a minimum on this fan site in an effort to prevent a large religious debate from erupting and to respect the fact that Adam isn’t religious.
At the same time, I imagine that many fans are curious about Adam’s faith because he is very inspirational and listening to his interviews and watching his performances sometimes feels like a spiritual experience. Smiling
Adam tweeted on 4/04/2010 “I’m Jew ISH by blood not by practice. I’m not religious. More spiritual.” and “I DO believe in a higher power.”
The concepts of “Jewish, but not practicing” and “spiritual, but not religious” may not be understood by everyone on this site given the diversity of the cultural backgrounds of Adam’s fans.
Judaism is a religion that is more than 3000 years old. It originated in the region that we now call Israel/Palestine. People who practice Judaism believe that there is only one God. Their holy scriptures are found in the Tanakh. These scriptures are pretty similar to the Christian Old Testament. The Christian New Testament is NOT part of Judaism. Jesus is viewed by some Jews as possibly having been a great man, but he is not considered to be divine.
If someone identifies as Jewish, it often means that he follows the practices, beliefs, doctrines, and rituals of Judaism, but this isn’t always the case. Unlike Christians and Muslims, Jews often identify themselves as all being part of the same ethnic group, no matter where they are living in the world.
Adam identifies as Jewish because his ETHNICITY is Jewish, in the same way that my ethnicity is part Scottish and someone else’s is Punjabi or Latino/a. (More specifically, if I’m correct, Adam’s mother is Jewish. I don’t know the ethnic background of his father.) But he doesn’t practice Judaism. He doesn’t generally practice Jewish rituals or celebrate Jewish festivals. In his 2/18/2010 DonorsChoose interview, he said that he only went to a few weeks of Hebrew school as a child and that he hadn’t had a ceremony to celebrate his bar mitzvah. He tweeted on 04/04/2010 that he hadn’t celebrated Passover in over 10 years.
Many people around the world identify as being spiritual, but not religious. This usually means that they don’t follow any of the practices, beliefs, doctrines, or rituals of any specific religious tradition, such as Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. But they DO still believe that God or some kind of higher power or intelligence does exist..
Adam has said on several occasions that he’s into astrology. He said in his DonorsChoose interview that he didn’t know whether or not he believed in reincarnation.
As far as I know, this is about all that Adam has shared about his beliefs. It’s important, I think, that we don’t assume that he believes something unless he says he does.
If there’s anything inaccurate about this little essay, please let me know, and I will gladly correct it
CRAZY GLAM 