Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Jews are meant to fast (among other prohibitions), and spend the day in Temple, communally asking forgiveness for our sins.

I’m a secular, atheist Jew. So why do I feel guilty for all of my meals yesterday? It’s not Pascal’s Wager; it’s not a lurking agnosticism. It is, I suppose, the weight of a few millenia of culture, some of it useless, irrational baggage but much of it a beautiful tradition of ritual and morality, connecting me to other Jews, and to “all the strangers who live in our midst”, as the prayers of forgiveness have it.