Very nice, Metis, I am in full agreement with these sentiments. How can anyone tell anyone else that they are not culturally Jewish ? Of course Judaism is much more than religion. It involves philosophy, ethics, morality, culture and other aspects.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on "traditional Judaism", which I will guess ain't so traditional.
Thanks for the above, and the issue of "traditional Judaism" I'll give short shrift to because that's pretty much off-topic.
If someone says "I'm a "traditional Jew", I pretty much know where they're coming from, which is neither intrinsically good or bad in my book. But where I do have trouble with "traditional Judaism" is that it all too often is used to demean other approaches, and I don't see much positive coming out of that kind of stance.
Because of my anthropology background, I tend to take fairly long-term views on many subjects, so the question I would have to someone using that terminology would tend to be something like "Which Judaism is actually 'traditional' overall?". My point would be that all religions change over time, and Judaism has done much the same; plus all religions will continue to change over time, and I suspect Judaism will do much the same.
If Judaism had remained totally static, it likely would have disappeared over time, but what's remarkable about it is that it's actually quite flexible. We well know that interpretation and application has been viewed as being variable, but also that other innovations have come in and become absorbed at least by some, and that also has been variable.
For example, a thousand years ago, who would have thought we'd now have female rabbis? We see it in the various reform movements, but now even some orthodox are tampering with the idea, and some feel it's only time before we some being admitted as such in at least some orthodox shuls.
We also have to remember that bar mitzvahs didn't always exist, and that the Talmud was not given en toto at Sinai. The chasidim as we know them today didn't exist a thousand years ago, and they were not too welcome when they first appeared by many of the orthodox. And then there's Kabbalah, as interpreted by Madonna. :banghead3
So, to conclude, which branch or concept of Judaism is "traditional"? None-- we're all a "work in progress".