ridicule my inability. Over a few years the ridicule turned to open mockery.
Not walking the talk means that such people don't really believe. I can understand trying and failing because that's my middle name but failure to try is failure to truly believe.
As to my personal experience, since my parents were atheist Jews, we never went to Temple outside of the typical wedding/funeral attendance. And when I came to that age, I refused to go through the Bar Mitzvah ritual so we had a birthday party with relatives.
It was only after I started believing in God that I realized that I had absorbed some things by osmosis as it were.