I'm not going to try to tell you that I'm an atheist; I just question what it means to believe in god. As a hardened analytic-type, I simply can't bring myself to believe in a burning bush unless it has something to do with a yeast infection. I'm just not what you would traditionally call spiritual, I guess.

When I think about the way I was brought up, I consider myself extremely lucky. My parents believed in choice. I took lessons in ballet, tap, jazz dance and gymnastics not because of my pushy parentals, but because I genuinely wanted to.

So when it seemed that everyone in my elementary school class was attending some kind of religious training after school, my parents presented me with yet another option: Did I want to start going to Hebrew school to study so that I could have a bat mitzvah on my 13th birthday?

At ten years old, I didn't weigh in my mind what my choice would say about my future relationship with god. I merely considered whether or not I needed another after-school activity, which seemed like a good idea...so I joined the basketball team.