The other day, after a few drinks, I got into a huge argument with one of my closest friends about God and religion and all that sort of thing.

She doesn’t need God, she said, because she can see beauty in science. She can appreciate the world without old-fashioned explanations. She also said that she would rather base her choices on her own instincts and experiences, rather than on an ancient value system which discriminates against gay people, sex workers and lepers. But she held strong that Judaism was still her religion; she was culturally Jewish, and that was enough.

I’ve struggled with this idea for a long time, but although it’s a question I often think about, my view on it very rarely changes. When I was deeply engaged with Judaism and went to shul a lot and believed in God, I felt that if you didn’t respect and understand the philosophical core of Judaism then you were missing out. The food and the music are one thing, but learning about the big ideas that have been discussed and debated for thousands of years are so much more precious, and so much more fragile. My friend would argue that she doesn’t need those ideas, and that she can find her own moral path without the help of dead homophobes.

I love her to pieces, but I think that’s downright arrogance. Yes, the writers of the Torah were homophobic, and no, I don’t think that’s excusable, regardless of the age in which they lived. But to dismiss the rest of Talmudic history and say that there is nothing we can learn from it is ridiculous. Sometimes, of course, we’ll be able to find our own solutions to problems we face – but in some situations we simply won’t know what to do, and a tried and tested moral code might just come in useful to fall back on. In times of trouble, a religion is something that could help you keep going and make good choices, but it won’t be able to do that if you only appreciate it for the food.

This is why, despite my lack of involvement with Judaism at the moment, I still see its philosophical value as well as its gastronomic one. It might be able to give me physical nourishment, but how can I expect spiritual nourishment when I need it if I dismiss its potential when I’m okay? I don’t always feel the need for answers – actually, most of the time I enjoy neither knowing nor caring – but I know that prayer is a powerful thing, and knowledge from the past can give strength, and I’m sure that one day I’ll need to rely on both of those things. So even if I don’t want it right now, as long as I remember its value it’ll be there when I need it.