We’re entering a rarely explored period in the Jewish calendar, a special time of observance and multiple trips to shul. We are entering the period of Secondary School Applications. Its holy text is the JFS 24/25 Certificate of Religious Practice.

Present entry requirements for parents with children at a Jewish primary are four synagogue visits, to be signed off by the rabbi. So I dust off my yarmulke and set my alarm for Saturday morning.

Having been through this process before, once inside the building, I am prepared: as the Torah scroll makes its way down the aisle I must jump out in front of the rabbi and shake his hand, whispering. “Remember I was here! Remember I was here!”

I actually quite enjoy shul. Nowadays. I was raised as a Buddhist, and the few times my teenage self accompanied my grandmother to synagogue were intimidating. I tried my best to follow the siddur, but not knowing any of the songs, the prayers or the squiggly symbols, meant the entire experience was utterly alien. And this was Reform!

Even as my pride in being Jewish grew, there seemed no greater way to make me feel that I did not, in fact, belong at all.

My overriding memory is of being utterly terrified of getting something wrong, of sitting down or standing up at the wrong time, of doing something, or not doing something, that would mark me out as fake.

Outside the syngogue walls, however, I, quite pointedly, didn’t consider the religion to have any bearing on my Jewish status. I was a proud cultural Jew. It was all about the bagels, the films, the ethnicity and Zionism for me.

The religious stuff was merely window dressing.

When I found myself in yeshiva a few years later, I recognised the ambivalence of the word “religion”.

The rabbis put particular emphasis on the rituals of Judaism. They didn’t care if you believed, you just had to do. Judaism was a way of life, that had little to do with the Christian focus on faith. Religion deepened the cultural, but the argument was never made that it defined it.

Now I get this is only one person’s perspective. The view of one Jew. And from those who’ve never been to synagogue, to those who go multiple times a day, the spectrum of our people is wide, there will be many different opinions. Perhaps that’s the ultimate quality that defines us.

But regardless of my shul attendance record — regular in the years before marriage, less frequent as children arrived, even less frequent as more children arrived, and now in bursts during bar mitzvah and Certificate of Religious Practice years — there are other things at play here, other things that explain the diminishing importance of Judaism to being Jewish.

With its be-all end-all focus on race, identity politics has meant we Jews now lean more heavily on our ethnicity to confront the, cough, anti-racists when they become racist.

It’s the same with Corbynism, and its disingenuous acolytes who intone ad nauseum: “Judaism’s a religion, how can you be racist against a religion?”

We counter with DNA evidence of Levantine origin, with evidence of genetic diseases specific to Jews. To root us in the biological, we even cite Nazi race laws. And so the ethno in our ethno-religion has come to dominate.

Yet sitting there in shul next to my son I had two thoughts. The first was annoyance when I realised the rabbi was on paternity leave.

The second, as I became more involved in the service, something not normally possible when you’re shushing five kids, was an epiphany, a course-correction of what it means to be Jewish.

Maybe it was because my son was diligently following and committed as best he could. Or maybe it was because of my familiarity with the service.

Or maybe it was because I felt safe in a welcoming wonderful community I’ve now been part of for nearly two decades.

But amid the calls for connection to Israel, the prayers for peace, the utter reverence for a book, the reminder of ideals to live by, I understood for the very first time that instead of focusing on what makes someone Jewish, the real point was : why be Jewish?

It’s our religion that can answer this, which was indeed established for this very purpose. Ethnicity is passive, religion is active.

This may all seem ridiculously obvious, but it has all been lost from me, and I’m eager to explore why with my rabbi upon his return.

In the meantime, I just want him to know I attended shul on May 27.