“So I had an idea for a website when I woke up this morning. People are going to take photos with Starbucks coffee mugs in different cities around the world. Then the photo captions will say they got mugged in Barbados or New York or whatever. You get it?” said one of the friendlier attendees of the seder I had the pleasure of going to this weekend.

After being dragged by my mother to suburban Detroit on Saturday for Passover with her friend, I realized that I don’t need Jewish gatherings to help me identify with my cultural heritage.

This weekend offered a 24-hour intensive re-exposure to Judaism that was way more than a rude awakening. On a day-to-day basis, I am happily aware that I’m a Jew, but these religious gatherings are meaning less and less to me as the years go on. Identifying myself with the culture doesn’t necessitate that I put myself through these traditions that don’t resonate with my daily life.

And as I sat feverishly blinking at Mr. Mugging Man, wishing a concrete wall would run continuously into my forehead, I wondered why the people in that room weren’t like me. I don’t fault them for this lack of connection and my own cynicism. I went to Jewish day school from kindergarten to sixth grade, had a Bar Mitzvah, and strolled through the old streets of Jerusalem like I was Dr. Dre in Compton. Yet in these moments, these hodgepodge gatherings of non-family members that I seem to find myself in on Jewish holidays, I find no solidarity around the table.

I could and probably should chalk the misery of this weekend up to the circumstances of the Seder itself, and not to a larger ethnic, or religious quandary I’ve been finding myself in. But the thing is that my self-identification has little or nothing to do with these traditional concepts of Judaism. What I mean by this is that Jews can retain a sense of cultural identity, without being religious. Or at least I think I can.

Because of minority status, there is an ingrained ideology in the American Jew that these holiday gatherings are imperative to keeping our tradition alive. The same goes for traveling to Israel and having a Bar Mitzvah; I’m looking at you, Drake. Why should the spirit of our culture be driven by such a guilty feeling of obligation? Faith should be practiced based on personal belief as opposed to being driven by some preordained doctrine.

I can think of thousands of things I would have rather done this weekend, not excluding having a colonoscopy, instead of going to this Seder. Yet, I would have sat and legitimately contemplated my own value system, having a frank conversation with my conscience, if I did not attend.

It is wrong to predicate religious practice on obligation. I’d rather let everyone know that I could not care less about walking into a synagogue for an entire year, than allow one wretched night at a Passover table to ameliorate my lack of Jewness.

Before I get smote to death though-I am the first-born male after all-it’s not like I have a self-deprecating hatred that’s going to drive me to become an Episcopalian or something like that. Moses forbid. It’s just I am comfortable telling people that I’m Jewish without wearing it on my sleeve.

So despite my efforts to get water-boarded on Manischewitz wine, which would be like if Mary Poppins dished out multitudes of Splenda spoonfuls with TheraFlu, I managed to make it through this seder unscathed and decently sober.

And in the few revelatory moments that popped up out of the gurgling bubbles resting on top of gefilte fish, I realized that none of this makes me feel more or less Jewish. I am no longer obligated.