At the Academy Awards, you can always count on someone putting God on their thank-you list. This year, there was Jennifer Hudson, who accepted the award for best supporting actress saying, "Oh my God. I have to just take this moment in. I cannot believe this. Look what God can do.... I'd like to thank the Academy. Definitely have to thank God again...."

Jewish winners tend to thank their brilliant costar, the writers, the producers, their agent, their spouse, even the parents who always believed they could do it. They thank the Academy, of course, but unless an "Ohmigod!" slips in, they leave God out.

A Harris poll last year revealed only "30 percent of Jews say they are ‘absolutely certain' there is a God," vs. 76 percent of Protestants and 64 percent of Catholics (and 93 percent of "born again" Christians).

Do Jews just believe in God less than Christians do, or does God figure differently in Christianity and Judaism?

Theologian Eugene Borowitz of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion once explained that the idea of God was essential to Christians: "It is through his faith in the Christ that a man becomes a Christian and that he lives as a Christian and that he achieves salvation."

If you take belief of God out of the equation, the Christian is not left with a cultural version of Christianity, something evocative, providing identity and a way to live. Though they might exchange gifts on Christmas and prepare a feast for their family on Easter, though they may reside in a largely Christian country, without belief in God they may not feel much like card-carrying Christians.

But what about Jews, Borowitz asked. Was having faith in God "the axis, the pivot, of the Jewish religion?" No, he said.

Judaism depends less upon the idea of God than upon the life of Torah, which Borowitz defined as "hearing God's commandment that we serve him, as a people and as single selves." He continues, "It is the sense that God wants us to act in godlike ways," commanded ways, ethically sensitive ways of being a human being in relationship with others.

Take belief in God out of the equation for Jews, and whether or not they are observant Jews or cultural Jews, they can still practice and identify as Jews. Acting as a Jew ought to, and feeling connected to Jews, past and present —those elements are key, or so their parents and grandparents taught them, either by saying so overtly or by communicating that through their deeds.

Picture a pair of American Jewish parents who, after being out of touch with their child, a young adult, for a long time, get this phone call: "I don't observe Jewish holidays. I don't keep kosher. I have not married a Jew. I have no relationship to Israel." The child thinks to offer the consolation of a testimony: "But now I believe in God! I love God, and God loves me! I pray to God!" Does this confession of faith bring the parents any comfort?

Now picture these American Jewish parents again, this time receiving a call from another long-lost child. This one is observing Jewish holidays at home and in synagogue. There is a Jewish spouse, kids are being raised as Jews, and money is being donated to Jewish causes here and in Israel. This child thinks to add one more fact, a confession: He or she no longer believes in God or maybe never did believe in the first place.

Compared to the first set of parents, the "nonbeliever's" parents do not become distraught, for they have been successful in transmitting Jewish practices and feelings of Jewish solidarity. Beside them, private issues about faith or one's personal feelings about God pale. This can be true no matter which denomination our hypothetical family identifies with.

This is not to say that faith isn't operative in the lives of American Jews. Believers abound. For some, the very idea of practicing Judaism without professing faith is illogical at best and blasphemous at worst.

But what about the large cohort of American Jews who consider themselves religious Jews but do not fully believe? Many still embrace some idea of God. Theirs is not a God who knows all, who can fix anything, who controls all.

With questioning minds, and a passion for science, they may prefer the big bang and evolution to the Book of Genesis. Still, they believe in a greater power (whom they may call God) who leads them to discover that life is meaningful, who goads them to study healing, who persuades them that love can undo despair. Not precisely the "belief in God" that the pollsters are measuring, but not full-out disbelief either. They may not be heeding the particular commanding voice who created the world, who gave Moses the Torah, who performed miracles, and who rewards the good and judges the evil harshly, but they do feel commanded to live the "life of Torah."

Sociologist Judith Lorber, an atheist by self-definition, tells the story of her response to loss. There was the untimely death of friends, the death of parents. What did she do to seek comfort and closure? She went to synagogue to say Kaddish, despite her atheism and knowing full well that "Kaddish doesn't mention death or the dead person being remembered —it only praises God."

Why does someone who does not believe in God still find enormous meaning saying a traditional prayer that offers God lavish praise? An anthropologist might answer that death so unhinges us that we grasp at familiar cultural forms, the scripts our ancestors turned to at similar moments. (Leon Wieseltier once wrote that saying Kaddish brought him from the periphery of Judaism back to the center.) The literal words of Kaddish, whether in Hebrew or translation, do not matter as much as what they have promised for centuries: Saying this prayer in the company of other mourners who can empathize with your grief and desire to be comforted by memories helps you to acknowledge the finality of death.

Surely, Jewish religious leaders would prefer a flock professing a hearty belief in God. They may have no better luck than Moses, who lamented to the generation of Israelites who left Egypt —the ones who should have remembered how God carried them as a parent carries a child: "Yet for all that, you have no faith in the Lord who goes before you on your journey."

According to the Harris poll, 70 percent of the tribe has their genes.