( Oprah.com ) -- For as long as I 've been alive , my parents have hosted the first night 's Passover seder . As our family matured and expanded , and as the seder became more inclusive ( coming to accommodate first and second cousins , teachers from our school , family friends and near-strangers who happened to be passing through town ) , we moved the proceedings from our dining room to the basement . Previously on CNN : The Foer Questions . One table became many pushed awkwardly together : the plastic folding table , the pingpong and bumper-pool tables , four card tables ... all covered in matching , if wine-stained , tablecloths . Oprah.com : How to connect to the present moment . At each setting was a Haggadah that my father had cobbled together the week before by Xeroxing favorite passages from other Haggadahs and , more recently , by printing online sources . Because on this night copyright does n't apply ... I 'm not an observant Jew and would n't be considered religious by most definitions ( including my own ) . But this oldest of rituals , which conveys the oldest of stories , could n't possibly feel more contemporary or important to me -- especially now that I 'm a father . Oprah.com : Your father , yourself : 6 women look back on their dads . Religion snuck up on me as a parent . Throughout my childhood , I spent Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons promising my future children that they would never waste their Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons at Hebrew school . And yet when the time comes -- my wife and I are still a few years away -- it 's hard to imagine doing anything terribly unlike what our parents did . Or their parents . Or their parents ' parents ' parents ' parents ... traditions of all kinds compel our parenting choices . ( This is true for everything from the `` cinnamon oatmeal '' I cook my children for breakfast to the stories I read to them at bedtime . ) But so does the desire to get it slightly more right : to put lessons learned in my own life to use , or simply to shape traditions to fit the contemporary moment . ( We are raising our children vegetarian and often invent our own stories to tell them in bed . ) It 's a balancing act : How do you bind yourself to the old , without binding yourself ? Oprah.com : What Oprah knows for sure about growing up . And there 's something else going on , too -- something beyond tradition , and inherited values , even beyond reason . Children evoke what Abraham Joshua Heschel called `` radical amazement . '' If you 've ever stood at the edge of the ocean before a storm or watched a solar eclipse in a puddle , you know what this is -- when the question being begged is not how something works , but why . And at this stage in my life , there is no more radically amazing why than the faces of my sons . Oprah.com : 12 ways to entertain kids ( Without resorting to a DVD ) All those years ago , we were doing more in my parents ' basement than just fulfilling a ritual , or telling a story , or transmitting values : We were setting aside some time from the bustle of our daily existence to engage with a question that has no answer , but whose asking reminds us of the scales and stakes of our lives : `` Why are we who we are ? '' The question inspires amazement . Religion -- even for the unreligious -- can be a powerful way , perhaps even the most powerful way , to engage with our amazement . I do n't especially care whether or not my children believe in God , but I can think of nothing more important or powerful to instill in them than the experience of wonder . And for us , this happens at a pushed-together table with a wine-stained tablecloth . Oprah.com : 18 questions that everyone 's too afraid to ask . Subscribe to O , The Oprah Magazine for up to 75 % off the newsstand price . That 's like getting 18 issues FREE . Subscribe now ! TM & © 2011 Harpo Productions , Inc. All Rights Reserved .
`` I would n't be considered religious by most definitions , '' says Foer . Foer says Haggadah could n't feel more important to him now that he 's a father . The book is not without its critics.