by A. J. Jacobs
It has become a reflex. Every time I use the future tense, I try to tag on those two words: “God willing.” My mother hates it. She told me I sound like someone who sends in videos to Al Jazeera. And I know my verbal tic comes off as weird in secular settings. But I find it a profound reminder of the murky instability of the future. Yes, I hope to return home at six, but God or fate might have other plans. This, in turn, makes me value the present even more. As James 4:14 says, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (NKJ).
I’ve got to try to squeeze all I can out of that vapor.
When her time of delivery came, there were twins in her womb.
—GENESIS 38:27
Day 232. Julie and I spend the morning at the doctor’s office to get another sonogram. Julie lifts her shirt, and the boys pop up on the little monitor. They’re starting to look human now. They both have the oversized skull of a bobblehead doll or talk show host, perched on a tiny body with reptilian limbs. You can see them move—they wiggle and jostle and…um…smack each other.
“Did you see that?” Julie asks.
“I saw it.”
The boy fetus on the right had given the boy fetus on the left a jab to the head. Actually, more of an uppercut. He just took his olive-pit-sized fist and thrust it directly into the ovarian wall, stretching it till it cuffed his brother in the face.
“You think it was intentional?” asks Julie.
“I don’t know. Could have been a spasm. Though it did kind of look intentional.”
“Oh, man. These next few years are going to be hard.”
Of course, being Bible-obsessed as I am, my mind goes straight to the Scripture’s most famous twins: Jacob and Esau, who also waged war in utero. A far more serious war.
The children struggled together within [Rebecca].
And she said, “If it is thus, why do I live?”
So she went to inquire of the Lord.
And the Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided” (Genesis 25:22–23).
I’ve been thinking a lot about Jacob and Esau lately (the real Jacob, not my biblical alter ego). The brothers are relevant—almost eerily relevant—not just to my family life, but also to my quest for biblical truth.
The story of Jacob and Esau provides a classic example of the gap between, on the one hand, what the Bible literally says, and, on the other, the centuries-old layers of interpretation that have built up around those words.
If you read the Bible cold, as if you’d been raised on one of Jupiter’s moons, you would, I’d wager, have this reaction: Jacob is a conniving scoundrel. And Esau, though maybe not a Mensa member, got a raw deal.
But the tradition—at least the more conservative tradition—says just the opposite: Jacob is a righteous man. And Esau, if not totally evil, is certainly depraved and impetuous and untrustworthy.
How does this work?
Consider the story of the swapped birthright. Esau, the older brother, owned the birthright, a privilege that Jacob coveted. The Bible says:
Once when Jacob was boiling pottage, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished.
And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red pottage, for I am famished!”…
Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?”
Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his
birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:29–33).
My first thought on reading this was: What kind of demented brother is Jacob? Why wouldn’t he just ladle out a bowl of red pottage for his starving sibling instead of blackmailing the poor guy?
But the tradition has a different read: Esau wasn’t really about to die; he was just hungry. He’s a slave to his urges, pure id, and an exaggerator to boot. He’d do anything for a snack, including selling the sacred birthright; he showed no respect for what God had given him.
Just a few pages later, Jacob dupes his brother again. This time, their father, Isaac, who is blind and on his deathbed, wants to give a blessing to his eldest son. He sends for Esau. But Jacob—at his mother’s urging—disguises himself as Esau, putting a goatskin over his hands and neck to mimic his brother’s hairiness. Jacob announces himself as Esau. Isaac checks by feeling the faux hairy hands and proceeds to give Jacob the blessing. Again, a first-time Bible reader might think Jacob a rascal for fooling his dying dad. But the tradition says that Esau deserved it.
You have to remember that Jacob is a patriarch, one of the original fathers of God’s people, so biblical interpreters had all the reason in the world to put a positive spin on his exploits. Esau wasn’t a patriarch. Well, not of righteous people, anyway: In the rabbinic tradition, Esau spawns an evil race—either the Romans or the Edomites, depending on the source (both were frequent enemies of the Israelites).
Even when Esau seems to act with nobility and forgiveness, the tradition doesn’t buy it. Take Jacob’s and Esau’s reconciliation. The two brothers, estranged for twenty years, finally meet up in the desert.
The Bible says: “Esau ran to meet [Jacob], and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept” (Genesis 33:4).
Sounds innocent enough. But my friend Nathaniel Deutsch, who teaches religion at Swarthmore College, told me about a fascinating midrash—a Jewish legend—about what really happened. The midrash says that Esau’s “kiss” was not a kiss at all, but actually an attempt to bite Jacob on the neck. And not a love bite, mind you, a malevolent bite. Jacob, being a man of God, was saved when his neck miraculously turned to marble.
I’m not immune to the interpretative tradition. Now that I read the Bible again with the rabbinically tinted lenses, I agree that Esau sold his birthright too quickly. He needed to engage in more long-range thinking. And Jacob is surely the smarter of the two—and a homebody like me—so maybe it’s a good thing that he tricked the doltish Esau to become the patriarch.
Still, I don’t want to whitewash Jacob. I love the complexity of the patriarchs, that their flaws are as numerous as the stars in the sky and, in some cases, come close to eclipsing their righteousness. And I am awed by the profound and extraordinary fact that the entire Judeo-Christian heritage hinged on a bowl of soup.
“You shall not join hands with a wicked man…”
—EXODUS 23:1
Day 233. I hate the nonsensical, bacteria-ridden custom of the handshake. And the Bible project—with its many purity laws—has given me an excellent excuse for avoiding shaking hands with women. Now I have figured out something beautiful: I can expand my prohibition to the rest of the population too.
The Bible says not to join hands with a wicked man. And what are the chances of a man being wicked? Remarkably high, especially with the strict standards I’m employing nowadays. So I find it’s best to keep my hands in the pockets of my white pants and just nod politely.
To be fair, the “not join hands” command occurs in relation to conspiring to give false evidence. So maybe it doesn’t apply all the time. Which is why I’ve come up with a backup excuse.
The Bible’s female impurity laws are more famous, but there are, in fact, corresponding laws of male impurity. Men don’t get off scot-free. Leviticus says that a man shall be unclean for the day after his “emission of seed,” as the Bible phrases it, and must take a bath to purify himself. In the twenty-first century, the male impurity laws are rarely observed, even by the strictest of the strict. The reason given is that such laws applied only in the era of now-destroyed Jerusalem temples. But if I’m trying to re-create biblical life, I should probably pay heed to the male laws.
My male friends usually assume that I’m evading the handshake because of germs. Since I’m biblically required to tell the truth, I say, “No, not germs.” And then I explain. Which somehow turns out to be even more awkward than discussi
ng the monthly cycles with women. Men just don’t like talking about their emissions.
“Well, I haven’t in a week,” said John. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
I’ve learned that men of my vintage aren’t having a whole lot of sex. I think I’m hanging out with too many new fathers.
I like the male purity laws, and not just because they allow me to stay in my antiseptic bubble. I like them because they make the female impurity laws seem much more palatable. It’s not only women who experience a miniature loss of life and must be avoided. Men do, too. The Bible has its moments of egalitarianism.
“Honor your father and your mother…”
—EXODUS 20:12
Day 234. I feel like I’ve dishonored my father and mother by even embarking on this quest in the first place. They wanted me to write a book about something safer, like taking a year of salsa lessons. Worse, I still haven’t told them about my visit to Gil.
Tonight Julie and I are going over to my parents’ house, and I plan to make a conscious effort to be more honorable. Honoring your parents is not one of the inexplicable chukim. It’s eminently rational, perhaps even more so in biblical times.
If you were a nomad—as many ancient Israelites were—the aging parents would be cumbersome. They couldn’t help with the heavy lifting or nailing down tent pegs. The temptation to leave them behind must have been great. But you couldn’t. Because God commanded us to honor them.
I’ve read objections to this commandment. The problem is the absolute nature of it. What if your parents don’t deserve honor? Should Stalin’s daughter honor him? It’s a hard question, and I don’t have an answer. But in my case, my parents do deserve honor. Despite the embarrassingly early curfew they gave me in high school, despite the daily guilt trips about not seeing them enough, despite the quibbles, they’ve been, on balance, very good parents. Just last week I figured out something about my dad. I realized that he checks my Amazon.com page every day, and if there’s a bad review up there, he clicks on the “Not helpful” box. It makes me want to hug him—if we weren’t both so repressed.
I don’t treat them nearly well enough. I honor them only in a lip-service way. I call them every weekend, but I spend the twenty minutes of the phone call playing hearts on my PowerBook or cleaning the closet while tossing out the occasional “mm-hmmm.” I delete without reading my mom’s emailed jokes about vacuous blondes or wacky etymology. And when I do reply to her emails, I often do the I’m-so-important-I-don’t-have-time-to-capitalize-or-punctuate thing.
So in this biblical year, I’ve been on a mission to reform. I’ve been trying to capitalize my emails to my mom. And to actually listen to what my parents say during our weekly calls. Listening is a key theme in the Scriptures. Or, in Hebrew, Shema. In fact, the Shema—a passage from Deuteronomy that begins “Hear, O Israel”—is considered the most important prayer in Judaism.
Tonight it’s dinner and a DVD. They chose Gods and Generals, a civil-war movie that opened to wide apathy a few years ago. The title smacks of polytheism to me, but I don’t object, and we settle into our respective chairs to watch it.
About forty-five minutes in, during another musket loading scene, I look over and notice my mom asleep in her chair. And not just light dozing. We’re talking mouth-agape, head-slumped-on-the-chest deep slumber.
I nudge Julie. At this point, I am planning to whisper something clever along the lines of “Looks like my mom is really enjoying the movie.” Or perhaps I would have gone with a sight gag—an impression of my mom with her jaw slack. But I stop myself. This isn’t good-natured jesting. It has a tinge of mockery to it. And the Fifth Commandment kicked in. So I just smile vacantly at Julie, who then goes back to watching Jeff Daniels.
I realize I nearly committed a major biblical sin. Or at least a G-rated version of one.
Consider this story from Genesis: After the floodwaters had receded, Noah planted a vineyard, grew some grapes, and made wine. One day he drank too much and passed out in his tent, naked. Noah’s bare body was spotted by his son Ham, who then told his brothers about it—we assume in a disrespectfully jovial manner. For this, Ham would pay. Or more precisely, Ham’s son Canaan would pay. Noah thundered, “Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”
What exactly was Ham’s sin? Perhaps seeing his father’s nakedness. Or maybe Ham did more than just look: Some believe that Ham perpetrated something X-rated on his dad, though this isn’t stated in the text itself. To me, perhaps the biggest offense was that Noah was asleep. We’re never more defenseless and vulnerable than when we’re asleep. If you mock a napping person, you might as well be putting a stumbling block before the blind (to use another biblical phrase).
So as difficult as it is to restrain myself from teasing my mother, it’s best that I did. When I get home, I check in on Jasper, who is sleeping as soundly as a drunken Noah. He is in my favorite sleeping position: on his knees, kowtowing before some invisible Chinese magistrate. I watch him for a good three minutes and smile like an idiot the whole time.
“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to fetch his pledge.”
—DEUTERONOMY 24:10
Day 236. The writing on our doorpost is starting to attract more attention. The building manager—a tall Russian guy with a goatee—knocks on our door today. He tells me I have to paint over it. Someone has complained. I ask him if I can wait a few months, till my year ends.
“Why so long?” he says.
“Well, I’m—”
“What is the writing, anyway?”
“It’s the Ten Commandments. From the Bible.”
“The Bible? Oh, religious?”
He puts his hands in the air and backs away. He looks flustered, like he just stepped on my cat’s tail or got caught feeling up my wife.
“Leave it there, leave it there.”
It certainly wasn’t our neighbor Nancy who was doing the complaining. I run into her in the hall while she is walking her dog.
“I love the writing,” she says. “I was thinking of doing it to my door.”
Excellent! My first disciple.
“Anytime,” I say. “I’ll write it for you myself.”
“OK, I may take you up on that.”
She pauses.
“You know what? Wait here.”
Nancy vanishes into her apartment and emerges with a blue paperback.
“I’m not very religious,” she says, “but I like this book. It’s Pirkei Avot: Ethics of the Fathers.”
She flips to a page with a passage highlighted in yellow.
She reads: “‘In a place of no humanity, strive to be human.’ That’s my motto for living in New York.”
That’s good wisdom. It may not be from the Bible itself, but it’s good.
“Here, take it.” Nancy says. Before I can say no, she’s shoved the book into my hands and is on her way into the apartment.
“How’s your Hendrix proposal?” I ask before she shuts the door.
“Just a few thousand more pages, and I’ll be done.”
You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt…
—DEUTERONOMY 16:12
Day 237. I got an unexpected email today. It arrived in my in-box at 1:07 p.m. from a guy named Kevin Roose. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m an eighteen-year-old native Ohioan in the middle of my first year at Brown.”
Kevin went on to explain that he’s going to be working at a café in New York this summer, but he wants to be a writer, and he noticed I went to Brown as well, and…would I be willing to take him on as a part-time personal intern?
This was an unusual request in several respects. First, there’s the fact that he wants to be a writer in this day and age, since it seems about as pragmatic as getting into Betamax sales. Second, that he took the initiative to email me. I don’t inspire many groupies. I still have a special place in my heart for my one and only rabid fan—the guy who took off his sweatshi
rt at a Texas signing to reveal passages of my book scrawled on his T-shirt in Magic Marker. Other than that, I’m not in the market for bodyguards.
I wrote back to Kevin saying I’d hire him sight unseen on one condition: that I could call him my “slave.” Now this might seem flip, and maybe it is, but slavery is a huge part of the Hebrew Bible, and I’d been struggling to figure out a way to include it in my biblical year. The closest thing to legal slavery in modern America? An unpaid internship. And here it was. Heaven-sent.
Kevin accepted.
His internship is still a few months off. Which is fine by me, because it’ll give me plenty of time to figure out biblical slavery. There are some interesting rules. Like:
You can beat your slave as hard as you want—as long as he survives a day or two postbeating (Exodus 21:21).
But if you beat him with a rod and he dies immediately, you will be punished (Exodus 21:20).
You also can’t pluck out the slave’s eye, or else you have to set him free. Likewise, you can’t knock out his tooth, or you set him free. (Exodus 21:26–27).
If the slave was born to the Hebrew race, then, regardless of his eye and tooth situation, he gets his freedom after six years. If he opts to refuse his freedom, you must put him against a doorpost and drill a hole in his ear with an awl (Exodus 21:6).
As much as I can’t wait for Kevin to take over my Kinko’s duties, the existence of slavery in the Bible is bewildering. It points to a bigger puzzle. Namely: Judaism, as practiced today, when practiced at its best, is a compassionate religion, just as Christianity, when practiced at its best, is a compassionate religion. Compassionate Judaism fights for the oppressed, encourages generosity, and so on.
But if you read the Hebrew Bible literally, it’s often not compassionate at all. Huge chunks of it seem downright barbaric. You’ve got slavery. An eye for an eye. Capital punishment for everything from adultery to checking your horoscope. God-approved genocide against the Canaanites. And sexism: a girl’s consecration price is three shekels to a boy’s five shekels, making her only 60 percent as valuable.
