by A. J. Jacobs
I’ve noticed that I sometimes walk around with a lighter step, almost an ice-skating-like glide, because the ground feels hallowed. All of the ground, even the ground outside the pizzeria near my apartment building.
All well and good, right? The only thing is, this is not the God of the Israelites. This is not the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. That God is an interactive God. He rewards people and punishes them. He argues with them, negotiates with them, forgives them, occasionally smites them. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures has human emotions—love and anger.
My God doesn’t. My God is impersonal. My God is the God of Spinoza. Or the God of Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian who believed that God was “the ground of being.” Or the God of the Jedi knights. It’s a powerful but vague all-pervasive force; some slightly more sophisticated version of pantheism. I don’t even know if my God can be said to have a grand plan, much less mood swings. Can I keep edging toward the true biblical God? I’m not sure.
And the Lord said to me, “Arise, go on your journey…”
—DEUTERONOMY 10:11
Day 127. Before I buy my tickets to Israel, I want to make sure my ex-uncle Gil will be there. I get his phone number from an Orthodox friend of mine in Israel, which was surprisingly easy. And I call.
My plan is to make it a stealth mission. I won’t reveal that I’m his former nephew. That’s not lying, right? That’s just omission of information. If he doesn’t know I’m an ex-relative, he can’t think that I’m giving him tacit approval, the family’s big fear.
I dial the fourteen digits. The phone rings.
My heart is thumping. I haven’t been this nervous since I called Julie for our first date.
“Hello?”
I don’t know what I expected—a booming voice speaking Aramaic?—but his pitch was a regular old midrange American.
“Is Gil there?”
“Speaking.”
“Yes, well, I’m a writer, and I’m writing a book about trying to live by the Bible, and I’m coming to Israel, and—”
“What’s your name?”
Part of me was hoping I could just be known as “the Writer.” So what do I do now? Should I give him a fake name? That would be lying. Well, maybe he won’t know my name. I’ve never met him, and I have a different last name from his ex-wife.
“My name is A. J. Jacobs”
“Oh! You’re related to my daughters.”
Well, there goes that theory. We set a date for me to come to his house for dinner. I’m tense enough about breaking the family taboo that it takes me three hours to go to sleep.
You shall write them on the doorposts of your house…
—DEUTERONOMY 6:9
Day 128. I’ve devoted a lot of time both to my physical appearance and my soul. But I feel I haven’t sufficiently Bibli-fied my house. The only thing I’ve done is to strip our apartment of those images that verge on idolatry, even if it’s of the celebrity kind: the poster of Ray Charles at the Monterey Jazz Festival, the half-dozen photos of Julie standing next to celebrities she accosted at events or on the street. (Julie with a reluctant Willem Dafoe, Julie with a skeptical Tupac Shakur, et cetera.)
So today, as instructed in Deuteronomy, I’m going to write a section of the Bible on our doorpost. I tell Julie, who has two stern commandments of her own.
1. Do not, under any circumstances, let Jasper see you write on the doorpost. We’ve been battling his tendency toward crayon abuse. This would not help.
2. Please, please do it in pencil. “I don’t want to get a call from the co-op board about this. I don’t want to have to pay for a painter.”
I promise.
At the end of the Israelites’ forty-year journey in the desert, Moses commanded them to write God’s words on their doorposts and their gates. It’s the origin of the mezuzah—the diagonally positioned box that we (and most other Jews) have nailed at the entrance to our homes.
The tradition has been to delegate the writing of the mezuzah to an officially sanctioned scribe. It all comes prepackaged. But the Bible’s literal wording—and presumably what some Israelites did back in ancient times—says that we should write on our door frames ourselves.
But what to write? Moses says “these words which I command you.” I briefly considered trying to squeeze in hundreds of commandments in tiny font but settled on the famous ten—they appear in the Bible right before the doorpost passage. (Incidentally, traditional mezuzahs instead have a scroll that contains famous prayer known as the Shema: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God. The Lord is One!”)
I get out my No. 2 Officemate pencil, make sure that Jasper is safely distracted by Legos, prop open the front door, and start slowly, very slowly, writing God’s words on the avocado-colored door frame. It takes an hour. All the while I am inhaling the mysterious odor that always wafts from apartment 5R (I think they have an illegal albacore cannery in there), taking a break between every commandment to shake out my wrist and elbow, and being vigilant not to make a stray loop or spike.
At first I feel absurd, like a biblical version of Bart Simpson at the chalkboard. Absurd and nervous—am I committing an egregious sin by ignoring the centuries-old tradition? Orthodox Jews might say so. Probably would say so. There are an astounding 4,649 instructions that go into creating a certified mezuzah. You must write with a quill taken from a kosher bird, like a goose or a turkey. The scroll must have twenty-two lines. And on and on. By comparison, I am winging it.
But after a half hour, I sink into a quasitrance. I haven’t done any monklike copying by hand in years—not since the invention of digital cut and paste, anyway. But there’s something to it. You are forced to linger over every letter, every cadence. You absorb the text. It’s the difference between walking to town and taking the bus—you can’t help but notice the scenery.
I notice the minimalist beauty of commandments six, seven, and eight:
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
And I notice the syncopated rhythm of the list of people banned from working on the Sabbath: “You, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates.”
I think about how every word that I am writing has launched a thousand debates. Even something as straightforward as: You shall not kill.
This is widely regarded as a mistranslation. The Old Testament features plenty of God-sanctioned killing—from capital punishment of blasphemers to the annihilation of enemies. The actual commandment is more like: You shall not murder.
Nothing is free from dispute, even the number ten. Depending on how you parse the language, you could argue that it’s actually the Thirteen Commandments. “You shall not make for yourself a graven image” is one commandment. “You shall not bow down to them” is another. But those two are generally lumped together.
They are deceptively simple, those Ten Commandments.
Do not go around as a gossiper among your people…
—LEVITICUS 19:16
Day 131. I keep thinking back to Amos, the harmonica-playing Amish man, and how he answered most questions with a monosyllable or a nod. And that’s if you were lucky. Sometimes he just stared over your shoulder until the silence got so unbearable that you asked another question.
I’m no Amos, but I feel myself drifting in his direction. Guard your tongue, I tell myself. Ration those words. Just nod your head and smile and don’t get provoked when they say “Hey, chatterbox, over there!” as my coworkers did at a recent Esquire dinner at an Italian restaurant.
I feel I have to clam up. It’s the best way to battle the overwhelming urge to spew biblically banned negative language. The pastor out to pasture, Elton Richards, gave me a good metaphor on this topic: think of negative speech as verbal pollution. And that’s what I’ve been doing: visualizing insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you’ve belched it out, you can
’t take it back. As grandma said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
The interesting thing is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place. My theory is, my thoughts are lazy. They say to themselves, “Well, we’ll never make it out into the world, so why even bother?” It’s more powerful than repression. The thoughts don’t even form enough to require being repressed.
Yes, the sales guy at the biblical bookstore sold me a hardcover copy of What Would Jesus Eat? when, as I found out today, there’s a paperback version that costs ten dollars less. But I refuse to complain about him to Julie. Maybe he didn’t know, or maybe he thought I’d prefer a good durable cover for posterity. I refuse to let that toxic cloud gather in my brain. It’s a purifying feeling, the verbal equivalent of wearing white clothes.
Tonight, over dinner with Julie, I was in fine no-negative-speech form. My wife’s job is all about creating fun; she works for a company that organizes scavenger hunts—they do corporate events, public events, bar mitzvahs—but apparently her day had not been fun at all.
She had this client who insisted on doing an outdoor event. Julie told her that it would be much better to do the scavenger hunt indoors this time of year, but the client said no. And, of course, the day turned out to be ear-numbingly cold. And now the client is freaking out and demanding a refund.
“She is such a pain in the ass,” says Julie.
I don’t know this woman. Technically, I shouldn’t say harmful speech about her.
“It’s a difficult situation.”
“I told her three times to do the hunt indoors, and she refused to listen,” says Julie.
“Maybe next time will be better.”
“I hope to God there won’t be a next time.”
“Sounds like she has some pluses and minuses, just like everyone.”
“What?”
“Everyone has their good and bad sides.”
“What does that mean? ‘Everyone has their good and bad sides.’”
“Well, it sounds like there was an unfortunate lack of communication.”
“There was no freakin’ lack of communication. I told her to do it, and she ignored me.”
Julie paused.
“Why aren’t you supporting me?”
“I am. But I don’t want to say anything negative. It’s gossip. Lashon hara.”
“Well, you sound like a creepy child psychologist.”
I’m jolted. But she’s right. I do sound ridiculous. I faced one of the many cases in which two biblical commandments butted heads: The commandment to refrain from gossip and the commandment to treat my wife as I would have her treat me. I chose the wrong one. I should have broken the ban against negative speech. Even absolutism must have exceptions.
I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.
—GENESIS 22:17
Day 132. It’s been twelve days since our visit to the clinic, and Julie and I just got the call from the nurse. She should have some news. Julie takes the call on the black cordless in our living room.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
Julie smiles. Gives me the thumbs-up.
She’s pregnant! Yes!
She gives another thumbs-up, this time with an overly clenched smile.
“OK. Yeah. Thanks.”
Julie clicks off the phone. She’s not just pregnant—she’s really pregnant. Her hormone levels show that she’s probably carrying twins. The doctor put in two fertilized eggs, and they both appear to have stuck.
Huh. Twins.
I knew there was a higher chance of twins with IVF, but still. That’s hard to process. I always felt ambivalent about taking the “be fruitful and multiply” commandment too far. The world is in the midst of a scary Malthusian population boom—I had figured that two kids would be about right for me.
Julie and I sit on the couch together, stunned silent for a minute.
“Two-for-one deal,” she says flatly. “Double the fun.”
I guess compared to biblical families—Jacob had thirteen kids, David had at least fifteen—three isn’t too bad. Be thankful, I remind myself. Be thankful.
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High.
—PSALMS 50:14
Day 133. Twins are, to use religious language, a mixed blessing. But they are a blessing nonetheless.
Two kids. It’s no doubt the biggest news I’ve gotten all year, and I decide that I need to express my gratitude somehow. I need to do more than just clasp my hands and utter thanks with my lips. If I really want to be biblical, I should sacrifice something.
So today in Union Square, I put some olives and dates on a platform of stones and left them there as an offering to God. I said a prayer and walked away. I don’t know what I was hoping for—a vision, a pillar of fire—but whatever it was, I didn’t get it. Instead I felt like I’d just spent $15.46 at the grocery store contributing to New York’s rat problem.
It was a letdown, especially after my previous experience with sacrifice. That one was profound, enlightening, and deeply disturbing.
Let me rewind a few months.
When I first read the Bible, it became clear that sacrifice isn’t a weird footnote in the Hebrew Scriptures—it’s central to it. The biblical rules for sacrifice go on for pages and are staggeringly complex. I’ve since read them dozens of times and still don’t have a handle on them.
I have, however, figured out three things:
1. Animal sacrifice is preferable to other types of sacrifice, including fruit, grain, and incense sacrifices, which are seen as B-level offerings.
2. The ancient Israelites sacrificed an impressively wide range of species: oxen, she-goats, he-goats, turtledoves, rams, lambs, and so on.
3. They sacrificed often, very often. Sins, death, birth, holidays—all required sacrifices at the Temple. After reading the sacrifice section of the Bible, you start to wonder how there was any time left to reap or sow or beget or anything else ancient Israelites had to do.
Luckily for me—and more luckily for the animals—practically no Bible followers sacrifice animals anymore. Sacrifices were allowed only at the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E. So maybe that’s my loophole. Perfectly understandable.
And yet, animal sacrifice is such a huge part of the Bible, I feel I have to experience it somehow. Which won’t be easy. Being a city boy, I’ve never killed anything larger than a water bug.
Over lunch one day, my adviser, the history teacher Eddy Portnoy, told me that there is still one ritual that borders on animal sacrifice. The ritual is called kaparot, and it’s practiced by some ultra-Orthodox Jews once a year—on the night before Yom Kippur. The idea is that you buy a live chicken, hold it over your head, say a blessing, and have the bird slaughtered in front of you. The chicken is then donated to the poor.
Kaparot is not in the Bible. The earliest mentions of the ritual are in ninth-century literature from what is now Iraq. But it’s the closest thing I’ll find to legal sacrifice in the tristate area, so on a drizzly night back in October, I hop the subway to Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
I know I am getting close by the smell. As I walk from the subway station, the smell segues from the traditional New York City garbage-and-car-exhaust odor to a startling Arkansas-poultry-farm odor.
I arrive a few blocks later. I’ll say this: There wasn’t much of a chance I’d walk by without noticing. Hundreds of Orthodox Jews mill around in their black hats and long black coats and prayer books, all soggy from the light drizzle.
The black hats are outnumbered only by chickens. Chickens in cages, chickens on the street, chickens tucked under arms. It could be a Lithuanian town in 1805—minus the ever-present cell phones and digital cameras.
My guide is Rabbi Epstein, a round-faced Hasid originally from Tennessee. We meet on a predetermined corner.
&nbs
p; We start by talking about our beards—common ground.
“Do you do any trimming?” I ask.
“No trimming allowed,” Epstein says.
“But you can try to clean it up a bit,” says his friend, another rabbi. With that, the other rabbi grabs his beard and does a quick roll-and-tuck-under-the-chin. Real sleight of hand, Ricky Jay stuff. But it makes his beard a half foot shorter.
The atmosphere is oddly festive, like a Jewish Mardi Gras. We have to talk loudly to be heard over the clucking and squawking and flapping. And just in case the scene needed to be more surreal, Rabbi Epstein has a noticeable Southern accent, so his Hebrew words are filtered through a Garth Brooks twang.
I ask about the sacrifice part of the ritual.
“Kaparot is definitely not a sacrifice,” says Epstein kindly but firmly. “You can only sacrifice at the Temple, and the Temple does not exist anymore.”
“How is it different?”
“The chicken does not die for our sins. It reminds us what could or should be happening to us because we are sinners.”
“But isn’t it in the same ballpark as the original scapegoat?” I ask.
I was referring to an ancient biblical ritual in which, on Yom Kippur, the Israelites transferred their sins to a goat and ran it over a cliff. It’s the origin of the word scapegoat.
“Maybe,” he says reluctantly. “But it’s very different. The sins aren’t in the chicken. It’s to arouse within us the knowledge that ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’”
I try to keep an open mind, but I am having trouble.
“I’ve gotta tell you,” I say. “I feel bad for these chickens.”
Epstein shakes his head. “No, it’s kosher slaughter. These butchers use the sharpest knives. It’s like a paper cut. You know how paper cuts don’t hurt for a while after you get them? This doesn’t hurt.”
The crowd is thick. Kids with boxes ask for donations for charity. Friends snap photos of one another holding up fluttering chickens. We bump into Rabbi Shmuley Boteach—he’s the third most famous Orthodox Jew, right after Joe Lieberman and reggae rocker Matisyahu. Boteach wrote the book Kosher Sex and, for a brief moment, was Michael Jackson’s spiritual adviser. Boteach has a Treo clipped to his belt, a show in development on The Learning Channel (which has since aired), and is alarmingly media savvy.
