by A. J. Jacobs
The waiter takes our orders. I get the steamed vegetables--bland but biblically safe. A few weeks ago I decided to make my Berkeley-based aunt Marti proud and go vegetarian. It wasn't so much an ethical decision as a pragmatic one. It's just so much easier to keep the Bible's food laws if you steer clear of the animals. Plus, according to the Bible, the human race started out as vegetarian--Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, right on up until Noah, who was the first to eat flesh. So avoiding meat has scriptural backing.
I've also tried to cut out eggs. This is because of something I learned while interviewing a Karaite, a member of that sect of Judaism that follows the Bible as strictly as possible. "Let me drop an atom bomb on you," said this Karaite; his name is Nehemiah Gordon, and he runs the Karaite website, the Karaite Korner. "You can't follow all of the Bible literally because we can't know what some of the words mean."
In Leviticus 11, there's a list of birds that are abominations: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, the pelican, and so on. Problem is, those birds are just our best guesses. The true identity of the birds have been lost in the haze of time. So to be safe, some Karaites don't eat eggs or poultry at all. It's a profound insight--and it has made my diet even more extreme.
Anyway, that was my dinner: vegetables that had been steamed into tastelessness. The conversation consisted mostly of Julie's stepmom trying to console Julie about the overload of Y chromosomes in our household.
"If you have another baby, I bet it's going to be a girl," she said. When we get home, I ask Julie about the helpful tip.
"You think we should?"
"No. Absolutely not," she says. "These ovaries of mine are done." "My thoughts exactly."
"Though we do have a frozen embryo at the clinic, right?" I don't know. Do we have another frozen embryo? I can't believe I
don't know. I should have been on top of that. The next day, I call the clinic and get a nurse on the phone. No, we have no embryos left. Nothing survived besides the two in Julie's swollen belly. Which is a relief. I don't have to figure out what to do with an extra embryo. One fewer moral decision to make.
The ethics of embryos--stem cells and abortion--are, of course, incredibly complex. Reasonable people disagree. And, frankly, the debate is beyond the scope of this book. So I won't try to argue for one side or the other. You can probably guess my position--it's typically liberal. But I will say this: When I read the Bible, it didn't seem to support either side. Religious tradition, church doctrine, rabbinical interpretation-- those all weigh in on stem cells and abortion, and weigh in mightily. But the literal words of the Bible are, I believe, neither pro-life nor pro-choice.
Some pro-life advocates disagree. They point to several passages to prove that life begins at conception. Among them:
For thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalms 139:13). (This passage is cited to prove that God is working on the fetus even as it is in the womb, thus making the unborn child sacred.)
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name (Isaiah 49:1). (Here the prophet Isaiah says that God made him sacred him before he was even born. Again, God is at work in the womb.)
And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:41). (Here John the Baptist's pregnant mother meets the Virgin Mary, also pregnant. John the Baptist jumps for joy--which is cited to show that unborn children have emotions.)
To base a major ethical decision on passages like these seems overreaching. They're too vague. They can be interpreted any number of ways-- and, naturally, pro-choice Christians and pro-choice Jews do just that. But pro-choicers go further, which I wasn't expecting. They cite passages of their own. I read an article called "The Bible Is Pro-Choice" from a journal called Humanist Perspectives. The article talks about this quote from Ecclesiastes 6:3.
If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but he does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he.
Here an untimely birth is interpreted as a phrase for miscarriage. This is meant to show that sometimes it is better that a life not be lived at all.
And there's also a controversial line in Exodus 21:22. This one says that if a man hurts a woman while she's pregnant and she loses her offspring, the man is liable. His punishment: He shall be fined some money. This, it's argued, shows that the unborn child is not considered a person. If it were a person, the man's punishment would be more severe. He'd be put to death.
Naturally, the pro-lifers have rebuttals to this. And their opponents have rebuttals to the rebuttals. (If you want to see a more in-depth look at the back-and-forth arguments, I recommend a website called Reli giousTolerance.org.) The abortion and stem cell debates always remind me of a William Blake quote. I wish I could say I read the quote while perusing Blake. Heck, I wish I could say I read the quote while reading a book by a Yale Divinity School professor. The sad truth is, I read it in a book called Don't Know Much about the Bible. But it's still a great quote:
Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white
He who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished. --PROVERBS 17:5
Day 324. I don't know what's happening to me. My friend Paul emailed me a YouTube video. I clicked it open. It showed a female newscaster reading some stock market news, when suddenly a huge stage light falls, smacking her on the head. She crumples off her chair and out of sight.
All the viewer comments said "LOL" or "laughing my ass off." But I didn't get it. It just seemed upsetting. I spent twenty minutes on Google trying to find the name of the poor newscaster so I could email her a getwell-soon or hope-you-win-your-lawsuit note. I couldn't track her down.
What's going on? What kind of an overly virtuous sap am I turning into? Next I'll be renting Pay It Forward.
By day the heat consumed me . . .
--GENESIS 31:40
Day 332. It's a hot, hot New York summer weekend. I'm sweating heavily in my beard and tzitzit. Jasper's face is lobster red. So when our friends--who have a plastic blow-up kiddie pool in their courtyard--invite us over, it sounds like a good idea.
Jasper's right now splashing around in the pool with their daughter Lily, and he's having the time of his two-year-old life. He's laughing like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He's showing us how he can jump from one side of the pool to the other. I, on the other hand, am not having the time of my life. It's not good, this jumping. He's going to break his kneecap, crack his skull--something. I want to dial 9-1 and keep my finger poised over the other 1 in preparation for the inevitable disaster.
After three minutes of watching, I can take it no longer. I slip off my shoes, roll my white pants up to my calves, get up from the table, and step into the kiddie pool.
"What are you doing?" Julie calls out.
"I'm spotting our son," I say as I wade toward Jasper. "Helmet," says Julie.
"Really?"
"Yes, helmet."
Fudge. Maybe she's right. Remember the example set by God, I tell
myself. Remember that he gave humans free will. Which was a crazy generous thing to do. But God knew that humans are part-divine, so He wanted to give us the divine ability to make decisions. And just as importantly, to make mistakes.
So I should do the same with Jasper. Slowly, reluctantly, I step out of the kiddie pool. I sit down on a sticky white plastic chair and watch Jasper. Who eventually smacks his butt on the pool bottom, appears dazed for about ten seconds before returning to jumping like a maniacal monkey.
Month Twelve: August (and Some of September)
Honor widows who are real widows.
--1 TIMOTHY 5:3
Day 336. Today, I met my great-aunt Joelle for lunch. Joelle's the only other religious member of our family besides my Orthodox aunt Kate. She's a practicing Catholic who happily thanks God, even when surrounded by agnos
tics like my family. She's a former actress and singer (when our family sings "Happy Birthday to You," her vibrato gives it a professional sheen), and the single most talkative person I've ever met. Her husband--a sweet navy veteran--died a few months ago at their house in Miami.
The Bible says to comfort widows, which was one of the reasons I invited her to lunch. But as is often the case, I think she was more helpful to me than I was to her. She talked about God's love, His unconditional love. "Sometimes I can't believe how much God loves me. I think, 'How can He love me that much? I don't love myself nearly as much as He loves me.'" Even if life turns sour, or Joelle botches something, she can count on the unconditional love of God.
When I left the lunch, I felt at peace for the first time in a week. Last week, you see, I had a bit of a mental breakdown about my Bible project. In the final stretch, I've been frantically trying to read every single book on religion, trying to interview every religious leader, trying to figure out how to obey every rule. What if I miss an insight? What if I overlook a potential translation? I haven't paid God five shekels to redeem my firstborn son. I haven't talked to a Seventh-day Adventist yet. What if they have the secret? I've barely made a dent in the Bible.
But maybe God will forgive me for my lack of omniscience. If Joelle is right, He'll still love me. I'll never know everything. I can't compete with Him. And if you want to see what happens when you try, just look at the overachievers behind the Tower of Babel.
Again she conceived and bore a son . . .
--GENESIS 29:34
Day 359. Today is the birth of our twins. The date is our choice. We scheduled to have them emerge onto God's Green Earth today, August 24, at nine in the morning. It's right there in Julie's computer calendar, like a routine eye exam with an ophthalmologist.
It seems highly unbiblical. I can't imagine that Rachel scheduled the birth of Joseph for the third day after the barley harvest. But our kids are positioned butt first in the womb, so the doctor says there's no choice but a Caesarian section.
It's all very civilized, this birth. Nothing like Jasper's. This time Julie has no contractions and lets out not a single lupine howl. She is wheeled on a gurney into the operating room with a little shower cap on her head. The anesthesiologist numbs her from the waist down, and that is it, she is ready to give birth.
I strap a surgical mask over my nose and mouth and join Julie in the OR.
"Uh-uh," says the nurse. "You need one for your beard."
She escorts me out and gets me a second mask for the bottom of my face. I return.
"We're going to take off your wife's gown now," the nurse says. "So if you want to leave, now is the time . . ."
"No thanks," I say.
An odd offer, I think. Oh, wait. She believes I'm an Orthodox Jew and might not want to see my wife's nakedness.
The atmosphere in the OR is an odd mix. It is, on the one hand, frighteningly gory. I'm stationed by Julie's head, and the doctor has hung a little curtain across the stomach so as to block the really messy stuff, though I still see enough to nearly make me pass out. On the other hand, the atmosphere is almost relaxed. The doctors are chatting about weekend plans as if they are having a chicken salad in the cafeteria.
"Hold my hand," says Julie.
"Well, you're impure for a week after the birth, so I can only hold it before the birth."
"Please don't--"
At 9:50 a.m. our doctor reaches in and scoops out one little man. At 9:52 she reaches in and scoops out another. I officially have a whole bunch of sons.
I look at my boys as they squirm around under a huge heat lamp. The boys themselves are another strange mixture. On the one hand, they're such little animals--tiny, naked, slimy little animals. They even sound like animals. Their crying isn't human, it's more like ducks quacking. On the other hand, I can already see something transcendent in them. When they pry their eyes open--blue eyes on both of them? where did that come from?--I spot what a nun I know calls "God's DNA." Those eyes are alive.
When the doctor plucks out our sons one after the other, I flash back to perhaps the most unforgettable delivery in the Bible. Yes, even in the OR, the Bible still colors my thinking. This was the birth of the twins Perez and Zerah. It goes like this: There was a struggle between the sons to see which one could be born first. One son--Zerah--stuck his hand out of his mother's womb, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around his wrist. Then he pulled his hand back inside. The second son, Perez, then maneuvered around him and got out first. The Bible doesn't say who was considered oldest in this unusual scenario. I like to think it was Zerah, since he breached the womb with his hand, much as an NFL player scores a touchdown if he gets the ball over the line.
I'm glad I flashed to this story. Not because of the red ribbon twist. But because, if you remember, their conception is a good metaphor for my boys. Those ancient twins were conceived in complicated circumstances--the offspring of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar, who disguised herself as a prostitute. Mine, too, have a complicated origin. But that doesn't, I hope, doom them.
And now that I type this up, I'm wondering if the Perez-Zerah story could be a Big Metaphor for my year. Maybe it applies to the Bible itself. The Bible may have not been dictated by God, it may have had a messy and complicated birth, one filled with political agendas and outdated ideas--but that doesn't mean the Bible can't be beautiful and sacred.
Little children, you are of God . . . --1 JOHN 4:4
Day 361. They released Julie and the twins from the hospital at eleven o'clock on the third day. It would have been sooner, but we lost about forty-five minutes to the hospital guards who double-checked and triplechecked our wrist bracelet IDs and social security numbers to make sure we hadn't swiped the wrong babies.
We've been home for two days now, and I've been spending the majority of that time snapping these little body suits on them. Man, these things have a lot of snaps. What the fudge happened to good old zippers?
Jasper has been dealing with his brothers with an interesting strategy: complete denial. He refuses to acknowledge them. Won't even look at them. They can be howling right in front of his face, but he'll use his X-ray vision to stare right through their skulls.
As for me, I know this will surprise you: I'm deliriously tired. Yesterday Julie was making a sandwich in the kitchen and I playfully patted her on the butt when I walked by. The only thing was, it wasn't Julie. It was my mom. My mom was visiting the twins. And in my bleary-eyed state, I had confused Julie for my mom. This is definitely forbidden by Leviticus.
I've barely been able to do anything biblical since the birth. I'm losing valuable time. I decided to extend my project another month, but Julie bargained me down to two weeks.
It doesn't help matters that the boys--Zane and Lucas--are on completely different schedules and refuse to cooperate. Their rivalry is, yes, biblical. The younger one is tiny--barely five pounds--and the older is a big lug, almost seven, and they're constantly battling each other to get access to Julie's milk supply. The younger one is sneaky. I think he can sense when the older one is stirring, and he'll start wailing to make sure he gets first crack. He's the Jacob to his brother's Esau--the mischievous underdog. Is it bad that I root for him? I've rooted for underdogs all my life, so I almost can't help it. I'm sure it's temporary. It better be. I've seen what favoritism can do--Jacob favored Joseph, and it got Joseph tossed in a pit by his jealous brothers.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven. --LUKE 6:37
Day 363. I finally told my parents that I had met my ex-uncle and was including him in the book. I emailed them the sections with Gil so they could be prepared.
They weren't happy. They told me I didn't expose Gil's dark side enough. They asked if I had to make him such a prominent part of the book. They wanted me to be clear he was an ex-uncle. They disputed the part where I said Gil was the most exotic creature in the family. But in the end, they were forgiving. They didn't make me change a thing. "We'll live with it," Mom wrote.
"We love you." Their son did the equivalent of eating the husks thrown to the swine, and they welcomed me home with a hug.
He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. --GENESIS 17:12
Day 366. My twin sons have been in this world for eight days, which means today is the day to follow one of the first biblical commands: Circumcision.
I actually knew quite a bit about circumcision even before my biblical adventure. Perhaps too much. For a year or so in my early career as a journalist, I wrote a surprising number of magazine articles about circumcision. It was my first real beat. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and my eccentric aunt Marti introduced me to some anticircumcision activists who saw the snipping of the foreskin as cruel and unnecessary. As Marti put it: "It's the only men's issue I care about."
The hardest of the hard core didn't just want to outlaw circumcision, they wanted to reverse their own circumcisions. I remember attending a support group meeting that was bizarre even by the standards of San Francisco support groups. They called themselves RECAP, short for Recover A Penis (a rival group was called BUFF--Brothers United for Future Foreskins).
The meeting was held in the basement of a church--either an extremely liberal church or a church that didn't know to whom it was renting space. A dozen men sat in folding chairs arranged in a circle. Some were ponytailed hippies, some resembled the Leather Dude in the Village People, a few were just plain vanilla guys who looked like they could have worked in the loan department at Citibank.
