The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  After the service, we drove out to the cemetery in Long Island, alternately tailing and losing the hearse in traffic. When we got there, we all took a silent turn with the shovel, tossing a couple of heaps of cinnamon-colored dirt onto a pine box at the bottom of the grave. Nothing will make you contemplate death like the soft thud of earth on a coffin. It’s such a final sound, that thud. That thud is worth a thousand entries about death.

  We drove back to Manhattan to sit shiva. In the car, the dings in my mind continued as always—Bavarian corpse cakes are a food placed on dead bodies to soak up the deceased’s goodness—but they were faint and hollow, and I mostly ignored them. When we got to Julie’s uncle apartment on the Upper West Side, I busied myself by making two huge urns of coffee. I shoveled scoops of coffee into the filter, the soft thud reminding me of the other soft thud at the grave site. But the coffee project made me feel better. I needed to keep busy. I’m addicted to work, whether it’s reading the Britannica or making coffee. And at least this work provided a clear, caffeinated benefit to others.

  After a couple of hours, we said good-bye. We had another rite of passage to attend. My sister, the night before, had given birth to a seven-pound baby girl, Isabella, at Cornell Medical Center. It’s a nice twofer for my parents, Julie’s pregnancy and Beryl’s delivery.

  When we got to the hospital, Beryl’s husband, Willy, was cradling Isabella in his arms while Beryl ate yogurt in the bed, tired but giddy. The birth wasn’t easy—Beryl had a cesarean section. But still, Isabella was healthy.

  “She looks like an old Chinese man,” said Beryl. It’s kind of true. She does look like she’d be at home in an opium den or paging through Mao’s Little Red Book—but she’s an adorable, gorgeous old Chinese man.

  It was a weird day—death and birth. And at the end of it, when I got home, I couldn’t bring myself to read a single page of the Britannica.

  razor

  Prehistoric ones were made of clamshells and sharks’ teeth. Egyptian razors were made of gold, which probably cost slightly more than my Mach3, but not much.

  Reed, Walter

  I recognized Walter Reed from the famous hospital that bears his name. But I didn’t know he was the man who solved the yellow fever mystery. During the Spanish-American War, when hundreds of soldiers were dying of yellow fever, Reed went down to Cuba to try to figure out how the disease was spread. Previous suspicions had focused on infected bed-sheets and uniforms. But some scientists—including Reed—now thought insects were the culprits. Reed eventually proved yellow fever was indeed transmitted by mosquitoes, thus saving hundreds, thousands, who knows how many lives. Which is great. He deserves much praise.

  But I think at least a couple of smaller hospitals should bear the names James Carroll and Jesse Lazear. These long-forgotten men were the two scientists who worked with Reed and who volunteered to be bitten by infected mosquitoes. Carroll suffered a severe attack and survived; Lazear died. It’s one thing to come up with a scientific theory, it’s another altogether to get yourself dosed with a fatal disease to help prove it. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for Carroll and Lazear. What went through their minds when they stuck out their arms and let those little fiends feast on their blood? On the one hand, they no doubt wanted the mosquito hypothesis to be true—but on the other hand, if the hypothesis was true, they’d have a fatal disease coursing through their veins. These were great, brave men.

  religion

  I didn’t grow up with an overabundance of religion. I’m officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way that the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say, not very Jewish at all.

  I never saw the inside of a Hebrew school, had no bar mitzvah, and wouldn’t know a gefilte fish if it bit me on the finger. Until recently, my family celebrated Christmas instead of Hanukkah—though, to be fair, we did sometimes have a Star of David on top of our Christmas tree.

  My family had melted right into that pot. You want to talk assimilation? My family are members of something called the Maidstone Club in East Hampton. This is a club for those who enjoy tennis, golf, speaking with their jaw locked, and debating which of their ancestors stepped onto Plymouth Rock first. This could be the Waspiest organization in America. I can’t swear on it, but I’d guess there are at least five unironically named Muffys on the membership roster. My friend John always urged me to wear a pink-and-green plaid yarmulke to the dining hall, maybe one with whales embroidered around the edges. Sadly I never did.

  Perhaps my closest brush with true Judaism came via a girlfriend, Rachel Zabar. Not that Rachel was particularly religious. She wasn’t. But she was Jewish royalty. Her father owned Zabar’s delicatessen, the most famous Jewish deli in the world, the white-hot center of whitefish.

  Everyone said the same thing: “Bet you get a lot of free lox. Eh? Eh?” Then they’d elbow me in the ribs, thinking they were making a very original sexual innuendo. Yes, I did get free lox. I also got to attend a Zabar seder, where both of the Zabar brothers—Rachel’s father and her uncle—brought matzoh from their respective stores, and you had to choose your allegiance by which matzoh you ate.

  In any case, that—and watching Woody Allen movies—is about as religious as I’ve gotten. As for my belief system, thanks to my relatively God-free upbringing, I’m agnostic. The word “agnostic”, by the way, was coined by the great and honorable evolutionary thinker T. H. Huxley, who died in 1895, fittingly, midway through a defense of agnosticism. Agnostics like to point out that there’s no empirical evidence for or against God. In fact, it’s impossible to even conceive of the evidence that would convince a true agnostic. The Britannica asks readers to imagine thousands of people are watching the night sky, and the stars suddenly rearrange themselves to spell out the word “God.” Would that constitute evidence? The Britannica says no. But let me tell you, if that happened, I’d be in a temple strapping on tefillin before you could say “potato kugel.”

  But as of this writing, the stars haven’t spelled out “God”, or even something close, like “Thou shalt not kill,” or “Never pay retail.” So I’m left to ponder these things without definite proof. I’m probably just rationalizing my own beliefs, but the Britannica does seem to offer support for agnosticism. You read about dozens and hundreds of religions, all claiming to be the one true religion. And you get scientific explanations for biblical miracles—the rivers of blood during Moses’ time were probably the result of excessive heavy rains mixing with the red soil and red algae of North Africa.

  The Britannica, at least, has made me feel less egregiously ignorant about the religion I was born into. It’s been an excellent substitute for Hebrew school. Finally, I know what this Purim is. I know who Esther is, and I know that a haftarah is not half a Torah, which I actually thought it was.

  Do I consider myself more Jewish after reading all this Judaica? Yes and no. I’ve found more reasons to be impressed with Judaism than I anticipated. I’ve also found more things that I really dislike about my religion. In the spirit of Talmudic dialogue, I figured I should talk my learning over with a three-dimensional rabbi.

  A friend’s rabbi agrees to see me. He has asked me to meet him at that well-known center of Semitic studies, the Au Bon Pain in Greenwich Village. When I arrive, I couldn’t be happier with the way he looks. His chin sports a long gray beard, about the size of a cafeteria tray. Very rabbinical. It reminds me of the facial hair I’ve seen in pictures next to 19th-century people in the Britannica. Perhaps Theodor Herzl? The rabbi is wearing a tweed jacket, big wire-rim glasses, and a yellow tie.

  I get a sesame bagel, which I figure is appropriate. The rabbi just has some coffee. We start with some small talk about our mutual friend, but he soon cuts us off. “Well, I could schmooze you all day, but I know your time is short,” says the rabbi. “Why don’t we get to your questions?”

  Straight to business. I like that.

  I figure I should ease into our debate—give him a couple of things I like a
bout Judaism before attacking my own millennia-old heritage. I tell him I admire Judaism’s love of scholarship. I quote the Britannica, which says that scholarship in Judaism is an “ethical good.”

  The rabbi nods his head, his beard bobbing up and down right above the table’s surface.

  “It’s more than an ethical good,” he says. “It’s a tool for survival. The emphasis on telling a story—that’s one way to express yourself Jewishly.”

  I’ve never heard Judaism used as an adverb, but I liked it.

  I next praise Ecclesiastes.

  “What do you like about it?” he asks.

  I get nervous, as if I am going to fail his test. I babble as Jewishly as I can. I say that I think Ecclesiastes is wise and true: you can’t be guaranteed of anything, so you should enjoy the good things that God has provided.

  He agrees it is wise—I have passed the test! “We shouldn’t be focused on the completing of a task. When you’re going from A to Z, if you make it to Z, great. But if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure.”

  “Very appropriate,” I say.

  He smiles wisely. “Some Orthodox Jews read a page of the Talmud every day. After seven years, they complete their study, and there’s a big celebration at Madison Square Garden. You know what they do the next day? They go back to page one.”

  Dear Lord. I hope I don’t go back to a-ak when I finish this.

  “Another thing I like about Judaism is that there’s very little ascetism,” I say. This is something I read way back in the As and it had stuck with me.

  When I bring up ascetism, the rabbi embarks on a long verbal detour about Cain and Abel and participating in the community. It is a little off the point I am trying to make. I am trying to say that I think it is cool that Judaism allows you to have sex. But now that seems a bit too sleazy a point to pursue. So I decide to change the topic.

  “Okay, now to the things I don’t like about Judaism,” I say.

  “Okay,” says the rabbi.

  “Well, there’s halitza,” I say.

  “Halitza?”

  “Yes, you know, halitza. According to the Bible, if a woman’s husband dies, she must marry his brother. Halitza is what the widow must do to get out of the marriage. The widow pulls a sandal off her brother-in-law’s foot and spits in his face.”

  “I know what halitza is. What’s your question?”

  “My question is, well, don’t you think that’s crazy? I mean, first requiring a woman to marry her dead husband’s brother. That’s crazy. And then with the sandal and the spitting?”

  “I’m still not sure what you’re getting at,” says the rabbi.

  His tone isn’t offended, just confused. I realize my question wasn’t the best phrased in the history of Jewish debate. So I try to explain again: halitza is a bizarre and unsavory ritual, one I could never support, and it comes straight from the Bible. Since other Jewish rituals—circumcision, Passover—come from the same source, why should I give them any more validity?

  The rabbi nods his head and stays silent for a solid fifteen seconds. Either I’ve made him think, which would be good, or I’ve really ticked him off.

  “First, halitza is not practiced anymore.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “We don’t practice it because it’s demeaning to human beings. You have to distinguish between rituals that are demeaning to human beings versus rituals that are life-affirming.”

  A good point, and a distinction that seems reasonable. And yet, Jews—like those in all religions—still seem to practice many non-life-affirming rituals. In the Orthodox synagogues, for instance, men and women are not allowed to sit together. That, to me, doesn’t seem life-affirming.

  “Have you ever heard of the two rabbis Shammai and Hillel?” asks the rabbi.

  I shake my head.

  “These were two famous rabbis, and they disagreed about everything. One said the mezuzah should go horizontal, the other thought it should go vertical. Which is why it’s diagonal to this day. Anyway, a man went to Shammai and said, ‘Tell me about Judaism while standing on one foot.’ Shammai said, ‘Get out of here.’ So the man went to Hillel and asked the same thing. Hillel stood on one foot and said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is the essence of Judaism. All the rest is commentary.’”

  I like that story. It’s a story told well and Jewishly, a fine conclusion to my Talmudic debate.

  My conversation with the rabbi lasted a couple hours—admittedly not quite equivalent to several years at Hebrew school, but longer than I’d ever spent one-on-one with a religious figure. At the end, I’m still agnostic. And yet, there is wisdom in Judaism—so I’ll just pick and choose the parts I like and hope I don’t go to Jewish hell (known officially as Gehenna). I’ll choose to follow the Golden Rule. I’ll choose Ecclesiastes. I’ll choose to go to seder, but more to be with my family than because I find the ritual meaningful. I’ll choose to stay married to Julie, who knows all the Jewish rituals cold, and who will give our kid a proper dose of ethnic identity.

  As we leave Au Bon Pain and walk to the subway stop, I throw out my final Semitic fact—that I am a descendant of a noted Jewish scholar. He was an 18th-century genius named Elijah ben Solomon, also known as the Vilna Gaon, the Wise Man of Vilna.

  The rabbi seems impressed, almost startled. “That’s quite some yichus.” I am flattered, once he explains that “yichus” means “lineage.” I feel like a very minor star, as if maybe I should autograph a yarmulke. “He was the original know-it-all,” says the rabbi. “I hope that he would think you were following in his footsteps.” Oy. That’s a lot of pressure. No one’s calling me the Wise Man of New York City.

  I had brushed up on the the Vilna Gaon before my meeting. According to the Britannica, he revolutionized Jewish study by expanding its boundaries. He argued that a complete understanding of Jewish law and literature required a broad education—the study of mathematics, astronomy, geography, botany, zoology, and philosophy. He was also violently opposed to the mystical Hasidic movement, which he thought of as unscholarly. I ask the rabbi about that. “Yes, that’s a battle that rages even today. Some people have a great hunger for what we would call the touchy-feely side of spirituality. The Vilna Gaon didn’t like the touchy-feely side. He didn’t like those who got in touch with God through dance and music.”

  For better or worse, I’ve inherited the Vilna Gaon’s worldview. His and my dad’s. I don’t think I had a choice. I was fated to be the obsessive scholar. I was genetically bound to be the wary-of-emotion, intellect-worshiping reader that I am.

  Renoir, Jean

  It’s the weekend, and I’m feeling sick once again. Got flulike symptoms. I’m moping around the house in my polar-bear-themed pajamas, drinking my Tropicana orange juice and shooting extremely expensive cold medication up my nose. Julie thinks I’m sick because of a lack of sleep. Then again, she thinks every health problem is caused by a lack of sleep. If I twisted my ankle or got pistol-whipped by a gangsta rapper, she’d blame it on my not getting the proper eight and a half hours.

  Regardless of the cause, I feel terrible and achy and generally unsettled. But I’m trying not to wallow. Nowadays, I’m trying to think more positively about my frequent illnesses, trying to see the silver lining. There’s always a silver lining—that’s what the Britannica has taught me. When the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it caused tremendous, unprecedented devastation. But it also threw so much dust into the atmosphere, it caused the most beautiful red sunsets around the world for the following year.

  Well, maybe that’s not such a relevant example. But there are plenty of instances—dozens, even—when getting sick was the best thing that could happen to a guy. The great Latin American writer Jorge Luis Borges was a decent if unremarkable writer until 1938. That was the year when he banged his head, suffering a severe wound and blood poisoning that left him near death, devoid of speech and fearing for his sanity. Best thing that ever happened to him
. The Britannica says this experience seems to have “freed in him the deepest forces of creation.” After that, Borges did his best work. Frida Kahlo began painting while recovering from a horrible bus accident. Henri Matisse took up the brush while recuperating from a bad case of appendicitis. Jean Renoir spent time recovering from his World War I leg wound in moviehouses, where he fell in love with the medium.

  The key is to take advantage of the free time your health problem creates, to use it as a chance to explore some unknown creative alleyway. So far, this weekend, the alleyways I’ve explored have been pretty unimpressive. I doodled a bit in my spiral notebook, tried to think of some Big Ideas and failed, stacked five Cheerios in a column without tipping it over. Maybe this isn’t my breakthrough illness, so I go back to reading my Britannica.

  reproduction

  The bandicoot male has a two-tipped penis, and the female a double-slotted vagina, so they can have a little orgy without sending out invitations.

  revelation

  Another thing my dad and I have in common: bad cholesterol. Without Lipitor, we’d both have cholesterol approaching Avogrado’s number (6.0221367 × 1023). Now I’ve also started to take aspirin every night. I can’t remember when I decided this would be good for my heart—after reading a Newsweek article? after talking to Julie’s father, a fellow high cholesterol sufferer? But it seems like the right thing to do. (Aspirin, by the way, was originally made from the bark of the willow tree.)