Omnibus: The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, My Life as an Experiment

by A. J. Jacobs

  I’m opening the door to leave, when I hear him call.

  “’Scuse me,” he says. He is about forty, squat, wearing biking shorts despite the chilly weather.

  I turn around.

  “Did you pay for my coffee?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I really don’t feel comfortable with that.”

  I pause. Huh. I don’t know what to do here. Does he think there must be a catch? Does he think I was hitting on him?

  “Uh…” I say. Then I walk out the door very quickly and don’t look back till I am a block away.

  Ye shall not round the corners of your heads.

  —LEVITICUS 19:27 (KJV)

  Day 153. A physical update on my/Jacob’s appearance: The beard has gone wild. You can see only about 40 percent of my face nowadays. It’s got its disadvantages, of course—my wife now will kiss me only after covering her face with her hands so that just her lips are exposed. But I try to look on the bright side. It’s keeping me warm from the wintry New York winds, like a sweater for my cheeks. Plus, it’s providing me a level of anonymity. Not that I’ve ever been mobbed on a subway platform by adoring fans. But if I happen to see my former boss on the street, it’s nice to know I could stroll by unrecognized.

  I’ve even started to get the occasional positive comment about my looks. The Italian woman who works at the corner deli said she feels more sacred in my presence and is afraid to curse or gossip. And my coworker Tom, whom I hadn’t seen in months, said he was all ready to greet me with a one-liner about Mel Gibson’s facial hair, then decided he couldn’t make a joke because he felt almost reverential. Reverential, that’s the word he used. I was on a high for two days afterward.

  The beard is the most noticeable, but I’m making other changes to my appearance too. I’m pleased to report that I got a new set of tassels. For the first few months, I tried the homemade approach: I attached four tassels from Tassels without Hassles to my shirt with safety pins. But here was a case where I decided I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel: Why not use the prefab tassels, or fringes, known as tzitzit and worn by Orthodox Jews? For about twenty dollars, you can get a towel-sized rectangular cloth with four clusters of meticulously knotted white strings tied on each corner. The cloth has a hole in the middle, and you simply slip the entire thing over your head and wear it under your shirt.

  If you’re really hardcore, like I’m trying to be, you need to go further. The Bible says you must attach a blue thread to your fringes (Numbers 15:38). For centuries, almost all Jews skipped the blue thread because no one could figure out the exact shade of blue used in biblical times. No more. Archaeologists in the last two decades have discovered a type of snail that the ancient Israelites used for blue dye. The snail is still around and still capable of making blue. So for the first time in hundreds of years, a handful of ultra-Orthodox Jews are, once again, wearing four blue threads tied to their fringes. As am I.

  And then there’s my hairdo, which is starting to take on a personality of its own. The Bible has a lot to say about hair. In general—despite claims to the contrary that I read on a website for pious heavy-metal rockers—the Bible comes down on the side of short hair for men.

  Consider Absalom, the vain and nefarious prince whose flowing locks got tangled up in an oak tree during battle. They cost him his life. And in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is even more to the point. He asks: “Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him?” (1 Corinthians 11:14).

  But what of Samson? Granted, he did lose his superhuman strength after Delilah gave him a haircut—but his was a special case. Samson was part of a holy sect called the Nazirites whose members took a vow to drink no wine, touch no dead bodies, and cut no hair. He broke the vow. He suffered the consequences.

  I’m no Nazirite, which is why I’ve been getting monthly haircuts at the local barbershop. Of course, as with everything in my biblical year, a haircut is not a simple matter. You want your hair mostly short, but a typical number 4 buzz cut is out of the question. Leviticus says you are forbidden to chop off the sides. This has led to some extreme micromanagement at the barbershop. First I requested for a male haircutter—purity issues. Then, after giving him elaborate pretrim instructions, I periodically piped up:

  “You won’t cut the temples, right?”

  “I won’t cut the temples.”

  Two minutes later:

  “You know not to cut the temples, right?”

  “Yes, I know. No cutting the temples.”

  By the end, I think he was ready to slay me with the jawbone of an ass.

  He did tell me that he needed to clean up the hair on my neck.

  “So you look religious, not dirty,” he said. “No offense.”

  Most biblical scholars believe the purpose of the uncut side locks was, as with the food laws, to distinguish the Israelites from the pagans. Apparently the pagans cut and shaved the sides of their hair short, perhaps, says one commentator, to give it the shape of a “celestial globe,” perhaps as some sort of mourning ritual.

  But in Jewish tradition, the hairstyle has taken on moral significance as well. One scholar told me that if you pass by a harlot on the road, God will blow your side locks into your eyes to shield you. Another rabbi has said that one day he will grab hold of the side locks to pull his students out of hell.

  The ultra-Orthodox twirl their side locks while praying or studying—resulting in those amazing curlicue stalactites, frequently as long and thick as rolling pins. The Bible doesn’t require this. So I’ve left my side locks untamed, leading to these odd hair formations that grow upward and outward, bringing to mind an ethnic Pippi Longstocking.

  But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

  —DEUTERONOMY 29:4

  Day 154. The more I research these side locks, the more confused I am about whether I’ve been properly following this commandment. The word payot in Hebrew is often translated as “corners.” Do not cut the corners of your head.

  What are the corners of the head? Not being a robot or cartoon sponge, my skull is reasonably ovoid. And if it is corners, shouldn’t it be four corners? So maybe I should grow sideburns, a rattail, and a unicorn-type forelock. Could be interesting. But there’s only so much I can subject my wife to. Payot is sometimes translated as “edge.” But this doesn’t clarify much.

  The Hasidic-style payot have been around for centuries, but what did they do in biblical times? Can we ever know? I’m growing more and more skeptical that I’ll ever hit biblical bedrock and discover the original intent. The Bible’s meaning is so frustratingly slippery.

  Yossi told me that the Bible has seventy faces. The ancient rabbis themselves don’t even claim to have struck the bedrock. The Talmud—the huge Jewish book with commentaries on biblical law—is far from black and white. As writer Judith Shulevitz puts it in Slate magazine: “You cannot compare the Talmud to, say, the United States civil code, a series of prescriptions issued from Congress, or to Catholic doctrine, which comes directly from the pope. The Talmud is more like the minutes of religious study sessions, except that the hundreds of scholars involved in these sessions were enrolled in a seminar that went on for more than a millennium and touched on every conceivable aspect of life and ritual.”

  Even more exasperating: If I do get to the bedrock, it may be such strange bedrock that I won’t be able to process it. In Karen Armstrong’s terrific book A History of God, she says that the ancient Israelites weren’t really monotheists. They believed in the existence of many gods: Baal, El, and so on. It’s just that Yahweh is the boss of all Gods. Hence the command “You shall have no other Gods before me.” It doesn’t say “You shall have no other Gods at all.”

  Could I ever hope to get into the skull of an ancient Israelite who believed in several gods? Do I want to?

  Month Six: February

  If you chance to come upon a bird’s nest…you shall not take the
mother with the young.

  —DEUTERONOMY 22:6

  Day 155. As a New Yorker, I’ve generally avoided interacting with pigeons, much like I avoid dark alleys or the Jekyll and Hyde theme restaurant. But living biblically makes you do some strange things.

  Tonight I got a voice mail from Mr. Berkowitz, the man who inspected my wardrobe for mixed fibers a while back.

  “Good evening, Mr. Arnold Jacobs. It’s Bill Berkowitz of Washington Heights. There’s a pigeon with an egg under her tonight, if you want to come over.”

  You bet I do.

  You see, Mr. Berkowitz, in addition to shatnez, also specializes in another commandment. This one is likewise among the least known in the Bible. You won’t find it on stone tablets in front of any federal courthouses.

  The commandment says that if you discover a mother bird sitting on her egg in a nest, you cannot take both mother and egg. You are permitted only to pocket the egg; you must send the mother away.

  The Bible doesn’t say why. Most commentators think it has to do with compassion—you don’t want the mother to have to watch her offspring snatched up for the breakfast table, so you nudge her away. In fact, many rabbis have expanded the meaning of this commandment to forbid cruelty to all animals, not just expectant birds, which is a great thing. I’m glad mainstream Judaism stresses kindness to animals, despite the sacrificial past.

  But the actual wording of Deuteronomy 22:6 is solely about birds and nests, and it is this formulation that Mr. Berkowitz—along with others in his community—has taken to the literal limit. He has set up two pigeon nests on his third-floor windowsill in his northern Manhattan apartment. Whenever there’s a newly laid egg, he allows a faithful seeker to come over, pay one hundred dollars to charity, shoo the mother pigeon away, pick up the egg, hold it aloft, say a prayer, place it back in the nest (or, in some cases, eat it), and thereby check off this commandment as officially “fulfilled.”

  This I needed to do. In fact, I’d been waiting for several months for my egg, tempted by a half dozen false alarms and missed opportunities. Tonight is the real thing.

  I get to Mr. Berkowitz’s apartment at seven-thirty, and he is all business. He has an appointment in a half hour, so we are on a tight schedule. He gives me a quick orientation on how this commandment works.

  “It must be a kosher bird,” says Mr. Berkowitz.

  Pigeons, interestingly, are kosher—they’re related to the doves mentioned in the Bible.

  “It has to be a wild bird, not domesticated. It has to be female, it has to be sitting on the eggs, not next to the eggs.”

  We’re at his dining room table, which is covered with half-open books and plastic cups. Mr. Berkowitz occasionally pauses in his speech to flip through his books. There’s a colorful tome on kosher birds and a tablet-sized book on Jewish law. There’s also a Hebrew manuscript devoted exclusively to the study of this single commandment, complete with diagrams of men climbing ladders, and photos of backlit eggs.

  I express my concern that maybe the pigeons don’t love the experience. Mr. Berkowitz shakes his head.

  “Don’t feel bad, because, first, God gave us this mitzvah. And, second, you ever eat an egg before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You feel badly about that? Your wife makes a scrambled egg, do you feel bad?” Mr. Berkowitz takes on a mock-petrified voice: “Oh no, don’t do that! Not a scrambled egg!”

  Speaking of which, most of Mr. Berkowitz’s clients put the pigeon egg back in the nest—the option I’ve chosen. But some take their egg home for a hard-boiled snack.

  “Have you tried it?” I ask.

  “I once tasted it. I ate it raw.”

  “Raw? How’d it taste?”

  “Tasted like a regular egg.”

  He shrugs his shoulders. No big deal.

  The time for egg gathering is at hand. He leads me into a dark room off the entrance hall and flips on his gray flashlight. It’s a huge and powerful flashlight—the kind used for spelunking or locating fugitives in the woods—and more than bright enough to help me see the nests.

  The nests are actually two white plastic boxes—originally olive boxes from the grocery—each with a pigeon and some shredded newspaper inside. Mine is on the right.

  “You have to do something to send her away,” says Mr. Berkowitz. “You can’t just scream at her, ‘Fly away, birdie!’ That won’t work. It has to be a physical action.”

  I stamp my feet, wave my arms. Nothing. The pigeon—a big one, about the size of a football—clucks contentedly, enjoying the show.

  “Open the window and reach in.”

  “Won’t she fly into the room?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I open the window and reach in. I’m wearing thick blue insulated ski gloves, official pigeon-shooing equipment provided by Mr. Berkowitz. Overcoming a lifelong revulsion to pigeons, I nudge the bird with my index finger.

  She flutters up and away.

  I take off the glove and pick up the egg. It’s cream colored and warm, about the size of a walnut. I hold it up for Mrs. Berkowitz to snap a photo.

  Mr. Berkowitz tells me now is the time to ask God for anything. “To have more children, make a million dollars a year, become a big scholar. Whatever you want.”

  In the outlying edges of Judaism (and I should stress that most Jews have never heard of this commandment, much less fulfilled it), the bird’s nest ritual has taken on mystical meaning, seen as good luck, especially for infertile couples.

  I make my wish for a safe delivery for our twins and soon after am shooed gently away from Mr. Berkowitz’s apartment.

  On the subway home, I’m euphoric. I just followed a rule that maybe a few dozen people in America have followed. I’m one of the faithful elite. But that feeling soon fades to worry. If there is a God, did I just please Him? Or did I maybe get Him angry? If His nest egg rule is meant to teach compassion, wouldn’t it have been compassionate not to pester the pigeons with a high-wattage flashlight and a crazy dance?

  “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!”

  —2 SAMUEL 18:33

  Day 161. Jasper has been suffering from what Julie calls, in honor of my project, a series of minor plagues. Rashes, colds, coughs. And today he got hit with a bad one. He suffered a major fracture in his left leg.

  I was at a meeting when it all went down, but apparently he stepped on his toy truck the wrong way and snapped his thigh bone. He paused that terrible calm-before-the-storm pause and then just let out a category five wail.

  The doctor told us that Jasper must be a invalid for at least the next six weeks. No playground, no sports, no playdates, no dancing, no walking. Just sitting. A baby Buddhist.

  I can’t tell you how depressed this makes me. So far we’ve been lucky to avoid much time in the hospital with Jasper. And this will, God willing, eventually heal. But Jasper’s stunned. He looks beaten for the first time in his life. He looks like Jack Nicholson after getting electroshock therapy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  I got a taste—just a little taste—of what King David meant when his rebellious son, Absalom, was killed:

  And the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33).

  As I sit here with Jasper on my lap watching Dora’s singing backpack on the TV—it’s two in the morning, and he won’t sleep—I waste a lot of time retroactively bargaining with God about Jasper’s leg. It’s a habit of mine, this fake bargaining. I say, “God, let me break my leg instead of him. I would break both legs. I’d break both legs and both arms. Would I amputate my legs? I don’t think so. But I’d amputate one toe. OK, two toes.” It’s a macabre game, and a waste of God’s time.

  Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish…

  —NUMBERS 19:2

  Day
168. I finally got a call back from a Mississippi minister I’ve been trying to reach for weeks.

  I want to talk to him about red heifers. The Bible’s rule on red heifers makes my list of the Top Five Most Perplexing Commandments. It is found in Numbers 19, and it tells us to purify ourselves by finding a red cow. And not just any red cow—it must be a perfect red cow, an unblemished one, and one that has never plowed a field. Once I do this, I have to sacrifice the cow, burn it with cedar wood, mix the ashes with water, and have the resulting blend sprinkled on me by someone holding some hyssop. Only then will I be spiritually clean.

  So how do I find an unblemished red cow in Manhattan? Well, I don’t. They don’t exist here. They don’t exist anywhere yet. But maybe soon. On and off for the past twenty years, at a handful of ranches across America, people have been trying to breed just such an animal. The quest has created a bizarre alliance between ultrafundamentalist Christians and a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, both of whom see it as a key to the end times.

  The Jews need it because it will make them ritually pure from contact with dead people. Without that, they can’t build the Third Temple in Jerusalem. Without the Third Temple, the Jewish Messiah will never come.

  The ultrafundamentalist Christians need it for the same reason. Sort of. To them, the Jewish Messiah will be the false Messiah, the Antichrist. The true Christ will have an apocalyptic battle with the Antichrist, which will bring on the thousand-year reign of peace on earth. The Jews will convert to Christianity or be destroyed.

  Cattle ranchers in Israel, Texas, Nebraska, and Mississippi have all tried or are currently trying to breed the ultimate rust-colored cow. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds. According to tradition, the cow must be at least three years old and cannot have a single nonred hair. One promising Israeli calf got believers excited a couple of years ago. But in the end, she sprouted white hairs.