by A. J. Jacobs
So how to reconcile modern Judaism with the realities of the Bible? In my journey, I’ve heard three main approaches:
1. Ancient Israel was, in fact, barbaric. It was sexist, racist, and violent. Judaism has simply evolved past that.
2. Ancient Israel was not barbaric at all. Quite the opposite. It was compassionate, even by today’s standards. You’ll hear this view from some hardcore traditionalists. An eye for an eye doesn’t mean what you think; it really means the plucker must pay the pluckee money. Or consider slavery, they say. Biblical slaves were not treated like slaves in antebellum Georgia. They had a much better life. One Orthodox Jew I know—who happens to be smart, funny, and sane—compared the biblical slaves’ status to that of English butlers. It wasn’t a bad job at all. The Scripture’s many slavery laws were there to ensure their safety.
3. Ancient Israel was barbaric by our standards, but it was morally evolved compared to other societies of the time. Yes, there was cruel slavery. But at least there were limits, including setting Hebrew slaves free after six years and forbidding murder. Yes, an eye for an eye did mean to pluck out the offender’s eye. But it’s better than a head for an eye, which is what other Middle Eastern societies were doing. An eye for an eye was a way to limit the cycle of violence. And sure, there was capital punishment, but for far fewer crimes than in the code of Hammurabi over in Mesopotamia.
From what I can tell, this option number 3 seems the most accurate. Or, actually, option-number-3-with-a-slight-tweak seems most accurate. The writers of the Bible were reformers. As one rabbi told me, the Bible is a “minority report.” The society portrayed by the biblical stories was probably more advanced than true Israelite society.
Now, there is an option number 4, but it doesn’t really tackle the issue directly. It’s more of an elegant look-over-here! decoy.
One of my spiritual advisers, Julie Galambush, a professor of religion at the College of William and Mary, explained this tactic to me: You simply act as if the Bible doesn’t say what it says. There’s a passage in Deuteronomy that says the Israelites should offer peace before attacking a city outside the land of Israel. If the city accepts, you take the residents as your slaves. If the city rejects your offer, you kill all the males and make everyone else slaves. For cities inside the land, you don’t even offer peace. You just kill everyone: men, women, children, cattle—“save alive nothing that breathes.” Pretty shocking stuff. But when talking about this in the midrash, the rabbis completely ignore the bloodletting. Instead, they focus on the part in which the Israelites offer peace. They say, See! The passage is all about compassion (I’m paraphrasing). “It’s clear the rabbis have moral objections to this passage,” professor Galambush says. “So they pretend it says something they do believe in—peace—rather than something they object to. You can’t underestimate the radicalness of the rabbis.”
My slave Kevin seems like a nice guy, so I’ll probably take option number 4 on those passages that allow me to give him a biblical beat-down.
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer…
—PSALMS 86:6
Day 237, afternoon. Jasper got out of his cast a couple of weeks ago. But the medical traumas never end. Today he trips and falls while dancing a bit too enthusiastically to The Wiggles masterpiece “Fruit Salad.” I watch him as he tumbles face forward and smacks his forehead hard against the door frame. It makes a horrible sound, a crack like a line drive off the wall at Shea Stadium.
I pick him up. He is crying by now. I inspect his forehead—a small bump.
“Should we get you some ice?”
He just keeps wailing, openmouthed.
I look at the bump again. It is bigger. Scarily bigger. It has become a bump you’d see on Fred Flintstone’s head after he got hit by a rock at the quarry. It looks like a golf ball had been sewn into Jasper’s skin.
I run into our bedroom to show Julie, who is still sleeping. We call the doctor, who tells us that if he starts vomiting, bring him to the ER. Otherwise, just ice it down and expect him to have a black eye tomorrow. Toddler’s foreheads apparently distort like that.
It’s a horrible moment—and also a milestone of sorts. My first reaction, as I was running to show Julie, was to pray to God for Jasper to be OK. It was like reflex praying. Unplanned, unforced.
Can…the leopard change his spots?
—JEREMIAH 13:23
Day 238. A spiritual update: I’m all over the place. My belief in God changes by the hour. I have three phases, about evenly split throughout the day. As I type this, I’m in phase two. But that could change by the time I finish the next paragraph.
First, there’s the comfortable old position: agnosticism. I haven’t erased that totally, and it especially pops up whenever I read about religious extremism.
The second phase is all about a newfound reverence for life. Life isn’t just a series of molecular reactions. There’s a divine spark in there. The official term is “vitalism.” I’d always thought of vitalism as a nineteenth-century relic—in the same category as leeches and phrenology. But now I’m a believer, at least sometimes.
The third phase, the highest level, is when I believe in something more specific, a God who cares, who pays attention to my life, who loves. Why wouldn’t there be a God? It makes just as much sense as having no God. Otherwise, existence itself is just too random.
Phase three is an amazing and uplifting state. For instance, my Hollywood dreams are in meltdown mode. My previous book—the one about the encyclopedia—was optioned for a movie. But now the director won’t email me back. And when I call his assistant, she always tells me to hold, then returns to report—surprise!—he’s not there right now but I am welcome to leave a message. Hmmm. I wonder: Could he be breaking the commandment not to lie?
It’s annoying, but things happen for a reason, right? It wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps something better will come out of it. Maybe Scorsese will call me out of the blue and tell me that encyclopedias have replaced bloodshed as his new obsession.
Julie always told me that things happen for a reason. To which I would reply, Sure, things happen for a reason. Certain chemical reactions take place in people’s brains, and they cause those people to move their mouths and arms. That’s the reason. But, I thought, there’s no greater purpose. Now I sometimes think Julie’s right. There is a reason. There has to be. Otherwise, it’s all too absurd. The world can’t be that Dadaist.
It’s certainly a healthier way to look at life. I feel better when I see the world this way. I ask Elton Richards, the pastor out to pasture, about this. Maybe I should commit myself to believing in God for the simple reason that it will make my life better.
“You could,” he says. “But it feels a little too calculated for me.”
It smacks of Pascal’s wager. This was devised by Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century French mathematician. He said we should believe in God because the cost is minimal, but the potential benefit of heaven is huge. Believe in God just to avoid hell. Pretty cynical, really. Or to use a more recent metaphor, maybe it’s the Matrix wager. Am I taking a blue pill just because it’s a happier worldview?
“I think you should believe for a more organic reason,” says Elton. “If you’re going to believe at all.”
He who pursues righteousness and kindness will find life and honor.
—PROVERBS 21:21
Day 239. I’ve been trying to be as compassionate as possible. Often this requires energy and planning—going to the soup kitchen, for instance.
But today God or fate gave me a big, juicy softball: An old lady asked me to help her across the street. Never in my thirty-eight years has an old lady asked me to help her across the street. I didn’t think those things happened anymore. I thought it was just an expression, like kittens getting stuck in trees.
But after lunch, outside the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I was meeting a friend, this kindly old octogenarian woman tells me that she is worried about making it across Broadway’s six lanes a
lone, and could I maybe help.
I’d be glad to. Though actually ecstatic is a better word. She locks her arm in mine—I figure she’s safely past the age when I can’t touch her—and we walk across, me holding my right hand out in a stern stop-traffic position, which was totally unnecessary, since the cars were safely motionless at the red light.
I am so happy about the situation, I stay with her for another several blocks, which, oddly enough, doesn’t creep her out.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
—PSALMS 32:11
Day 240. Mr. Berkowitz is over to pray again today. I can only say no to him so many times. He’s giving me another kind but stern lecture.
“You have to say a prayer in the morning,” says Mr. Berkowitz.
“Right,” I say.
“You have to say a prayer over bread.”
“Right.”
“Did you say the prayer over bread today, Arnold?”
“Right.”
“Arnold, I asked you a question. Are you paying attention?”
I am busted. I had tuned out. Mr. Berkowitz is frustrated; not angry, but frustrated.
“Yes, yes, I said the prayer over bread.”
“OK,” he says.
Then it’s on to learning the Hebrew alphabet.
“Aleph, beth, daleth.”
“No, aleph, beth, gimel.”
“Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth.”
It’s a time-consuming visit—a ninety-minute chunk out of my day. But in the end, I’m glad he came over, because Mr. Berkowitz said two things that struck me as astoundingly wise.
The first was about how much he loves doing the commandments. “To me, going to pray is like going to do a hundred-thousand-dollar deal,” he said.
This is a mind-set I’m trying to adopt. I shouldn’t look at the Bible as a collection of pesky tasks on my to-do list. I have to look forward to the commandments. I have to love them.
And in a few cases—just a handful, really—I’m starting to. Like, with the Sabbath. I used to orient my week around Monday, the start of the secular workweek. Now it’s the Sabbath. Everything leads up to the Sabbath. On Friday morning I start prepping for it like I’m going on a big date. I make a huge pot of coffee so that I don’t have to do anything resembling cooking on the Sabbath. I pile my research books in a corner.
And when the sun sets, I flip off my computer and get to work not working. Because resting is, paradoxically, difficult. The writer Judith Shulevitz talks about how avoiding business requires much effort. She’s right. You can’t talk about work, you can’t even think about work. A notion about Esquire will creep into my brain—I have to write that article on weddings for Thursday—and I’ll squash it down. Another will pop up. It’s like mental Whac-a-Mole. By the end of Saturday, as the sun finally sets, I feel as if I’ve done something strenuous but healthy, like I’ve taken a run through Central Park. I feel good, like I deserved the endorphin rush the Sabbath gave me. And then I start to look forward to next week’s Sabbath.
The second thing Mr. Berkowitz says is this: “It’s a different way of looking at the world. Your life isn’t about rights. It’s about responsibilities.” It’s the biblical version of that famous quote from our first Catholic president: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a good way to think. It’s not my natural mind-set, far from it, but I’m giving it a shot.
Consider speech. As a journalist—even though I spent most of my career as a frivolous entertainment journalist—I’ve been obsessed with my right to free speech. If I was an absolutist in any sense, then it was as a zealot for the First Amendment. Journalists should be allowed to say whatever they want. It’s our right. The American way. Take no prisoners. But now I’m trying to balance that mind-set with my responsibility not to engage in evil tongue or the written equivalent. In my article on tuxedos, do I really need to make a cheap joke at David Arquette’s expense? Does it make the world a better place? As much as it pains me, I leave my article free from Arquette abuse.
Month Nine: May
In the beginning was the Word…
—JOHN 1:1
Day 243. Today is the first day of my New Testament life. I’m as nervous as I’ve been since the start of this experiment, more nervous than even the very first day, more nervous than when I called up Guru Gil.
On the one hand, I can’t wait to dive in. It should be a massive education. Before this year, I knew only the very basics of the New Testament and Christianity. Well, the basics plus the random facts that I still remember from the encyclopedia (for example, some early Christians believed that the creation of the world was equivalent to conception, and it occurred on March 25, lending symbolic weight to Jesus’s birth nine months later on December 25). But I want more in-depth knowledge. So this will be good for me.
Plus, it feels timely. It’s hard to argue with the fact that the New Testament holds more sway in America today than the Old. Or, to be more precise, the Christian literal interpretation of the Bible holds more sway than the Jewish method of exegesis. I don’t buy that we’re on the verge of a theocracy, but certainly evangelical Christianity—both in its conservative and progressive forms—has a massive impact on our lives.
On the other hand, I’m freaked out. I’ve already been overwhelmed by the complexity of my own tradition, and now I’m going to venture into even more foreign territory. I told Julie I had a stress headache.
“You don’t have to do it, you know,” said Julie.
“If I don’t, I’ll only be telling half the story,” I said.
“But it’s a big half.”
True. But like Nachshon, the Israelite who marched into the Red Sea, I’m going to wade into the water and see what happens. Before I do, though, I have to wrestle with a bunch of Big Issues.
The first Big Issue is this: If I’m going to switch my focus to the New Testament, should I continue following all the rules of the Hebrew Bible? In other words, should I keep my beard and fringes? Or should I break out the Gillette Mach3 and order shrimp fajitas?
After asking this question to pretty much every Christian expert I meet, I’ve come to this definitive conclusion: I don’t know.
You can find a small group—a very small group—of Christians who say that every single Old Testament rule should still be followed by everyone. The ultralegalist camp. They quote these words from Jesus found in Matthew 5:17–18:
Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Jesus is God, but he affirms that the laws of the ancient Israelites still stand.
On the other end of the spectrum are those Christians who say that Jesus overrode all rules in the Old Testament. He created a new covenant. His death was the ultimate sacrifice, so there’s no need for animal sacrifice—or, for that matter, any other Old Testament laws. Even the famous Ten Commandments are rendered unnecessary by Jesus.
Consider Matthew 22:37–39, in which Jesus is asked by a lawyer what is the great commandment of the law.
Jesus responds:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Some Christians say all of the other eight commandments flow from those two. You love your neighbor, so you don’t lie to him. You love your neighbor, so you don’t steal from him. The Old Testament is important historically, but as a moral guidebook, it has been superseded.
And then there’s the vast middle ground. Most Christians I met draw a distinction between (a) moral laws and (b) ritual laws. The moral laws are the ones such as those found in the Ten Commandments: no killing, no
coveting, and so forth. Those we still need to follow. Ritual laws are the ones about avoiding bacon and not wearing clothes of mixed fibers. Jesus made those laws obsolete.
What does obsolete mean? Is it a sin to keep a beard and avoid shellfish? Or is it just unnecessary, like wearing sunscreen indoors? Ask ten people, and, once again, you’ll get ten different answers. But most seem to say, go ahead, wear that sunscreen. It won’t hurt. You need to accept Jesus, but you don’t need to shave the beard.
Which is a relief. I want to keep the beard. I’m not ready to give up my rituals. That would feel like I ran seventeen miles of a marathon. So unless there’s a contradiction in the laws—for instance, the literal interpretation of eye for an eye contradicts the literal interpretation of turn the other cheek—I’ll follow both Old and New.
My second Big Issue is this: As a Jewish person, how do I treat the issue of the divinity of Christ?
For the bona fide literal New Testament experience, I should accept Jesus as Lord. But I just can’t do it. I’ve read the New Testament several times, and though I think of Jesus as a great man, I don’t come away from the experience accepting him as savior. I’ve had no road-to-Damascus moment yet.
The closest I’ve come to such a moment was probably during college when I grew strangely envious of my best friend’s Catholicism. He went to mass several times a week and did the sign of the cross before every meal. We ate together at least once a day, and I always felt awkward while I waited for him to finish his prayer. Awkward and superficial. Here he was, funny and smart, but he had something deeper going on than I did. I’d pretend not to look, but I was fixated by the sign of the cross. It’s such a simple and beautiful ritual. What if I started doing it with him at dinner? Just to see what it’s like? To see if I felt anything? Would my friend be weirded out? Probably. So I never tried it.