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

by A. J. Jacobs

  In retrospect, though, I’m starting to think that maybe it’s not completely insane. My dad always talked about how his hero Albert Einstein owned seven identical suits, so that he wouldn’t waste any neuronal activity on choosing what to wear. Similar idea.

  In fact, it’s part of a bigger theme I’ve been mulling over: freedom from choice. I’d always been taught to fetishize freedom of choice. It’s the American way. It’s why I went to Brown University, where they don’t have any requirements, and you can go through all four years writing papers about the importance of Christian Slater’s oeuvre.

  But more and more I’m starting to see the beauty in a more rigid framework. The structure, the stable architecture of religion.

  My brother-in-law Eric—now getting his doctorate in psychology—likes to lecture me about an experiment at a grocery store by researchers from Columbia and Stanford. They set up two tables offering free tastes; one table had six flavors of jam, the other had twenty-four flavors of jam. Oddly, more people bought jams from the table with six flavors. Nearly ten times more people, in fact. The conclusion was that the big table was just too overwhelming, too many options.

  The Bible takes away a lot of those jam jars. What should I do on Friday night? Stay at home with the family. Should I waste my time reading about Cameron Diaz’s love life? No. Should I give to the homeless guy on 77th? Yes. Should I be stricter with Jasper? Yes. There’s something relieving and paradoxically liberating about surrendering yourself to a minimal-choice lifestyle, especially as our choices multiply like cable channels.

  I recently heard a rabbi give a talk on Moses, and how, in a weird sense, he was a slave even after his release from bondage. He was a slave to goodness. He had no choice but to do the right thing.

  There’s a Jewish book that restricts choice even more—far more—than the Bible itself. It’s a massive work from the sixteenth century called the Set Table—or Shulchan Aruch in Hebrew. It’s an amazing book; it gives practical instruction on everything you can think of: eating, sleeping, praying, bathing, sex. Some Orthodox Jews follow a lot of the Set Table’s guidelines, but it’d be darn near impossible to follow every directive. There are thousands of them. One stipulates that when going to the bathroom outside, you should face north or south but not east or west.

  Most of the Set Table’s rules are postbiblical. The Scriptures don’t get into shoe-donning procedures per se. But the Bible still has plenty of laws to keep me busy—some that I like (the Sabbath) and some I don’t (monthly wife avoidance). The key question seems to be: How do you choose which choice-restricting rules to follow in the first place? I don’t know. It’s like an M. C. Escher drawing. It hurts my brain.

  Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, finished his lesson and the prayers, and left about an hour later. As he said goodbye, he reminded me to prepare for Sabbath by reciting a little ditty:

  A Shabbos well spent

  Brings a week of content.

  I agree with the sentiment, if not the grammar.

  I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.

  —DEUTERONOMY 5:9

  Day 117. My son, Jasper, has finally improved his vocabulary, but not in the way I was hoping. And I’m the one to blame.

  Perhaps I can explain what happened via a quick biblical story: In Genesis 12, Abraham traveled to Egypt with his beautiful wife, Sarah, to escape a famine. Sarah was so stunning, Abraham feared that the Egyptians would kill him and steal Sarah for themselves. So Abraham lied. He said that Sarah was his sister. Abraham took the deception so far that the Pharaoh, thinking Sarah was single, married her. And when the Pharaoh found out that he’d been deceived, he was—somewhat justifiably, I think—furious, and ejected Abraham from the land.

  Abraham and Sarah eventually conceived a son named Isaac. When he’s grown, Isaac and his wife Rebecca moved to the land of the Philistines to avoid a famine. And what does Isaac do? He pretends Rebecca is his sister. He doesn’t want the Philistines to kill him and steal Rebecca.

  This is a big recurring theme in the Bible: Children mimic their parents’ behavior, even the flaws, perhaps especially the flaws. (One other example: Rebecca played favorites with her son Jacob; Jacob played favorites with his son Joseph.)

  I’ve always known that parents influence their kids. It’s not an obscure concept. But it didn’t sink in on a gut level until I saw Jasper aping our words and deeds.

  I first noticed it when he adopted one of Julie’s more endearing habits. After Julie takes a sip of a drink, she’ll often let out a satisfied “Ahhh,” like she’s secretly taping a Sprite commercial. Now Jasper is doing it. He’ll polish off his watered-down apple juice, plunk the sippy cup on the table, and exhale noisily.

  But with me, it’s taken a darker turn. A few days ago, Jasper’s Elmo plate slipped out of my grasp, scattering cubes of cantaloupe all over the kitchen. I shouted a four-letter word that is a synonym for the biblical verb “to know.” (I’d type it here, but I think that’d be breaking the rules again.) Apparently Jasper was paying close attention. He has now decided this is a great word. It has replaced the perfectly acceptable “uhoh” as the go-to exclamation.

  When I’ve seen kids cursing on TV or in the movies, it’s kind of adorable. When my two-year-old niece said the S-word? I chuckled. But when my own kid squeaks out swear words in his high-pitched voice, it’s not funny at all. I immediately picture him fifteen years down the road with a syringe sticking out of his arm sprawled on the floor of some train station bathroom.

  In Deuteronomy 5:9 the Bible says “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.” I used to find this an appalling sentence. Why should God punish my grandson for my sins? It seemed outrageously un-American. What about everyone being entitled to a clean moral slate? And, yes, if you interpret this as a threat that God will smite your child with leprosy when you worship a carved idol, then absolutely, it’s cruel.

  But I’ve come to appreciate it. The trick is, you have to see the passage as a warning that your moral failings will affect your kids’ ability to make the right choices. If you beat your son, he’ll be more likely to beat his son. If you get angry at cantaloupe-related mishaps, your son will too. What better deterrent could there be to bad behavior?

  It had even more resonance in biblical times. As Jack Miles points out in his excellent book God: A Biography, ancient Israelites didn’t have the clearly formed concept of immortality of the soul, as we do now. You achieved immortality through your children and children’s children, who were physical extensions of you. The basic building block of society was the family, not the individual.

  With no afterlife, God dispensed justice to a family—a person’s actions reverberate through his descendants’ lives. The most extreme example: When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit of knowledge, the family of humanity has been paying ever since.

  I can’t say why for sure—maybe the Bible has seeped into my brain, maybe there’s an inevitable mental shift that accompanies parenthood—but I’ve edged away from extreme individualism. My worldview is more interconnected, more tribal.

  Ask now, and see, can a man bear a child?

  —JEREMIAH 30:6

  Day 120. On this brisk December morning, Julie and I trek to the fertility clinic on the East Side. They’ve been steeping two of Julie’s eggs in a test tube for five days. The doctors are implanting both, in the hope that one will stick.

  Man, does it feel unnatural. Surgical caps, antibacterial lotion, gurneys, charts. This is about as far from Adam and Eve as you can get.

  They wheel Julie out a few minutes later. And it is done. She is, God willing, pregnant. For reasons I still don’t understand, Julie has to lie in a hospital bed with a full bladder for about a half hour.

  “Distract me, please!” says Julie. “Talk about
anything.”

  I start in on a biblical story about Tamar.

  “Anything but that.”

  OK. But it’s a good story, a relevant story—and a profoundly strange story. Julie, feel free to skip this section, but here goes:

  Tamar’s tale is found in the Book of Genesis. Tamar was married to a man named Er, son of Judah. Er died before they could have kids. There was a custom in biblical times—as bizarre as it sounds now—that a widow who has no children stays within the family: She must marry the brother of her dead husband. It’s called “levirate marriage.” So Tamar married Er’s younger brother, Onan. Onan, too, died. Tamar was understandably distraught. Two husbands, two deaths. But her father-in-law, Judah, told Tamar not to worry—she could marry his youngest son, Shelah. But Judah failed to follow through. Tamar was left without a husband.

  Tamar was desperate to get pregnant. So she came up with a plan: She put on a veil, disguised herself as a prostitute, and intercepted her father-in-law, Judah, as he was on his way to shear his sheep. The unsuspecting Judah slept with Tamar, and then gave her his staff and personal seal as a IOU for payment. The plan worked. She got pregnant.

  Judah, unaware he had been duped, found out that his widowed daughter-in-law was with child and accused her of loose morals. He wanted her burned to death. So Tamar showed him his staff and personal seal. Now he understood. He was the father of her child. He backed down and repented. Tamar had twin sons by Judah. They were named Zerah and Perez. And here’s an interesting twist: Perez eventually became the ancestor of that remarkable leader of ancient Israel, King David.

  When I first read this, it was too outlandish to have any meaning for me. A woman having sex with her father-in-law? In a prostitute disguise? But after rereading it four times, I’ve wrung a powerful moral out of it. And that is this: Even great things can be born from ethically murky origins. Even an illicit, deceit-filled union can lead to someone like King David.

  So…perhaps in vitro fertilization is the same. It’s ethically complicated, but maybe our child will be great. Or maybe I’m justifying like crazy here.

  In the end, I do end up distracting Julie by finding some common ground. We play a name-a-movie-with-a-biblical-title game.

  I will never forget thy precepts, for by them thou hast given me life.

  —PSALMS 119:93

  Day 122. It’s New Year’s Eve, and Julie and I pull our rental car into the driveway of our friends’ house in New Jersey. We’ll be staying there for a three-day weekend.

  After hellos and avoided hugs, I lug our suitcase upstairs to the guest room, heave it onto the bed, unzip it—and immediately realize my mistake. I forgot to bring my ram’s horn. It’s back in my closet in New York. Damn. I won’t be able to blow a horn on January 1, the start of the new month.

  I try to argue with myself that, well, January 1 isn’t the Hebrew calendar, so maybe it’s not really a new biblical month. Doesn’t help. I feel surprisingly anxious and off-kilter, like I’m back in high school and forgot to study for a big physics exam. I take it out on Julie by picking a fight with her about the volume of Jasper’s baby monitor.

  The truth is, I’ve begun to get really rigorous with my rituals. I hate missing my daily routine—the praying, the binding, more praying, the tassels, the white clothes, the praying again. Why? Perhaps because these rituals dovetail beautifully with my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  Thanks to my OCD, I’m prone to weird little rituals, like touching the shower head four times after turning off the faucet. Or opening my jaw into a yawnlike position whenever I look in the mirror. Or making sure never to start a conversation with the word you because when I was eleven I saw an Eight Is Enough episode in which an estranged father’s first words to his son were “You doing all right?” and the relationship went sour after that—probably not because the father started his sentence with “you,” but you never know.

  I’ve been doing my own rituals less and less frequently, as the Bible rituals take over more and more of my time. And why not? People have been doing these Bible rituals for thousands of years. They’re time tested. Why should I try to invent my own ceremonies, when my heritage provides me with a book full of them? Mr. Berkowitz doesn’t waste his days concocting his own rituals; he takes them off the rack.

  At least in this way, I’m preprogrammed for biblical living. Religion—especially ritual-heavy religions like Judaism and High-Church Christianity—have three key OCD traits. First, the repetition (every day the same prayers, every week the same candle-lightings). Second, the fascination with taxonomy—everything in its proper category: good or evil, holy or profane. And third, especially in Judaism, the fixation on purity and impurity (the equivalent of my constant hand washing). I’m drawn to all three.

  Of course, I’m not the first to make this connection. Sigmund Freud, a Jew who, as a child, regularly attended Catholic mass with his Czech nanny, believed that religion was the “universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.”

  If so, I think it can be a healthy neurosis. I’m more open to the chukim nowadays: those inexplicable commandments such as keeping apart wool and linen. Without realizing it, I had been practicing my own self-generated chukim for years. How long had I wasted turning on and off the radio because I needed the final word to be a noun? Compared to my radio ritual, strapping commandments to my forehead looks positively rational. Instead of compulsively repeating the list of my freshman year classes—French, math, biology, and so on (don’t ask)—I compulsively repeat certain passages from the Bible that I am mandated to remember. Like, that God gave us the commandments. And that God brought us out of Israel. And gave us the Sabbath. And that God instructed us to blow a horn at the start of every month.

  Month Five: January

  Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you—for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.

  —ECCLESIASTES 7:21–22 (NIV)

  Day 124. January 2. We’re back in New York. I’m not supposed to make New Year’s resolutions—probably a pagan ritual—but if I did, here’s what mine would be: I have to start thickening my skin. It’s right there in the Ecclesiastes: Don’t pay attention to everything everyone says about you; you know you’ve talked trash about other people, too.

  Today I was reading the Amazon.com reviews for my encyclopedia book (I know, not biblical), and I ran across one that was very strange. The reviewer said she looked at my author photo and discovered that I’m not really that ugly. In fact, I’m kind of “normal looking.” Which I guess is sort of flattering. Normal looking.

  But she didn’t mean it as flattery. She said that I’m normal-looking enough that I have no excuse to be socially awkward, neurotic, or beset with an inferiority complex. So I should shut my normal-looking trap and stop complaining. This is the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever received. It sank me into a bad mood for three hours. The Bible is right: I have to toughen up.

  And I must, absolutely must, stop self-Googling. It’s a horrible habit that I still haven’t kicked in my biblical year. I found one blogger in Singapore who got my book for a birthday present, though he seemed more excited about another present, a T-shirt that read, “I’m Looking for Treasure. Can I See Your Chest?” I’ve done image searches on myself, and found an outtake from an appearance on C-Span’s Book TV where the website froze on a particularly unflattering moment that makes me resemble Sean Penn in I Am Sam.

  This is all very unrighteous, very vain. I should think instead of the well-being of my family and my neighbors—and on God.

  I should be more like Noah. It took Noah decades to build his ark. Can you imagine the mockery he must have received from doubting neighbors? If Noah were alive today, he wouldn’t be wasting his time checking out what blogs said about him. He’d be down at Home Depot buying more lumber. Starting today, I’m going to be like Noah. Toughen up.

  You shall teach them diligently to your children.


  —DEUTERONOMY 6:7

  Day 126. There’s one upside to my son not talking a lot: I don’t have to figure out what to tell him about God yet. Because I have no idea what to say.

  The subject came up at dinner tonight with our friends Jessica and Peter, up from Washington, D.C., for a visit. Here’s how Jessica answered the question when their daughter asked her about God.

  “I told her God is in the wind, in the trees, He’s in the rocks, He’s everywhere.”

  Her husband Peter looks dismayed.

  “Well, maybe not everywhere,” says Peter.

  “Yes, everywhere,” says Jessica.

  “God’s in that cement mixer?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “In the forklift?”

  “Yes, why not?” says Jessica.

  Peter shakes his head. “You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

  But I know what Jessica is saying. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve taken not quite a leap of faith, but a cautious baby step of faith. I’m not sure why. I think it’s that the three-times-a-day prayers are working their mojo.

  The point is, I don’t see the world as a collection of soulless quarks and neutrinos. At times—not all the time, but sometimes—the entire world takes on a glow of sacredness, like someone has flipped on a unfathomably huge halogen lamp and made the universe softer, fuller, less menacing.

  I spend a lot of time marveling. I haven’t stared at a forklift yet, but I’ll marvel at the way rain serpentines down a car window. Or I’ll marvel at the way my reflection is distorted in a bowl. I feel like I just took my first bong hit. I feel like Wes Bentley rhapsodizing about that dancing plastic bag in American Beauty.