by A. J. Jacobs
The Mississippi minister who called me today is a man named Dean Hubbard, a Kia car salesman who has been working on the red heifer project for years. He caught me on my cell phone as I was walking out of my building. But I was so eager to talk to him, I didn’t want to call him back. I plopped down on a lobby chair and grilled him for an hour, nodding at my neighbors as they passed by.
Dean is hard not to like. He’s got a big voice and a big laugh. Dean became a minister in 1974 after he was zapped by 4,600 volts of electricity during a mishap at a radio station. He says God meant for him and me to talk. God has blessed him so far in life. Even when his wife died a few years ago, he says God provided him with another.
“I prayed to God for a new wife. I prayed I don’t want a big one. I want a small one—about five foot three. I want her between fifty and sixty years old. I want her cute. And I said, I don’t want to go far to find her. I want her to show up in my driveway. I gave God all these criteria. I prayed at two in the afternoon, because it says in the Bible that a man needs a female. And at seven that evening I walked to the end of my driveway to my mailbox, and there she was in a tennis skirt carrying a bunch of gardenias.”
They are still happily married. And she’s still small.
Hubbard works on the red heifer project with a born-again cattle rancher and preacher named Clyde Lott, also of Mississippi. About three years ago, Lott bred a cow they thought could be unblemished. But there was a problem.
“The thing about Mississippi is we have something called hoof-and-mouth disease,” says Hubbard. “The thing about Israel is there’s a coming war. We don’t want the cows over there now.” So for safety, they shipped the cow off to Nebraska. Hubbard and Lott believe that the true world-changing red heifer must be born in Israel, so they are waiting till the political situation calms down before exporting this—or any other—potential red mothers.
Their contact in Israel is a Massachusetts-raised rabbi named Chaim Richman. Richman runs the Temple Institute, which is a remarkable place staffed by people who make my ex-uncle Gil look moderate. Richman and his colleagues are awaiting the establishment of the Third Temple and the restoration of animal sacrifices. They aren’t just waiting, though. They’re preparing. They have a museum in Jerusalem with dozens of vessels and vestments preapproved for Temple use. If you want, you can browse the photos online. There’s a three-pronged fork for turning over the roasting goats. There’s a golden flask, a menorah cleaner, and the sacred jewel-bedecked breastplate of the high priest. And so on.
I like Dean, but I’m no fan of his and Chaim Richman’s project. It’s not just that it’s zany—I’m certainly not opposed to occasional zaniness—it’s that it’s potentially dangerous. If the red heifer arrives, it’ll be seen by some as divine permission to build a Third Temple. Where would it go? On the Temple Mount, which is currently under the administration of Muslims—home to their sacred Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Then it really might be the end of the world.
Frankly, the apocalypse sections in the Bible leave me cold. It’s one of the few topics in my biblical year that I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around. Not that I don’t believe we could be living in the end times. I do. I think about it way too much. I worry about which lithium-deprived manic-depressive misfit will finally decide to use the nuclear bomb.
But I don’t believe the Bible predicts how the world will be destroyed. The main apocalyptic text in the Bible is the Book of Revelation (not Revelations, as I always thought). The writing is poetic, vivid, and terrifying. Killer horses with heads like lions and tails like serpents stampede across the earth. People are thrown into lakes of fire. The sky opens up like a scroll being unfurled. If it weren’t in the public domain, I could see Jerry Bruckheimer optioning it.
How to interpret this notoriously complex text?
A few fundamentalists go with the ultraliteral. In the very near future, just like Revelation says, seven angels will sound seven trumpets. The sun will go black, and locusts will cover the earth. A red dragon with seven heads will try to attack the Messiah as a child, but God will save him.
A step down the literalism ladder are those who say that the main points of Revelation are true—the world will end in a battle between Christ and the Antichrist—but some passages use symbolic language.
For instance: I was watching Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club—the fundamentalist version of the Today show—and there was a news story about how the Israeli army is using nanotechnology with the hopes of creating “killer bionic hornets.” Robertson—actually, it was Robertson’s son Gordon, sitting in for Pat—said this was fulfillment of Revelation prophecy. Specifically, this passage about deadly insects:
And the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails like unto scorpions, and stings, and their power of hurting men for five months lies in their tails.
So that’s one side. At the other end of the spectrum are the religious moderates who say that no part of the Book of Revelation should be taken literally. And, just as important, no part of the Book of Revelation should be taken as a Nostradamus-like prediction of events in centuries to come. Instead the Book of Revelation referred to the political situation at the time it was written.
In this view, the book is an extended allegory about the persecution of the Christians by the Roman Empire. The seven-headed beast, for instance, is the city of Rome, a reference to the seven hills it was founded on. The elaborate symbolism was partly to avoid censorship, partly because it’s a hallmark of a then-flourishing genre called apocalyptic literature.
“To take Revelation literally is entirely missing the point,” says Elton Richards, my pastor out to pasture. “It’d be like taking Aesop’s fables as literally true.”
Their hearts are far from me…
—ISAIAH 29:13
Day 169. I’ve taken a step backward again, spiritually speaking. My faith is fragile. Little things jolt me back to pure agnosticism. All that talk of red heifers and pigeons—that did it. As will a story about a suicide bomber, which reminds me of religion’s dark side. Or even a quote like the one from the philosopher interviewed in the New York Times, in which he said that ethical monotheism is the single worst idea that humans have come up with.
If my spirituality could be charted like the NASDAQ, the general trend so far is a gradual rise, but there are many valleys, and I’m in a deep one now. It’s making me lazy. I forget to put on my fringes, and I tell myself, well, what’s the big deal? I’ll put them on tomorrow.
I’m still praying several times a day, but when I do, I’m saying the words with as much feeling as I give to a Taco Bell drive-through order. I often think of this verse in Isaiah where he lashes out against the Israelite hypocrites:
Because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote.
That describes me right now.
I even find myself being skeptical of those times when my heart was near to God in the last few months. Perhaps it was an illusion. If I prayed to Apollo every day, would I start to feel a connection to Apollo? And what if I’m drawn to spirituality simply because I’m bored of the dry, dusty, rational mind-set that I’ve had these many years? I get bored easily. I can’t sit through a sequel to a movie because I’m already tired of the characters. Maybe spirituality attracts me for its novelty factor.
Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it…”
—PROVERBS 3:28
Day 177. I may have found a way to help my neighbor Nancy, the self-described “kooky dog lady” who lives in apartment 5I. She knocked on my door today.
“Can I ask you a favor?” she says.
“Sure.”
I could tell she hated this conversation already. I think she considers it an imposition to ask a waiter for the ch
eck, so asking me for a favor kills her.
“But I don’t want you to do it because the Bible tells you to. I want you to do it because you want to.”
“OK,” I say. “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference anymore, but OK.”
“I have a book idea.”
“Yup.”
I guess I should have said something else, because Nancy gets skittish.
“I don’t know.” She turns to go away.
I finally squeeze it out of her: Nancy wants to write a book about her life in the sixties. About hanging with the classic rockers: Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, and especially Jimi Hendrix. She was good friends with Jimi. She sketched him for the cover of one of his albums and collaborated with him on still-unpublished poems.
“What were the poems about?”
“Hippie stuff. Clouds. Sky. Love. I’ll give them to you when I’m done with the book.”
“How much have you written?”
“Only fifteen hundred pages. I’ve got a ways to go.”
She smiles. She says she’d always been resistant to writing about her rocker days, but, well, it’s been a long time. And, frankly, she needs the money.
I tell her I’d be happy to give whatever advice and/or referrals I can. I do want to help. Aside from a few blissful moments in the sixties, Nancy’s life has been an unhappy one—an abusive mother, a rough marriage, inability to have kids, a fizzled career. She deserves something good. And if I help her, I will be “making a deposit of righteousness in God’s bank,” as I heard one preacher say.
But her question also nags me: Am I doing this just because of the Bible project? Or would I be this eager to help her no matter what?
“In the end, people appreciate frankness more than flattery.”
—PROVERBS 28:23 (TLB)
Day 179. I’m still wrestling with the no-lying commandment. It’s brutal. But the Bible says to tell the truth, no matter what. People appreciate frankness. I need to follow the lead of those biblical heroes who take enormous risks to tell the truth.
Consider the prophet Nathan, who confronted King David. It’s one of the Bible’s most dramatic tales. The background is that David had wronged his loyal soldier Uriah by sleeping with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, while Uriah was away at war. David got Bathsheba pregnant. To try to cover up his act, he arranged for Uriah’s death.
So Nathan, one of the wisest people in the kingdom, told David a parable: There’s a rich man and a poor man. The rich man has a vast herd of sheep. The poor man owns but one lamb. One day the rich man gets a visitor. What should he feed him for dinner? The rich man decides to slaughter the poor man’s only lamb and serve that for dinner.
When he heard the parable, King David had the reaction most people have: The rich man is a horrible person. He’s greedy and pitiless.
At which point Nathan reveals to King David: You are the rich man. Nathan’s point was, King David had everything—including multiple wives and concubines—and still chose to steal Uriah’s wife.
Nathan was taking a huge risk—criticizing the king to his face could have backfired. But in this case, the truth worked. King David realized the prophet was right. He had acted evilly.
As you might imagine, I’m not the prophet Nathan. So far, my truth telling hasn’t laid bare the hypocrisies of great men. But I have managed to slash my total production of white lies by one-third.
Sometimes this works well, other times not so much. Tonight, Julie, Jasper, and I go for a five o’clock dinner at Homer’s, a greasy spoon tastefully decorated with a flat-screen TV playing nonstop Nickelodeon.
I’m busy cutting Jasper’s hot dog while simultaneously making sure not to touch the skin myself, as it’s impure. At the next table, as at pretty much every other table, is a family. A dad in typical Upper West Side khakis, a mom with a ponytail, a three-year-old girl busy with some Crayolas.
“Julie Schoenberg?” says the ponytailed woman.
It’s an acquaintance Julie hasn’t seen since college. Hugs are exchanged, compliments toward babies are extended, spouses introduced, mutual friends discussed.
At the end of the meal, we get our check, and Julie’s friend says: “We should all get together and have a playdate sometime.”
“Absolutely,” says Julie.
“Uh, I don’t know,” I say.
Julie’s friend laughs nervously, not sure what to make of that.
Julie glares at me.
“You guys seem nice,” I say. “But I don’t really want new friends right now. So I think I’ll take a pass.”
A few weeks ago, I read a book called Radical Honesty, which was about telling the truth in all situations. It talks about the scary thrill of total candor, the Six Flags–worthy adrenaline rush. I felt that. I heard myself saying the words, but they seemed unreal, like I was in an off-Broadway production.
Julie is not glaring at me anymore. She’s too angry to look in my direction.
“It’s just that I don’t have enough time to see our old friends, so I don’t want to overcommit,” I say, shrugging. Hoping to take the edge off, I add: “Just being honest.”
“Well, I’d love to see you,” says Julie. “A. J. can stay home.”
Julie’s friend pushes her stroller out of Homer’s, shooting a glance over her shoulder as she leaves.
And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes…
—EXODUS 13:9
Day 180. Today marks the twenty-sixth time I’ve been asked whether I’m going to sacrifice Jasper during my biblical year. No, I say politely, only Abraham was commanded to do that.
“No binding your son on top of a mountain?” asked David, a friend of Julie’s who has drifted slowly toward Orthodox Judaism over the years.
“No binding him.”
David clearly knows his stuff: “The binding” is what some Jewish scholars call Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac. Binding, I’ve noticed, is a huge theme in the Bible. Isaac’s is the most famous, but there are plenty of other less violent examples. And those I am trying to do.
Last week I scratched Deuteronomy 14:25 off my list: “You shall bind money to your hand.” This is one of the verses that my ex-uncle Gil took literally, and though most take it metaphorically (as advice to be careful with your money), I wanted to follow Gil, at least for a day.
When I woke up, I found a rubber band in Julie’s desk and used it to strap a five-dollar bill on top of my left knuckles. I went about my day—I visited the grocery and Starbucks. But it felt like I was tempting fate. New York still has a sizable crime rate, so this seemed about as clever as walking around Yellowstone National Park with a salmon strapped to my hand. Luckily, despite lingering stares, no one tried to grab my exposed cash.
There’s another type of binding I’ve been doing every day. This one comes from Deuteronomy 6:8. It tells you to bind the commandments to your hand and between your eyes.
Since I began my year, I’ve been using this homespun method: I take two xeroxed copies of the Ten Commandments and fold each to the size of a Polaroid photo. Every morning I tie one around my wrist with a white string, the other around my head.
It’s been startlingly effective. Just try forgetting about the word of God when it’s right in front of your eyeballs, obscuring a chunk of your view. Sometimes I imagine the commandments sinking through my skin and going straight to my brain like some sort of holy nicotine patch. If you look really closely, “Thou shalt not steal” is branded somewhere on my frontal lobe.
Even after I take off the string for the day (usually at about noon), I still have red indentations on my hand and head for hours afterward.
So in that sense, my binding feels good, righteous. But lately, my daily binding has also become tinged with guilt. I feel a tug from my ancestors or conscience or God that maybe now is the time to try the traditional Jewish method of binding the commandments to my arm and forehead: I should try to wrap tefillin.
I had a passing familiarity wi
th the Jewish prayer straps (they’re usually called tefillin, but sometimes they’re known as phylacteries). When I was fourteen, on an El Al flight to Israel, I saw the ritual for the first time: A group of Orthodox Jews stood in the airplane aisle with leather boxes on their heads that looked like jewelers’ loupes. They wrapped straps, they bounced their heads back and forth, they chanted. It was mystifying and a bit frightening.
My only other brush with tefillin was a book I was sent a few years ago at Esquire. It was by Leonard Nimoy—Star Trek’s Spock himself—who, as it turns out, is also a photographer and a quasireligious Jew. His book contained racy black-and-white photography of half-nude women wrapped in tefillin, a sort of Mapplethorpe-meets-Talmud motif. (Brief but relevant side note: You know Spock’s famous split-fingered “Live long and prosper” salute? It’s actually a sacred hand position used by the Jewish priestly class, the kohanim.)
Tefillin have been around a very long time—archaeologists found a pair near the Dead Sea in Israel dating to right around the time of Christ. And some claim that Jesus himself put on tefillin every day, though he did criticize the bulky versions worn by the Pharisees.
But what about the origins of tefillin? What did they do in the beginning? In the time of Moses? No one’s sure. Biblical scholar Oded Borowski—author of Daily Life in Biblical Times—told me it might have been much more primitive, perhaps a string with a scroll. Others say that perhaps nothing was worn at all: The passage was originally meant metaphorically.
However it started, tefillin have evolved into an enormously intricate ritual. There are dozens of rules, right on down to a ban on passing gas while wearing them.
I would be needing some help. I ask Yossi, one of my Orthodox advisers, to be my tefillin-wrapping tutor. He invites me to his house on the Upper West Side. It’s late in the afternoon—ideally, tefillin should be wrapped early in the morning, but it’s still acceptable to do it now.
Yossi welcomes me with a handshake, goes to his closet, and takes out a small blue velvet pouch. Inside are two black leather boxes, each with tiny scrolls of scripture inside and leather straps attached.