The Year of Living Biblically Part 18

"You know what my spiritual adviser Yossi would say?"

"What?"

"What seems terrible at first may turn out to be a great thing. You can't predict."

Yossi had been talking to me about this the other day. We were discussing the biblical story of Esther. This is the tale of a pagan king who went on a kingdomwide search to find a new queen for himself. He set it up as a beauty pageant, and a surprisingly carnal one. Each contestant would be primped for an entire year--six months with oil of myrrh, six months with perfumes and spices--then be sent in to spend the night with the king. The winner--the one the king loved "above all the women"--was a Jewish exile named Esther. The king crowned her his queen. This mixed marriage would have been viewed with horror by the Jews of the day. But here's the twist: It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. Because Esther ended up convincing the king to spare the Jews, against the wishes of his evil adviser Haman. Bad can lead to good. We don't know the greater plan.

"I agree with that intellectually," Julie says. "But right now, it's a little hard to swallow."

Yeah. It's not helping me much either.

My mouth is filled with thy praise and with thy glory all the day. --PSALMS 71:8 --PSALMS 71:8 Day 191. Speaking of Yossi, he gave me a stern talking-to today. I was over at his house on the Upper West Side. We are sitting on a couch in his living room, a room dominated by books. There's a huge set of shelves stuffed with hardcovers, paperbacks, and pamphlets on whatever biblical topic you can think of, even the obscure ones like polygamy and gleanings.

"I love saying prayers of thanksgiving," I say, "because it makes me more grateful for life. But I still have trouble with the prayers where you're glorifying G.o.d . . ."

"You're on thin ice there," he says.

He told me: Stop looking at the Bible as a self-help book. That is the way I view it a lot of the time. I ask myself, "How can religion make me more joyous? How can it give my life more meaning? How can it help me raise my son so he won't end up an embezzler or a racketeer?"

But religion is more than that. It's about serving G.o.d. Yossi tells me this story: Two men do their daily prayers while at work. One spends twenty minutes in his office behind a closed door and afterward feels refreshed and uplifted, like he just had a therapy session. The other is so busy, he can squeeze in only a five-minute prayer session between phone calls. He recites his prayers superfast in a supply closet.

Who has done the better thing?

"The first," I say.

"No," says Yossi. "The second."

The second guy was doing it only for G.o.d. He was sacrificing his time. There was no benefit to himself.

I think: That's interesting. Prayers are a good way to teach me the concept of sacrificing my time for the higher good. I'll become a more selfless person. A better person.

And then I realize: I'm back to self-help again. I can't escape it.

"I will ask you a question; hide nothing from me." --JEREMIAH 38:14 --JEREMIAH 38:14 Day 196. Wednesday morning, March 15, I wake up early to make my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. That is, if I can get through El Al airline security at Newark.

The security officer--a feisty, olive-skinned Israeli woman--grills me but good. I don't fit into any of her categories--a beard, but not the traditional black hat or coat? Thus commences a half hour of questions.

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"Kheel."

"Why do you have such a big beard?"

"I'm writing a book about the Bible, and [here a one-minute summary of my premise]."

"Hmm. Did you celebrate Purim?'

"Technically, it's not mandated by the Bible proper, so no." "What does the 'J-R' at the end of your name stand for?" "Junior."

"Why are you a Junior if you're Jewish?"

"My parents weren't so observant."

"Did you have a bar mitzvah?"

"Uh, no."

By the end, my mouth is dry, my palms are damp, and I feel like I have just been on worst first date in history--but for some reason, she lets me board.

Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey . . . --EXO D U S 33:3 --EXO D U S 33:3 Day 197. The plane touches down in Tel Aviv, and I hop on the onehour shuttle bus to Jerusalem with a couple of Scandinavian tourists.

I'm a mess. I'm jet-lagged and energized at the same time. And above all, I'm jittery. I'm jittery about meeting Gil. I'm jittery about trying to wrap my brain around this unfathomably historic place in a mere weeklong stay. I'm jittery about Jerusalem syndrome: the bonafide psychological disorder in which tourists become delusional during their time in Israel and end up wandering the streets in a white gown and spouting moralizing sermons. Among the symptoms: "the need to scream, shout, or sing out loud psalms, verses from the Bible, religious hymns, or spirituals." I doubt I'll fall prey to it--I'm too self-controlled--but you never know. Also, as I have been since 9/11, I'm jittery about terrorism.

After I check in at the hotel, I meet a friend of a friend--a curly haired twenty-six-year-old TV producer named Neta--who has agreed to show me around. We go to a cafe of her choosing, a laid-back place with couches and patterned pillows. I eat pastries and pick her brain about what I should see.

As we leave, she takes me around to the side window of the cafe.

"I didn't want to show you this before we ate, but do you see this plaque?"

I nod. It's a stone plaque engraved with a flame and a half dozen names.

"This is to memorialize the people who died in a terrorist attack here a couple of years ago."

My shoulders tense up. She antic.i.p.ates my question before I ask it.

"It's not out of the ordinary," she says. "Pretty much all the cafes in this neighborhood have been bombed at one point or another."

She wasn't blase, but she wasn't overly dramatic either. It's a fact of Jerusalem life; she talked about it with the same tone you'd hear from a Los Angeleno talking about earthquakes or an Alaskan talking about the blizzards. If you love Israel as she does, she tells me, you live with it.

The Lord is my shepherd . . . --PSALMS 23:1 --PSALMS 23:1 Day 198. The next morning I head off to the Negev Desert. That's where I want to go first.

Chronologically, it appears earlier in the Bible than Jerusalem does--it's the arid land where Abraham and Isaac once pitched their tents. I'm also hoping it'll get me into the biblical mind-set. I'd been reading about these patriarchs for months. Now I want to walk the ground they walked.

I rent a small car from Hertz, get hooked up with a translator by Neta, and we set off at ten o'clock with two cups of strong Israeli coffee. The landscape gets spa.r.s.er and spa.r.s.er. The wind picks up. The street names become more biblical: Jacob Street and Abraham Street. And then, a couple of hours later, we arrive.

The Negev is an extraordinary place. Step out of your car and look around, and you can visualize what it was like to live in biblical times. Well, you could if you removed the yellow-and-black camel-crossing signs. And the cigarette boxes littering the roadside. And the omnipresent electrical wires with weird orange b.a.l.l.s on them to keep planes from flying into them.

Over the last three millennia, the desert has become a bit cluttered. But it's still as biblical a landscape as we have on this earth: dunes that stretch to the horizon, fine sand that coats your mouth whenever there's a gust of wind.

Unfortunately, aside from the view, the trip is turning out to be a bit of a letdown. The best we can muster is a visit to a Bedouin museum, which had a faux Bedouin tent that felt too sterile and orderly, like a room at an ancient Ramada Inn.

We are actually heading back to Jerusalem when we spot the thing that will save us. On the right side of a twisty, empty road: a flock of sheep. And a shepherd.

As even the most casual Bible reader knows, sheep and shepherding imagery pervades the Scriptures. The Twenty-third Psalm talks about the Lord as shepherd. Exodus compares the Israelites to a flock of sheep. Jesus is the lamb of G.o.d. Plus, most of the patriarchs were shepherds at one time: Jacob, Moses, King David.

So lambs have been very much on my mind. (My strangest lamb sighting before this: At a Judaica store on Manhattan's West Side, there was a kids' video of a Pa.s.sover dinner with Dom DeLuise, Shari Lewis, and the sock puppet Lamb Chop, which must have been disturbing for Lamb Chop, seeing as seders traditionally include a roasted shank bone to represent a sacrificed lamb.) But here, finally, was the real thing.

The shepherd is a Bedouin man in his twenties wearing a red sweater and an orange jacket. He is shy and quiet, but in keeping with Middle Eastern hospitality, he invites me to tend with him.

We stand side by side, watching the sheep graze. I expected shepherding to be a silent occupation, but it's not. The sound of two hundred sheep chomping gra.s.s is surprisingly noisy. And that's not to mention the constant b-a-a-a b-a-a-a-ing. And lambs do say just that: "B-a-a-a-a-a." It reminds me of how Julie sneezes; she lets out an "Ah-choo!" as if she's reading from a script.

The shepherd does not have a flute or harp or staff (the hook-shaped instrument). But he does have a rod. He carries a black rubber tube that looks like it might have once been part of a tractor.

I ask through the translator, "What do you do with the rod?" "It's just for appearance," he admits.

I love that. Even shepherds are concerned with superficial things. I ask him a few other questions.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Two years."

"Is the black sheep really rebellious?"

"No, it acts the same way as the white sheep."

"Do you like being a shepherd?"

"Yes, very much."

And then the conversation dies. Which is a relief to him, and OK by me. We just stroll along silently, listening to the chomping and b-a-a-a b-a-a-a-ing.

My mind is clear, settled, still. At least for a few minutes, the separation between me and my biblical alter ego Jacob dissolves. Theoretically, if G.o.d is everywhere, then He should be just as present in a New York forklift as he is in an Israeli sheep pasture. But what can I say? Maybe I lack vision, but the idea of G.o.d is just easier to sense out here, away from the beeping of trucks backing up and the sight of gym ads.

Occasionally one of the lambs strays too far away. The shepherd teaches me to chuck a rock near it to get it to return to the flock. It's the method that's been in use since the days of King David, which is how David was so adept at embedding a rock in Goliath's forehead.

Perhaps the biggest revelation from my afternoon of shepherding is this: It's astoundingly good for your confidence. I have minimal management skills, but even I could handle a couple of hundred sheep. Because in addition to "ba-a-a-ing," sheep fulfill another stereotype: They are sheepish. A loud "Hey!" or a tossed stone, and the sheep fall right into place. Everyone can be a Jack Welch in the pasture. You can see why shepherding was the ideal first job for patriarchs. There's a reason Moses led sheep before leading the Israelites out of bondage.

"It is not good that the man should be alone . . ." --GENESIS 2:18 --GENESIS 2:18 Day 198, late afternoon. If the desert is relatively empty (not counting the acc.u.mulating twenty-first-century detritus), then Jerusalem is the most packed place I've ever been. Every square inch seems drenched with people, history, and religion.

This afternoon, as I am walking along some twisty cobblestone streets of the Old City, I turn a corner and witness what has to be the highest density of spiritual devoutness on planet earth. The scene is this: Dozens of brown-robed, Franciscan Friars are slowly, solemnly walking the stations of the cross, their hands clasped in front of them. They are singing "Ave Maria," accompanied by a single-speaker boom box strapped over the right shoulder of one friar. Another friar is swinging a miniature umbrella in the exact same way that altar boys swing incense lamps.

Then, slicing through the crowd of friars comes a family of Orthodox Jews. The father--his head topped by a brown fur hat the size of a manhole cover--leads the way, with eight Hasidic children trailing behind in single file. And, at that same moment, mingling with the "Ave Maria," comes the Muslim call to prayer over a tinny loudspeaker. A man with a fez edges past the Hasidic Jew. All three Abrahamic faiths intersecting on the same street.

It's an astounding sight. And it makes me feel more alone than I've felt since Project Bible began.

Here I am, a stranger in a strange land, away from my wife and child, in a city where everyone belongs to his or her own gated spiritual community. It drives home a disturbing point: My quest is a paradoxical one. I'm trying to fly solo on a route that was specifically designed for a crowd. As one of my spiritual advisers, David Bossman, a religion professor at Seton Hall University, told me: "The people of the Bible were 'groupies.' You did what the group did, you observed the customs of your group. Only the crazy Europeans came up with the idea of individualism. So what you're doing is a modern phenomenon."

I've loved that crazy European individualism all my life. To use author Robert Putnam's phrase, I bowl alone, and I've always preferred it that way. It gives me more control, or at least the illusion of it. It's made me resistant to joining anything. No frats, no Rotary clubs, not even the Kiss Army when I was a kid.

This year I've tried to wors.h.i.+p alone and find meaning alone. The solitary approach has its advantages--I like trying to figure it out myself. I like reading the holy words unfiltered by layers of interpretation. But going it alone also has limits, and big ones. I miss out on the feeling of belonging, which is a key part of religion. I experienced this most keenly once before, during the biblical holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah back in October. I tried to do them alone. I fasted. I ate sweets. I sent portions to the poor. But I was doing it cluelessly and by myself, and it felt empty. I couldn't even bring myself to write a chapter about the holidays, because I failed to wring anything approaching the proper level of meaning from them. And many of my more profound experiences have come when I've joined a group, even momentarily, whether that group be huge (the Hasidic dance party) or small (Amos, Julie, and I singing "Amazing Grace").

Maybe I have to dial back my fetis.h.i.+zing of individualism. It'd be a good thing to do; the age of radical individualism is on the wane anyway. My guess is, the world is going the way of the Wikipedia. Everything will be collaborative. My next book will have 258 coauthors.

You shall surely t.i.the all the produce . . .

--DEUTERONOMY 14:22 (NASB).

Day 201. Before I left for Israel, my adviser Yossi had given me a list of commandments that--according to traditional Judaism--can be fulfilled only in the homeland. Many involved sacrificing animals. But one was relatively bloodless: t.i.thing fruit.

Today I buy an orange at an Israeli farmers' market for a couple of shekels. Outside, I meet a man named David. He is a portly guy in a Gilligan-style hat who is reading a pa.s.sage aloud from the Bible. I can't remember the exact pa.s.sage, but I know it involved the word harlotry. harlotry. His audience consists of me and a tall guy in ripped jeans. His audience consists of me and a tall guy in ripped jeans.

David seems like a good candidate.

"I want to give you ten percent of my fruit," I say. "I need to give it to my fellow man on the street."

"Oh, you're t.i.thing?" David knew all about this and thought this was a good idea. "Problem is," he says. "I don't eat oranges. Give it to Lev here." He motions at the tall guy.

Lev is unsure.

"Come on!" says David. "He can't eat the orange unless you take a tenth of it."

"Fine," says Lev.

So I peel the orange and, with my index finger, dig out two sections.

"Here you go!"

Lev recoils. Understandable, actually. I wouldn't take a manhandled orange slice from a stranger.

"Take it!" urges David.

Lev thinks about it.

"How about I take the ninety percent and you take the ten percent?"

He's not kidding. I agree and keep the small chunk for myself. It's true, what they say. Everything's a negotiation in the Middle East.

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compa.s.sion . . . --LUKE 10:33 --LUKE 10:33 Day 202. The next day I climb into a small Israeli cab to go visit a Samaritan. Before my project, I figured I'd have to climb into a time machine to visit a Samaritan. I a.s.sumed they had gone the way of the Hitt.i.tes and Canaanites and other long-lost biblical tribes. But, no, the Samaritans are still around twenty-one centuries later.

The Samaritans get a couple of brief mentions in the Hebrew Scriptures, but they are far more famous for their role in Jesus's parable. When Jesus is asked by a lawyer, "Who is my neighbor?" he answers: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he pa.s.sed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, pa.s.sed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compa.s.sion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (Luke 10:30-34) It's a powerful story--all the more powerful when you understand the historical context. The Judeans and the Samaritans hated each other, so the idea of a Samaritan helping this man was deliberately shocking, like a modern-day Hezbollah fighter tending to an Israeli soldier.

The Samaritans are particularly relevant to my quest because they lean toward biblical literalism. They disregard the interpretations of the rabbis in mainstream Judaism and place great--though not exclusive-- emphasis on the Bible itself.

So I called Benyamim Tsedaka, the community's unofficial spokesman--he edits the Samaritan newspaper--and he invited me to his home outside Tel Aviv. He's waiting in his front yard when the cab pulls up.

"Tell me your name again?" asks Benyamim.

"It's A. J."

"Ah. Like C. J. on Baywatch. Baywatch."

This takes me aback. I knew that, at one time, Baywatch Baywatch was beamed was beamed to all of earth's seven continents, but it is still a bit startling. Here is a member of the Samaritans, the most ancient surviving biblical tribe, and the first words out of his mouth are about TV's top-heavy harlot Pamela Anderson?

"I think that is a good icebreaker," says Benyamim. He laughs. "Yes, a good icebreaker," I agree.