The Year of Living Biblically Part 27

I've felt absurd many times throughout in the last ten months, but wearing a white man-skirt was a particularly embarra.s.sing part of the experiment. My beard has drawn attention, but it is also--paradoxically--protective, since it s.h.i.+elds my face. A robe is not. A robe makes me vulnerable.

My friend Nathaniel told me about a rabbi in nineteenth-century Lithuania who required his students do ridiculous things. He'd make them go into a bakery and ask for a box of nails. Or go into a tailor and ask for a loaf of bread. The idea was that he was trying to break down their ego, which he saw as a hurdle to true spirituality. That's what I try to think of when I walk around with my shepherd's robe, which sometimes billows up like Marilyn Monroe's white dress: I am breaking down the ego.

* The slave/intern. My slave-slash-intern started a couple of weeks ago. And it could be among the top ten best things that ever happened to me.

I've had a.s.sistants before, but this is a whole other league. Kevin is a nice boy from Ohio. He's well-scrubbed, has dark blond hair, and looks like he stepped out of a commercial for herpes medication (I mean that as a compliment, by the way; they always cast the most vigorous American types, you know?). He's also part of an a cappella group that sings Jay-Z tunes. I heard them on his iPod, and they're really good.

And, man, has he thrown himself into this role of biblical slave. Yes, he does a lot of regular intern stuff, like researching, making phone calls, and data entry (he set up an eBay account for me so I could sell some of my possessions--mostly DVDs and flannel s.h.i.+rts--and donate the proceeds to charity). But he also sends emails like this: "Need any shopping done? Any baby clothes or things like that?"

Or: "I'm willing to work eight hours a week or eighty."

I felt a bit guilty at first, but that faded soon enough. It's hard to complain when a guy zips off to the hardware store whenever a lightbulb blows out.

He also sent me this email yesterday: "If I can use your kitchen--mine's too small for these purposes--I'd love to bake you a loaf or two of Ezekiel bread tomorrow morning or afternoon, so that you can enjoy them over the weekend and on the Sabbath. Is this OK?"

Today I come home from a meeting, and Kevin is in my kitchen, his hands covered in flour, mas.h.i.+ng a mixture of grains with a mortar and pestle. Ezekiel bread is one of the few recipes in the Bible. G.o.d told the prophet Ezekiel to bake a bread made with wheat, barley, beans, lentil, millet, and spelt. Kevin's Ezekiel bread was quite good. It reminded me of a less-crunchy graham cracker. Kevin later confessed that he tweaked the biblical recipe and added honey, but I felt it would be petty to rebuke him.

"Maybe we should give some to your neighbors," Kevin says. "That would be the biblical thing to do."

We knock on some doors, but no one's home. Well, actually, my neighbor Nancy is home, but she calls out from inside: "I'd love some, but I have a cracked rib, so I'm not getting up." I remind myself: I've got to get to work on that Hendrix proposal when she's better.

Kevin says he'd like to take a portion of bread to give away on his walk home. He reminds me of the good servant in Jesus's parable. The parable says that a master left for a trip, and gave five bags of money to his good servant and five to his bad servant. The good servant invested the money and doubled it to ten bags. By contrast, the bad servant buried his bag of money, which meant no increase at all. A good servant is proactive. Kevin would have doubled the money, maybe tripled it.

If a man begets a hundred children . . .

--ECCLESIASTES 6:3.

Day 314. We go out to a Chinese restaurant with Julie's dad and stepmom. Julie is big enough now that the top of her stomach juts out at a ninety-degree angle, pretty much parallel with the table. She slides into the booth with impressive grace.

The waiter takes our orders. I get the steamed vegetables--bland but biblically safe. A few weeks ago I decided to make my Berkeley-based aunt Marti proud and go vegetarian. It wasn't so much an ethical decision as a pragmatic one. It's just so much easier to keep the Bible's food laws if you steer clear of the animals. Plus, according to the Bible, the human race started out as vegetarian--Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, right on up until Noah, who was the first to eat flesh. So avoiding meat has scriptural backing.

I've also tried to cut out eggs. This is because of something I learned while interviewing a Karaite, a member of that sect of Judaism that follows the Bible as strictly as possible. "Let me drop an atom bomb on you," said this Karaite; his name is Nehemiah Gordon, and he runs the Karaite website, the Karaite Korner. "You can't follow all of the Bible literally because we can't know what some of the words mean."

In Leviticus 11, there's a list of birds that are abominations: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, the pelican, and so on. Problem is, those birds are just our best guesses. The true ident.i.ty of the birds have been lost in the haze of time. So to be safe, some Karaites don't eat eggs or poultry at all. It's a profound insight--and it has made my diet even more extreme.

Anyway, that was my dinner: vegetables that had been steamed into tastelessness. The conversation consisted mostly of Julie's stepmom trying to console Julie about the overload of Y chromosomes in our household.

"If you have another baby, I bet it's going to be a girl," she said. When we get home, I ask Julie about the helpful tip.

"You think we should?"

"No. Absolutely not," she says. "These ovaries of mine are done." "My thoughts exactly."

"Though we do have a frozen embryo at the clinic, right?" I don't know. Do we have another frozen embryo? I can't believe I don't know. I should have been on top of that. The next day, I call the clinic and get a nurse on the phone. No, we have no embryos left. Nothing survived besides the two in Julie's swollen belly. Which is a relief. I don't have to figure out what to do with an extra embryo. One fewer moral decision to make.

The ethics of embryos--stem cells and abortion--are, of course, incredibly complex. Reasonable people disagree. And, frankly, the debate is beyond the scope of this book. So I won't try to argue for one side or the other. You can probably guess my position--it's typically liberal. But I will say this: When I read the Bible, it didn't seem to support either side. Religious tradition, church doctrine, rabbinical interpretation-- those all weigh in on stem cells and abortion, and weigh in mightily. But the literal words of the Bible are, I believe, neither pro-life nor pro-choice.

Some pro-life advocates disagree. They point to several pa.s.sages to prove that life begins at conception. Among them: For thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalms 139:13). (This pa.s.sage is cited to prove that G.o.d is working on the fetus even as it is in the womb, thus making the unborn child sacred.) The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name (Isaiah 49:1). (Here the prophet Isaiah says that G.o.d made him sacred him before he was even born. Again, G.o.d is at work in the womb.) And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:41). (Here John the Baptist's pregnant mother meets the Virgin Mary, also pregnant. John the Baptist jumps for joy--which is cited to show that unborn children have emotions.) To base a major ethical decision on pa.s.sages like these seems overreaching. They're too vague. They can be interpreted any number of ways-- and, naturally, pro-choice Christians and pro-choice Jews do just that. But pro-choicers go further, which I wasn't expecting. They cite pa.s.sages of their own. I read an article called "The Bible Is Pro-Choice" from a journal called Humanist Perspectives. Humanist Perspectives. The article talks about this quote from Ecclesiastes 6:3. The article talks about this quote from Ecclesiastes 6:3.

If a man begets a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but he does not enjoy life's good things, and also has no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he.

Here an untimely birth is interpreted as a phrase for miscarriage. This is meant to show that sometimes it is better that a life not be lived at all.

And there's also a controversial line in Exodus 21:22. This one says that if a man hurts a woman while she's pregnant and she loses her offspring, the man is liable. His punishment: He shall be fined some money. This, it's argued, shows that the unborn child is not considered a person. If it were a person, the man's punishment would be more severe. He'd be put to death.

Naturally, the pro-lifers have reb.u.t.tals to this. And their opponents have reb.u.t.tals to the reb.u.t.tals. (If you want to see a more in-depth look at the back-and-forth arguments, I recommend a website called Reli giousTolerance.org.) The abortion and stem cell debates always remind me of a William Blake quote. I wish I could say I read the quote while perusing Blake. Heck, I wish I could say I read the quote while reading a book by a Yale Divinity School professor. The sad truth is, I read it in a book called Don't Know Much about the Bible. Don't Know Much about the Bible. But it's still a great quote: But it's still a great quote: Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white He who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished. --PROVERBS 17:5 --PROVERBS 17:5 Day 324. I don't know what's happening to me. My friend Paul emailed me a YouTube video. I clicked it open. It showed a female newscaster reading some stock market news, when suddenly a huge stage light falls, smacking her on the head. She crumples off her chair and out of sight.

All the viewer comments said "LOL" or "laughing my a.s.s off." But I didn't get it. It just seemed upsetting. I spent twenty minutes on Google trying to find the name of the poor newscaster so I could email her a getwell-soon or hope-you-win-your-lawsuit note. I couldn't track her down.

What's going on? What kind of an overly virtuous sap am I turning into? Next I'll be renting Pay It Forward. Pay It Forward.

By day the heat consumed me . . .

--GENESIS 31:40.

Day 332. It's a hot, hot New York summer weekend. I'm sweating heavily in my beard and tzitzit. tzitzit. Jasper's face is lobster red. So when our friends--who have a plastic blow-up kiddie pool in their courtyard--invite us over, it sounds like a good idea. Jasper's face is lobster red. So when our friends--who have a plastic blow-up kiddie pool in their courtyard--invite us over, it sounds like a good idea.

Jasper's right now splas.h.i.+ng around in the pool with their daughter Lily, and he's having the time of his two-year-old life. He's laughing like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. Goodfellas. He's showing us how he can jump from one side of the pool to the other. I, on the other hand, am not having the time of my life. It's not good, this jumping. He's going to break his kneecap, crack his skull--something. I want to dial 9-1 and keep my finger poised over the other 1 in preparation for the inevitable disaster. He's showing us how he can jump from one side of the pool to the other. I, on the other hand, am not having the time of my life. It's not good, this jumping. He's going to break his kneecap, crack his skull--something. I want to dial 9-1 and keep my finger poised over the other 1 in preparation for the inevitable disaster.

After three minutes of watching, I can take it no longer. I slip off my shoes, roll my white pants up to my calves, get up from the table, and step into the kiddie pool.

"What are you doing?" Julie calls out.

"I'm spotting our son," I say as I wade toward Jasper. "Helmet," says Julie.

"Really?"

"Yes, helmet."

Fudge. Maybe she's right. Remember the example set by G.o.d, I tell myself. Remember that he gave humans free will. Which was a crazy generous thing to do. But G.o.d knew that humans are part-divine, so He wanted to give us the divine ability to make decisions. And just as importantly, to make mistakes.

So I should do the same with Jasper. Slowly, reluctantly, I step out of the kiddie pool. I sit down on a sticky white plastic chair and watch Jasper. Who eventually smacks his b.u.t.t on the pool bottom, appears dazed for about ten seconds before returning to jumping like a maniacal monkey.

Month Twelve: August (and Some of September)

Honor widows who are real widows.

--1 TIMOTHY 5:3.

Day 336. Today, I met my great-aunt Joelle for lunch. Joelle's the only other religious member of our family besides my Orthodox aunt Kate. She's a practicing Catholic who happily thanks G.o.d, even when surrounded by agnostics like my family. She's a former actress and singer (when our family sings "Happy Birthday to You," her vibrato gives it a professional sheen), and the single most talkative person I've ever met. Her husband--a sweet navy veteran--died a few months ago at their house in Miami.

The Bible says to comfort widows, which was one of the reasons I invited her to lunch. But as is often the case, I think she was more helpful to me than I was to her. She talked about G.o.d's love, His unconditional love. "Sometimes I can't believe how much G.o.d loves me. I think, 'How can He love me that much? I don't love myself nearly as much as He loves me.'" Even if life turns sour, or Joelle botches something, she can count on the unconditional love of G.o.d.

When I left the lunch, I felt at peace for the first time in a week. Last week, you see, I had a bit of a mental breakdown about my Bible project. In the final stretch, I've been frantically trying to read every single book on religion, trying to interview every religious leader, trying to figure out how to obey every rule. What if I miss an insight? What if I overlook a potential translation? I haven't paid G.o.d five shekels to redeem my firstborn son. I haven't talked to a Seventh-day Adventist yet. What if they have the secret? I've barely made a dent in the Bible.

But maybe G.o.d will forgive me for my lack of omniscience. If Joelle is right, He'll still love me. I'll never know everything. I can't compete with Him. And if you want to see what happens when you try, just look at the overachievers behind the Tower of Babel.

Again she conceived and bore a son . . .

--GENESIS 29:34.

Day 359. Today is the birth of our twins. The date is our choice. We scheduled to have them emerge onto G.o.d's Green Earth today, August 24, at nine in the morning. It's right there in Julie's computer calendar, like a routine eye exam with an ophthalmologist.

It seems highly unbiblical. I can't imagine that Rachel scheduled the birth of Joseph for the third day after the barley harvest. But our kids are positioned b.u.t.t first in the womb, so the doctor says there's no choice but a Caesarian section.

It's all very civilized, this birth. Nothing like Jasper's. This time Julie has no contractions and lets out not a single lupine howl. She is wheeled on a gurney into the operating room with a little shower cap on her head. The anesthesiologist numbs her from the waist down, and that is it, she is ready to give birth.

I strap a surgical mask over my nose and mouth and join Julie in the OR.

"Uh-uh," says the nurse. "You need one for your beard."

She escorts me out and gets me a second mask for the bottom of my face. I return.

"We're going to take off your wife's gown now," the nurse says. "So if you want to leave, now is the time . . ."

"No thanks," I say.

An odd offer, I think. Oh, wait. She believes I'm an Orthodox Jew and might not want to see my wife's nakedness.

The atmosphere in the OR is an odd mix. It is, on the one hand, frighteningly gory. I'm stationed by Julie's head, and the doctor has hung a little curtain across the stomach so as to block the really messy stuff, though I still see enough to nearly make me pa.s.s out. On the other hand, the atmosphere is almost relaxed. The doctors are chatting about weekend plans as if they are having a chicken salad in the cafeteria.

"Hold my hand," says Julie.

"Well, you're impure for a week after the birth, so I can only hold it before the birth."

"Please don't--"

At 9:50 a.m. our doctor reaches in and scoops out one little man. At 9:52 she reaches in and scoops out another. I officially have a whole bunch of sons.

I look at my boys as they squirm around under a huge heat lamp. The boys themselves are another strange mixture. On the one hand, they're such little animals--tiny, naked, slimy little animals. They even sound like animals. Their crying isn't human, it's more like ducks quacking. On the other hand, I can already see something transcendent in them. When they pry their eyes open--blue eyes on both of them? where did that come from?--I spot what a nun I know calls "G.o.d's DNA." Those eyes are alive.

When the doctor plucks out our sons one after the other, I flash back to perhaps the most unforgettable delivery in the Bible. Yes, even in the OR, the Bible still colors my thinking. This was the birth of the twins Perez and Zerah. It goes like this: There was a struggle between the sons to see which one could be born first. One son--Zerah--stuck his hand out of his mother's womb, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around his wrist. Then he pulled his hand back inside. The second son, Perez, then maneuvered around him and got out first. The Bible doesn't say who was considered oldest in this unusual scenario. I like to think it was Zerah, since he breached the womb with his hand, much as an NFL player scores a touchdown if he gets the ball over the line.

I'm glad I flashed to this story. Not because of the red ribbon twist. But because, if you remember, their conception is a good metaphor for my boys. Those ancient twins were conceived in complicated circ.u.mstances--the offspring of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar, who disguised herself as a prost.i.tute. Mine, too, have a complicated origin. But that doesn't, I hope, doom them.

And now that I type this up, I'm wondering if the Perez-Zerah story could be a Big Metaphor for my year. Maybe it applies to the Bible itself. The Bible may have not been dictated by G.o.d, it may have had a messy and complicated birth, one filled with political agendas and outdated ideas--but that doesn't mean the Bible can't be beautiful and sacred.

Little children, you are of G.o.d . . . --1 JOHN 4:4 --1 JOHN 4:4 Day 361. They released Julie and the twins from the hospital at eleven o'clock on the third day. It would have been sooner, but we lost about forty-five minutes to the hospital guards who double-checked and triplechecked our wrist bracelet IDs and social security numbers to make sure we hadn't swiped the wrong babies.

We've been home for two days now, and I've been spending the majority of that time snapping these little body suits on them. Man, these things have a lot of snaps. What the fudge happened to good old zippers?

Jasper has been dealing with his brothers with an interesting strategy: complete denial. He refuses to acknowledge them. Won't even look at them. They can be howling right in front of his face, but he'll use his X-ray vision to stare right through their skulls.

As for me, I know this will surprise you: I'm deliriously tired. Yesterday Julie was making a sandwich in the kitchen and I playfully patted her on the b.u.t.t when I walked by. The only thing was, it wasn't Julie. It was my mom. My mom was visiting the twins. And in my bleary-eyed state, I had confused Julie for my mom. This is definitely forbidden by Leviticus.

I've barely been able to do anything biblical since the birth. I'm losing valuable time. I decided to extend my project another month, but Julie bargained me down to two weeks.

It doesn't help matters that the boys--Zane and Lucas--are on completely different schedules and refuse to cooperate. Their rivalry is, yes, biblical. The younger one is tiny--barely five pounds--and the older is a big lug, almost seven, and they're constantly battling each other to get access to Julie's milk supply. The younger one is sneaky. I think he can sense when the older one is stirring, and he'll start wailing to make sure he gets first crack. He's the Jacob to his brother's Esau--the mischievous underdog. Is it bad that I root for him? I've rooted for underdogs all my life, so I almost can't help it. I'm sure it's temporary. It better be. I've seen what favoritism can do--Jacob favored Joseph, and it got Joseph tossed in a pit by his jealous brothers.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven. --LUKE 6:37 --LUKE 6:37 Day 363. I finally told my parents that I had met my ex-uncle and was including him in the book. I emailed them the sections with Gil so they could be prepared.

They weren't happy. They told me I didn't expose Gil's dark side enough. They asked if I had to make him such a prominent part of the book. They wanted me to be clear he was an ex-uncle. They disputed the part where I said Gil was the most exotic creature in the family. But in the end, they were forgiving. They didn't make me change a thing. "We'll live with it," Mom wrote. "We love you." Their son did the equivalent of eating the husks thrown to the swine, and they welcomed me home with a hug.

He that is eight days old among you shall be circ.u.mcised. --GENESIS 17:12 --GENESIS 17:12 Day 366. My twin sons have been in this world for eight days, which means today is the day to follow one of the first biblical commands: Circ.u.mcision.

I actually knew quite a bit about circ.u.mcision even before my biblical adventure. Perhaps too much. For a year or so in my early career as a journalist, I wrote a surprising number of magazine articles about circ.u.mcision. It was my first real beat. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and my eccentric aunt Marti introduced me to some anticirc.u.mcision activists who saw the snipping of the foreskin as cruel and unnecessary. As Marti put it: "It's the only men's issue I care about."

The hardest of the hard core didn't just want to outlaw circ.u.mcision, they wanted to reverse their own circ.u.mcisions. I remember attending a support group meeting that was bizarre even by the standards of San Francisco support groups. They called themselves RECAP, short for Recover A p.e.n.i.s (a rival group was called BUFF--Brothers United for Future Foreskins).

The meeting was held in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a church--either an extremely liberal church or a church that didn't know to whom it was renting s.p.a.ce. A dozen men sat in folding chairs arranged in a circle. Some were ponytailed hippies, some resembled the Leather Dude in the Village People, a few were just plain vanilla guys who looked like they could have worked in the loan department at Citibank.

"I don't feel whole," said one. "I want to feel whole again."

Another asked: "Can you imagine what it's like to have s.e.x with a foreskin? It must be like watching color TV." (I never was able to confirm this, but the claim is that circ.u.mcision blunts the sensation.) Most of the time was spent discussing homespun methods that would allow the men to regrow their foreskins. I'll spare you the details. I'm sure the internet has plenty more information for those who are interested.

s.e.xual sensitivity aside, the medical aspect of circ.u.msicion remains a matter of debate. The American Academy of Pediatrics makes no recommendation either way. Circ.u.mcision may reduce penile cancer, and there's now compelling evidence it lowers men's susceptibility to AIDS. (After my biblical year ended, the World Heath Organization recommended medical circ.u.mcision be practiced in high-risk locales.) So when our first son, Jasper, was born, I had mixed feelings about circ.u.mcising him. I didn't think he'd end up in a San Francis...o...b..s.e.m.e.nt venting his anger, but why put him through the pain? There's no rational reason for it. At least there wasn't before this latest round of AIDS studies. And even if it makes good medical sense, should we really turn the procedure into a party with sesame bagels and veggie cream cheese?

My aunts fueled my confusion. I was subjected to dueling campaigns. On the one hand, my Orthodox aunt Kate left voice mails encouraging us to go ahead with it. On the other, Marti sent pamphlets with stomachchurning stories of circ.u.mcisions gone bad.

In the end, Julie put her foot down. Jasper would have a circ.u.mcision, and it would be at our apartment, and it would be done by a family friend, Lew Sank, a New Jersey pediatrician who also has mohel mohel credentials. credentials.

When the day came, and the family gathered, I did my best to ignore what was actually happening. I deluded myself into thinking of it as a brunch, with a short detour into some minor medical procedure.

I distanced myself with jokes. Of which Lew--like all mohels--had plenty.

"Did you hear the one about the guy who converted to Judaism as an adult? He has to get a circ.u.mcision, but he's nervous about it. So he asks his Jewish friend Abe, does it hurt? And Abe says, 'Oy. When I had mine done, I couldn't walk or talk for a year.'"

The only terrifying moment was when I spotted a knife on the table the size of a small machete. It turned out to be for the cutting of the ceremonial bread. So that, too, turned into something of a joke.

During Jasper's circ.u.mcision, Julie and I refused to watch the actual cutting. We both went into our bedroom and shut the door, and held hands, and talked very loudly about whether the dolphin-themed mobile took AA batteries or C batteries so as to drown out the crying. Two and a half years later, circ.u.mcisions two and three are upon me. And despite the existence of bagels and the mohel Lew, these feel different: This time I plan to watch. If I'm choosing to do this to my sons--this, the fifth and final law on my list of Most Perplexing Rules in the Bible--I can at least face up to my choice.

Circ.u.mcision is a huge part of the Bible; it merits eighty-seven mentions. It was seen as the way to seal the covenant between G.o.d and humans. A signature in blood. Abraham was the pioneer. G.o.d appeared to him and instructed him to circ.u.mcise all males in his house, and all newborns after eight days. Abraham had no newborns at the time, so the first inductees were his elder son, Ishmael (who was thirteen years old), and Abraham himself, who was all of ninety-nine years old.

In the New Testament, circ.u.mcision becomes optional, at best. The Apostle Paul--whose mission was to expand the Christian faith beyond the Jewish people--said that circ.u.mcision wasn't necessary. You didn't need the physical proof as long as you changed your heart. The phrase he used was circ.u.mcised "in the heart." Some pa.s.sages do indicate that Paul is fine with circ.u.mcision for those who are direct descendants of the Israelites.

"So are you going to do the circ.u.mcision yourself?" asks Julie's brother Eric.

"I hear there are some nice flint rocks in Central Park," adds her other brother, Doug.

"Very good," I say.

I'm not in the mood for jokes; I'm too anxious. My forehead is damp.