Year of Living Biblically: Funny, Smart-alecky, and occasionally suprisingly scholarly
When I first saw an article about an upcoming book, The Year of Living Biblically, with the sub-title “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible,” by Esquire editor at large A.J. Jacobs, I sent it on to my dearest friend, an Orthodox rabbi, Martin Lockshin. He promptly emailed me back, “I think I’ll pass on reading this one,” and it’s not hard to see why. Who needs to be possibly offended?
Jacobs has been described as “a stunt journalist,” and he does it extremely well. His first book—also a best seller, was “The Know-It-All,” in which he read an entire encyclopedia to try to make himself sound brighter than his brother-in-law. On the surface, at least, this one is similarly smart-ass and occasionally off-putting: what religion does not look extreme, or silly, or even absurd, if one attempts to model one’s behaviour around it? We think of the unfortunate references to homosexuality as being an abomination in the Hebrew Testament, women being ordered to remain silent in the Christian one, and Jews who truly know their faith realize that if it were not for the Mishna and Talmud (or “Oral Law”) which expanded and made life more livable (how exactly does one “keep the Sabbath holy”? What does it mean to avoid boiling a calf in the milk of its mother?), we would be sitting in the dark each Saturday, unsure of what we could eat.
This book suggests endless mockery, insults and cheap gags, and there are certainly some of those in its 350-plus pages: I enjoyed a witty line such as the author describing himself as being “Jewish in the way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.” The many photos of the pleasant-looking young Jacobs growing a giant beard which makes him “resemble Moses. Or Abe Lincoln. Or Ted Kaczynski [the Unibomber]” are very funny. But Year of Living Biblically displays a good deal of scholarship, understanding, and even empathy for this kind of life. After all, as he points out early in his book, over one-third of Americans take the Bible literally, which must not thrill gays or women or Amalekites who often get short shrift in the Holy Book.
I was often put-off by his write-anything-for-a-gag tendency, such as when he is troubled that he is guilty of “envy” as he checks how well his first book is selling on amazon.com. And I didn’t need Jacobs to track down an elderly man on the streets of Manhattan who gleefully admits to committing adultery frequently, and begs the right to stone him—promising that it will be with small pebbles. But it’s somehow touching that Jacobs recognizes the greatness of the first real commandment, P’roo Ur’voo—when he tries to get his wife pregnant. (She ends up with twins.) And when he has a rabbi come to his apartment to try to explain the hok—a commandment with no rational explanation—of mixing flax and wool—there is both thought and respect in his response. The visits to the Amish of Pennsylvania and the dancing with Hassidim in Brooklyn are well done; other visits (such as to a creationist museum in Kentucky), less so.
What I like most about this book is that Jacobs recognizes how one could easily spend a whole year focusing on “the strange parts” of the Bible while ignoring the endless cries for “goodness and justice.” That he wisely quotes the prophet Micah who urges his co-religionists to “do justice” more than worrying about sacrificing animals. And, as a freelance author and journalist of over three decades, I thrilled to seeing him pay his babysitter every night, by fulfilling my own favourite mitzvah of the 613: “Do not keep your servant’s wages until the morning.” Bravo.
Much of this is “slumming” in faith: inviting a Jehovah’s Witness over to study scripture is too cute; building a Sukkah is nice, if condescending; struggling to love an unpleasant neighbour is powerful (“it’s hard!”). And it is touching to see him stand up out of respect for the elderly. Many readers will rejoice to see his (honest? pandering?) declaration that he is “still agnostic but no longer dreading prayer” as he blesses food before he eats it. (At times, I recalled a rather idiotic yet still powerful best-seller of my youth, Black Like Me, in which the author dyed his face dark so he could live as “a Negro,” to experience and then write about the endless offences which blacks experienced just a few decades ago in the U.S.
I can think of plenty of black Americans who didn’t have to go through the trouble of darkening their skin, except they couldn’t find publishers who would print their stories.)
Should we believe the writings of this sit-down comedian, when he claims, late in his book, that he found “a newfound reverence for life” from his experiment? Perhaps. What makes this now low-priced paperback worth reading are the author’s scholarly comments about “an eye for an eye,” how slavery worked in ancient times and today, and Jewish attitudes toward abortion and circumcision. Jacobs really did do his homework. As he shaves off his very fluffy beard in its last pages, he claims that “there’s nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren’t bad per se. I’ve had some great meals at cafeterias. The key is in choosing the right dishes. You need to pick the nurturing ones (compassion), the healthy ones (love thy neighbor), not the bitter ones.” I know many Jews who will be offended by such praise for cafeteria Judaism, and others who will be relieved and pleased. Read this and decide yourself. It certainly is very funny.
