The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

The beard is the most noticeable, but I'm making other changes to my appearance too. I'm pleased to report that I got a new set of tassels. For the first few months, I tried the homemade approach: I attached four tassels from Tassels without Hassles to my shirt with safety pins. But here was a case where I decided I didn't need to reinvent the wheel: Why not use the prefab tassels, or fringes, known as tzitzit and worn by Orthodox Jews? For about twenty dollars, you can get a towel-sized rectangular cloth with four clusters of meticulously knotted white strings tied on each corner. The cloth has a hole in the middle, and you simply slip the entire thing over your head and wear it under your shirt.

If you're really hardcore, like I'm trying to be, you need to go further. The Bible says you must attach a blue thread to your fringes (Numbers 15:38). For centuries, almost all Jews skipped the blue thread because no one could figure out the exact shade of blue used in biblical times. No more. Archaeologists in the last two decades have discovered a type of snail that the ancient Israelites used for blue dye. The snail is still around and still capable of making blue. So for the first time in hundreds of years, a handful of ultra-Orthodox Jews are, once again, wearing four blue threads tied to their fringes. As am I.

And then there's my hairdo, which is starting to take on a personality of its own. The Bible has a lot to say about hair. In general--despite claims to the contrary that I read on a website for pious heavy-metal rockers--the Bible comes down on the side of short hair for men.

Consider Absalom, the vain and nefarious prince whose flowing locks got tangled up in an oak tree during battle. They cost him his life. And in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is even more to the point. He asks: "Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him?" (1 Corinthians 11:14).

But what of Samson? Granted, he did lose his superhuman strength after Delilah gave him a haircut--but his was a special case. Samson was part of a holy sect called the Nazirites whose members took a vow to drink no wine, touch no dead bodies, and cut no hair. He broke the vow. He suffered the consequences.

I'm no Nazirite, which is why I've been getting monthly haircuts at the local barbershop. Of course, as with everything in my biblical year, a haircut is not a simple matter. You want your hair mostly short, but a typical number 4 buzz cut is out of the question. Leviticus says you are forbidden to chop off the sides. This has led to some extreme micromanagement at the barbershop. First I requested for a male haircutter--purity issues. Then, after giving him elaborate pretrim instructions, I periodically piped up:

"You won't cut the temples, right?"

"I won't cut the temples."

Two minutes later:

"You know not to cut the temples, right?"

"Yes, I know. No cutting the temples."

By the end, I think he was ready to slay me with the jawbone of an

ass.

He did tell me that he needed to clean up the hair on my neck. "So you look religious, not dirty," he said. "No offense." Most biblical scholars believe the purpose of the uncut side locks

was, as with the food laws, to distinguish the Israelites from the pagans. Apparently the pagans cut and shaved the sides of their hair short, perhaps, says one commentator, to give it the shape of a "celestial globe," perhaps as some sort of mourning ritual.

But in Jewish tradition, the hairstyle has taken on moral significance as well. One scholar told me that if you pass by a harlot on the road, God will blow your side locks into your eyes to shield you. Another rabbi has said that one day he will grab hold of the side locks to pull his students out of hell.

The ultra-Orthodox twirl their side locks while praying or studying--resulting in those amazing curlicue stalactites, frequently as long and thick as rolling pins. The Bible doesn't require this. So I've left my side locks untamed, leading to these odd hair formations that grow upward and outward, bringing to mind an ethnic Pippi Longstocking.

But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

--DEUTERONOMY 29:4

Day 154. The more I research these side locks, the more confused I am about whether I've been properly following this commandment. The word payot in Hebrew is often translated as "corners." Do not cut the corners of your head.

What are the corners of the head? Not being a robot or cartoon sponge, my skull is reasonably ovoid. And if it is corners, shouldn't it be four corners? So maybe I should grow sideburns, a rattail, and a unicorntype forelock. Could be interesting. But there's only so much I can subject my wife to. Payot is sometimes translated as "edge." But this doesn't clarify much.

The Hasidic-style payot have been around for centuries, but what did they do in biblical times? Can we ever know? I'm growing more and more skeptical that I'll ever hit biblical bedrock and discover the original intent. The Bible's meaning is so frustratingly slippery.

Yossi told me that the Bible has seventy faces. The ancient rabbis themselves don't even claim to have struck the bedrock. The Talmud--the huge Jewish book with commentaries on biblical law--is far from black and white. As writer Judith Shulevitz puts it in Slate magazine: "You cannot compare the Talmud to, say, the United States civil code, a series of prescriptions issued from Congress, or to Catholic doctrine, which comes directly from the pope. The Talmud is more like the minutes of religious study sessions, except that the hundreds of scholars involved in these sessions were enrolled in a seminar that went on for more than a millennium and touched on every conceivable aspect of life and ritual."

Even more exasperating: If I do get to the bedrock, it may be such strange bedrock that I won't be able to process it. In Karen Armstrong's terrific book A History of God, she says that the ancient Israelites weren't really monotheists. They believed in the existence of many gods: Baal, El, and so on. It's just that Yahweh is the boss of all Gods. Hence the command "You shall have no other Gods before me." It doesn't say "You shall have no other Gods at all."

Could I ever hope to get into the skull of an ancient Israelite who believed in several gods? Do I want to?

Month Six: February

If you chance to come upon a bird's nest . . . you shall not take the mother with the young.

--DEUTERONOMY 22:6

Day 155. As a New Yorker, I've generally avoided interacting with pigeons, much like I avoid dark alleys or the Jekyll and Hyde theme restaurant. But living biblically makes you do some strange things.

Tonight I got a voice mail from Mr. Berkowitz, the man who inspected my wardrobe for mixed fibers a while back.

"Good evening, Mr. Arnold Jacobs. It's Bill Berkowitz of Washington Heights. There's a pigeon with an egg under her tonight, if you want to come over."

You bet I do.

You see, Mr. Berkowitz, in addition to shatnez, also specializes in another commandment. This one is likewise among the least known in the Bible. You won't find it on stone tablets in front of any federal courthouses.

The commandment says that if you discover a mother bird sitting on her egg in a nest, you cannot take both mother and egg. You are permitted only to pocket the egg; you must send the mother away.

The Bible doesn't say why. Most commentators think it has to do with compassion--you don't want the mother to have to watch her offspring snatched up for the breakfast table, so you nudge her away. In fact, many rabbis have expanded the meaning of this commandment to forbid cruelty to all animals, not just expectant birds, which is a great thing. I'm glad mainstream Judaism stresses kindness to animals, despite the sacrificial past.

But the actual wording of Deuteronomy 22:6 is solely about birds and nests, and it is this formulation that Mr. Berkowitz--along with others in his community--has taken to the literal limit. He has set up two pigeon nests on his third-floor windowsill in his northern Manhattan apartment. Whenever there's a newly laid egg, he allows a faithful seeker to come over, pay one hundred dollars to charity, shoo the mother pigeon away, pick up the egg, hold it aloft, say a prayer, place it back in the nest (or, in some cases, eat it), and thereby check off this commandment as officially "fulfilled."

This I needed to do. In fact, I'd been waiting for several months for my egg, tempted by a half dozen false alarms and missed opportunities. Tonight is the real thing.

I get to Mr. Berkowitz's apartment at seven-thirty, and he is all business. He has an appointment in a half hour, so we are on a tight schedule. He gives me a quick orientation on how this commandment works.

"It must be a kosher bird," says Mr. Berkowitz.

Pigeons, interestingly, are kosher--they're related to the doves mentioned in the Bible.

"It has to be a wild bird, not domesticated. It has to be female, it has to be sitting on the eggs, not next to the eggs."

We're at his dining room table, which is covered with half-open books and plastic cups. Mr. Berkowitz occasionally pauses in his speech to flip through his books. There's a colorful tome on kosher birds and a tablet-sized book on Jewish law. There's also a Hebrew manuscript devoted exclusively to the study of this single commandment, complete with diagrams of men climbing ladders, and photos of backlit eggs.

I express my concern that maybe the pigeons don't love the experience. Mr. Berkowitz shakes his head.

"Don't feel bad, because, first, God gave us this mitzvah. And, second, you ever eat an egg before?"

"Yeah."

"You feel badly about that? Your wife makes a scrambled egg, do you feel bad?" Mr. Berkowitz takes on a mock-petrified voice: "Oh no, don't do that! Not a scrambled egg!"

Speaking of which, most of Mr. Berkowitz's clients put the pigeon egg back in the nest--the option I've chosen. But some take their egg home for a hard-boiled snack.

"Have you tried it?" I ask.

"I once tasted it. I ate it raw."

"Raw? How'd it taste?"

"Tasted like a regular egg."

He shrugs his shoulders. No big deal.

The time for egg gathering is at hand. He leads me into a dark room off the entrance hall and flips on his gray flashlight. It's a huge and powerful flashlight--the kind used for spelunking or locating fugitives in the woods--and more than bright enough to help me see the nests.

The nests are actually two white plastic boxes--originally olive boxes from the grocery--each with a pigeon and some shredded newspaper inside. Mine is on the right.

"You have to do something to send her away," says Mr. Berkowitz. "You can't just scream at her, 'Fly away, birdie!' That won't work. It has to be a physical action."

I stamp my feet, wave my arms. Nothing. The pigeon--a big one, about the size of a football--clucks contentedly, enjoying the show.

"Open the window and reach in."

"Won't she fly into the room?"

"Don't worry about it."

I open the window and reach in. I'm wearing thick blue insulated ski gloves, official pigeon-shooing equipment provided by Mr. Berkowitz. Overcoming a lifelong revulsion to pigeons, I nudge the bird with my index finger.

She flutters up and away.

I take off the glove and pick up the egg. It's cream colored and warm, about the size of a walnut. I hold it up for Mrs. Berkowitz to snap a photo.

Mr. Berkowitz tells me now is the time to ask God for anything. "To have more children, make a million dollars a year, become a big scholar. Whatever you want."

In the outlying edges of Judaism (and I should stress that most Jews have never heard of this commandment, much less fulfilled it), the bird's nest ritual has taken on mystical meaning, seen as good luck, especially for infertile couples.

I make my wish for a safe delivery for our twins and soon after am shooed gently away from Mr. Berkowitz's apartment.

On the subway home, I'm euphoric. I just followed a rule that maybe a few dozen people in America have followed. I'm one of the faithful elite. But that feeling soon fades to worry. If there is a God, did I just please Him? Or did I maybe get Him angry? If His nest egg rule is meant to teach compassion, wouldn't it have been compassionate not to pester the pigeons with a high-wattage flashlight and a crazy dance?

"O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!" --2 SAMUEL 18:33

Day 161. Jasper has been suffering from what Julie calls, in honor of my project, a series of minor plagues. Rashes, colds, coughs. And today he got hit with a bad one. He suffered a major fracture in his left leg.

I was at a meeting when it all went down, but apparently he stepped on his toy truck the wrong way and snapped his thigh bone. He paused that terrible calm-before-the-storm pause and then just let out a category five wail.

The doctor told us that Jasper must be a invalid for at least the next six weeks. No playground, no sports, no playdates, no dancing, no walking. Just sitting. A baby Buddhist.

I can't tell you how depressed this makes me. So far we've been lucky to avoid much time in the hospital with Jasper. And this will, God willing, eventually heal. But Jasper's stunned. He looks beaten for the first time in his life. He looks like Jack Nicholson after getting electroshock therapy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I got a taste--just a little taste--of what King David meant when his rebellious son, Absalom, was killed:

And the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (2 Samuel 18:33).

As I sit here with Jasper on my lap watching Dora's singing backpack on the TV--it's two in the morning, and he won't sleep--I waste a lot of time retroactively bargaining with God about Jasper's leg. It's a habit of mine, this fake bargaining. I say, "God, let me break my leg instead of him. I would break both legs. I'd break both legs and both arms. Would I amputate my legs? I don't think so. But I'd amputate one toe. OK, two toes." It's a macabre game, and a waste of God's time.

Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish . . .

--NUMBERS 19:2

Day 168. I finally got a call back from a Mississippi minister I've been trying to reach for weeks.

I want to talk to him about red heifers. The Bible's rule on red heifers makes my list of the Top Five Most Perplexing Commandments. It is found in Numbers 19, and it tells us to purify ourselves by finding a red cow. And not just any red cow--it must be a perfect red cow, an unblemished one, and one that has never plowed a field. Once I do this, I have to sacrifice the cow, burn it with cedar wood, mix the ashes with water, and have the resulting blend sprinkled on me by someone holding some hyssop. Only then will I be spiritually clean.

So how do I find an unblemished red cow in Manhattan? Well, I don't. They don't exist here. They don't exist anywhere yet. But maybe soon. On and off for the past twenty years, at a handful of ranches across America, people have been trying to breed just such an animal. The quest has created a bizarre alliance between ultrafundamentalist Christians and a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, both of whom see it as a key to the end times.

The Jews need it because it will make them ritually pure from contact with dead people. Without that, they can't build the Third Temple in Jerusalem. Without the Third Temple, the Jewish Messiah will never come.

The ultrafundamentalist Christians need it for the same reason. Sort of. To them, the Jewish Messiah will be the false Messiah, the Antichrist. The true Christ will have an apocalyptic battle with the Antichrist, which will bring on the thousand-year reign of peace on earth. The Jews will convert to Christianity or be destroyed.

Cattle ranchers in Israel, Texas, Nebraska, and Mississippi have all tried or are currently trying to breed the ultimate rust-colored cow. It's a lot tougher than it sounds. According to tradition, the cow must be at least three years old and cannot have a single nonred hair. One promising Israeli calf got believers excited a couple of years ago. But in the end, she sprouted white hairs.

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-andmouth 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 selfdescribed "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 check, 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 offBroadway 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 . . .

--EXO D U S 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 with 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.

"Are you right-handed or left-handed?" asks Yossi.

"Right."

"OK, then give me your left arm."

I stick out my arm, palm up, and Yossi places the black box on my left

biceps. As prescribed by custom, I wrap the band around my arm seven times, starting below the elbow and ending at the wrist. Well, actually, I do it five times and then run out of arm. So I start over with Yossi's help, which isn't easy for him, as it requires him to do reverse wrapping.

"It's like tying a tie on someone else," he says.

He finally wraps it the proper seven times. Yossi puts the other black box on my forehead, and points to a part in the prayer book. I read, "Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever."

The tefillin is tight, creating six little lumps of forearm. The experience isn't frightening or odd, as I'd imagined. It is more . . . comforting. The wrapped arm reminds me of getting my blood pressure taken, so my unconscious logic probably went like this:

Getting my blood pressure taken is good for me.

This feels like I'm getting my blood pressure taken.

Therefore it must be good for me.

Or maybe it's that it reminds me of getting swaddled. I used to envy

Jasper whenever I rolled him into a human burrito in his swaddling blanket. Perhaps this was God swaddling me.

Or maybe it's something about connecting with my father's father. My aunt had recently told me that my grandfather used to wrap tefillin. Which startled me. I knew that he was more religious than most of my secular family. But wrapping tefillin? That's seriously religious. And if he did it, you know his dad did it. And so on back for hundreds of years.

As Yossi helps me unwind the straps from my arm and head, I feel relief. Not just that I hadn't totally messed up the ritual. But relief that, after trying to do DIY religion for months, I'd finally done it the approved way. The Vilna Gaon would be happy.

It didn't send me into the mystical trance that I seek, but it was far more moving than I thought it'd be. As strange as the ritual is, it also has beauty. As I walk home, I feel my red heifer-inspired skepticism ebb away.

Finally, Moses finished writing all the words of these teachings in a book. --DEUTERONOMY 31:24 (GWT)

Day 181. My Esquire boss just sent me a final version of the article I wrote about the Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. I admire the Wikipedia, though I do so with much guilt, since it's the enemy of my beloved Britannica.

In any case, I've decided--and my aunt Kate would kill me if she heard this--that the Wikipedia and the Bible have a lot in common. Hardcore believers say that the Bible emerged from God's oven like a fully baked cake. Or, to be precise, several fully baked pieces. Moses transcribed the first five books. King David wrote Psalms. The Gospel of St. Luke was written solely by St. Luke. Every book of the Bible was written by a single author who transcribed God's words.

The alternative is called the documentary hypothesis. This says that the Bible has many, many authors and editors. The first five books of Moses didn't come from Moses alone. They are a patchwork from four anonymous sources who have been named J, E, P, and D. Each writer has his own linguistic quirks and theological passions. P, for instance, short for "Priestly," was fascinated by the laws. The sections on food and sex prohibitions in Leviticus, for instance, come from the Priestly source.

The passages have been chopped and pieced together by various editors. In short, the hypothesis says that the Bible has evolved, like humans themselves. Like a Wikipedia entry.

I believe the documentary hypothesis. And, as with creationism versus evolution, I just can't see myself ever embracing the alternative. I'm too in awe of archaeology and secular historical scholarship to reject it. I'm too attached to the idea that everything has untidy origins.

The challenge is finding meaning, guidance, and sacredness in the Bible even if I don't believe that God sat behind His big oak desk in heaven and dictated the words verbatim to a bunch of flawless secretaries. Or maybe the fundamentalists are right, and this is impossible.

For the company of the godless is barren . . . --JOB 15:34

Day 181, afternoon. I was on the subway today, sitting a few seats down from a Buddhist monk. He looked at me, with my white raiment and bushy beard, I looked at him, with his orange robes, and we exchanged a knowing nod and smile.

It was a great moment. I felt like I'd been let through the velvet rope at a holy nightclub.

Here, at the halfway mark of my journey, I've had an unexpected mental shift. I feel closer to the ultrareligious New Yorkers than I do the secular. The guy with the fish on his bumper sticker. The black man with the kufi. The Hasidim with their swinging fringes. These are my compatriots. They think about God and faith and prayer all the time, just like I do.

Yes, there's still a difference between me and my alter ego Jacob-- but Jacob is gaining strength. In fact, he's often the dominant one, quizzically observing my secular self. Jacob looks at the world and says, "Secular people are the freaks, not religious people. How can you not think about the Big Questions all the time? How can you put so much energy into caring about earthly matters, like basketball games or Esquire's sell-through rates or the divorce proceedings of TV actresses?"

I'm still aware of the Bible's crazy parts. I haven't forgotten about the red heifer. But I find myself compelled to look for the Bible's good parts--or at least put the insane parts in context. Yes, it's crazy that I have to grow a huge beard. But if you think about it, it's actually a humane hairstyle. You're not supposed to shave the corners--the payot-- the same word used when God tells us to leave the corners of the field unharvested. As with the side locks and edible crickets, maybe the beard teaches us to remember the less fortunate.

Last week, as part of my equal-time policy, I read Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth. It's both very funny and wildly sacrilegious. At one point Twain says he doesn't understand why the Bible so despises those who piss against a wall. He's referring to this verse in the King James version of the Bible:

And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends (1 Kings 16:11).

Twain writes: "A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches and get off, but he must not piss against the wall--that would be going quite too far."

Yet I knew from my research that those who "piss against the wall" was an idiom for adult men, since men would go behind a wall to get a modicum of privacy. Not quite as nonsensical. I want to stick up for the Bible, maybe insert a footnote in Twain's book.

Today a friend of mine who knows of my biblical quest sent me a funny email. It's the third time I've gotten this email since I started. Depending on the version, it's either an open letter to conservative Jewish radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger or one to a strict evangelical minister. It first started circulating a few years ago and inspired a scene on The West Wing in which President Josiah Bartlet dresses down a barely disguised fictional version of Dr. Laura.

The email thanks Dr. Laura/the minister for reminding us that the Bible condemns homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22). But the writer has some questions.

Should he stone his mother for working on Saturday?

If he sells his daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus, what would be a good price for her?

He wants to burn a bull in sacrifice, but what should he do about his pesky, complaining neighbors?

The Bible says we can't touch the skin of a dead pig, so he should avoid directly touching a football. But can he play football if he wears gloves?

The first time I read this email, I thought: Excellent. What a great critique of those who follow the Bible literally, but haphazardly. It imagines a world of biblical literalism free from picking and choosing--the world I'm trying to create.

And now, here it was again, for the third time. As always, I was amused, and agreed with the gay-rights thesis. But here's the odd thing: I also got a little defensive. I wanted to send the author a note. Yes, the mixing fibers sounds berserk, but maybe the emailer should talk to Mr. Berkowitz about the glory of following things we can't explain.

Also, I know from my encyclopedia-reading days that a football is not made of pigskin anymore. NFL footballs are made of regular old cowhide. And my son's football is some sort of plastic. The email commits the same fallacy that it satirizes: It overliteralizes the word pigskin.

The email did make me think twice about touching pig carcasses. I don't have any pigskin clothes, so that's good. But to be really safe, I'm avoiding contact with playing cards, because they're often made of gelatin, which can be made of pigs. So even if poker didn't lead to greed and coveting, it would be off-limits for me.

Month Seven: March

He who winks his eyes plans perverse things . . . --PROVERBS 16:30

Day 184. Julie's dad is visiting from Florida. We're out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It's proving to be a trying experience, mostly because her dad--a former software salesman--is indulging his weakness for particularly excruciating puns.

I can't even remember how it came up, but over entrees he punned on the word olive and the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph.

Then he looked at me and winked.

"You know, the Bible is antiwinking," I say.

"Really? What's the origin of that?"

"Not sure."

"Well, when you get down to it, the Bible is all about the prophet motive."

I purse my lips and nod. A little part of me dies.

"Prophet," he says. "Like the Prophet Elijah."

"I got it."

The Bible's antiwinking bias (there are at least four warnings against winkers) is one of the least-studied scriptural motifs around. I found negligible literature on the topic. But it does seem wise and ahead of its time, the wink being perhaps the world's creepiest gesture, with the winker coercing the winkee into being a part of his little cabal. If the Bible condemned people who call me "Captain" . . . well, a man can dream.

The Lord has made everything for its purpose. --PROVERBS 16:4

Day 187. I blew my shofar on the first of the month, and frankly, I'm feeling much better about my skills. Mr. Berkowitz gave me a few pointers--including holding my shofar between my fingers like a giant cigarette--so it's begun to sound respectable. I'm no Miles Davis, but I can hit a couple of clear notes.

Today, Julie and I have an appointment at Mount Sinai to get a sonogram. Julie is dreading it. It's not so much a fear of hospitals. It's a fear that we'll find out the twins' genders--and that they'll both be boys. She's wanted a daughter from day one.

"We'll be fine," I say. "There's a seventy-five percent chance we'll have at least one girl. My guess is two."

An hour later, the Italian-accented nurse is sliding the microphonelike sonogram gadget over Julie's stomach. She stops on the right side.

"OK, Baby A is a boy. That's very clear. Baby A is a boy."

Julie starts laughing nervously. She's muttering, "Please be a girl, Baby B, please be a girl."

The nurse is digging the gadget into the left side.

"And I'm sorry," the nurse says.

At which point, my stomach drops, my pulse triples. What? What's wrong?

"I'm sorry to say that you have two boys. Baby B is a boy."

I'm relieved. For a moment, I thought that there was something seriously wrong with Baby B. But the only thing wrong is that he has a Y chromosome.

Julie isn't relieved. Her face crinkles. She starts crying, then sobbing. My relief fades to mild depression.

"I know it's stupid," says Julie. She's caught her breath now. "I'm mad at myself for being so upset. But it's just the finality of it. I'll never have a girl. That's it."

It's true. I love Jasper--but three boys? That's far too much testosterone for a two-bedroom New York apartment. That's a future filled with hundreds of lacrosse games and countless hours discussing vehicle parts like backhoes and racks and pinions.

The doctor, a stout fiftyish man, comes in. He sees Julie's wet cheeks.

"I used to do a lot of sex change operations," he says, chuckling. "I could do one for you guys."

Julie and I don't even so much as smile. This doesn't deter him.

"You know, Daniel is a nice name. A strong name. Dan. Daniel and the lion's den." The doctor's name is Daniel, you see.

Daniel puts some petroleum jelly on Julie's stomach for the sonogram. "Yesterday I used grape. This is raspberry." The guy is relentless.

After the sonogram, Julie and I go out to lunch. We barely talk.

I've got to focus on being thankful. Perhaps this is God's will.

"Maybe it's not so bad. Think about My Three Sons," I say. "They seemed happy."

"That doesn't help me," says Julie. "The mother was dead."

We sit silently for another couple of minutes.

"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

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 God . . ."

"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 God. 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 God. 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

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

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 anticipates 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

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 sparser and sparser. 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 balls 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 God. 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 Passover 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 grass is surprisingly noisy. And that's not to mention the constant 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-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 God 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 God 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

Day 198, late afternoon. If the desert is relatively empty (not counting the accumulating 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 worship 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 fetishizing 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 tithe 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: tithing 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 passage aloud from the Bible. I can't remember the exact passage, but I know it involved the word harlotry. 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 tithing?" 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 compassion . . . --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 assumed they had gone the way of the Hittites 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 passed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, 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."

This takes me aback. I knew that, at one time, Baywatch 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.

Benyamim, sixty-two, has gray hair combed straight back, a neatly

trimmed white moustache, and a thick accent. He's wearing a gray skirt down to his ankles, the traditional Samaritan dress for the Sabbath, which he has kept on in my honor. His apartment feels clean, modern; it somehow reminds me of a Middle Eastern version of my late grandmother's condo in Century Village. As with everyone I've visited so far, Benyamim offers food and drink moments after I enter his door. He brings out a pot of tea and a plate of Samaritan cookies that look like madeleines but taste more spicy than sweet.

We wander around his apartment, looking at the gallery of Samaritan photos on his wall. I stop at a picture of a group of Samaritans gathered on top of a mountain, the men in white suits and white fezzes.

"That's the entire Samaritan community in 1914," says Benyamim, "One hundred forty-six people."

The current population has grown to all of seven hundred Samaritans, he says. Which is still an astounding statistic. Seven hundred people. His whole ethnic group could be comfortably seated in a high-school auditorium.

Think of it this way: Benyamim tells me about how a Samaritan mother recently gave birth to severely premature twins. They survived-- but if they had died, Benyamim says, it would have been the equivalent of "wiping out your Kansas City."

The seven hundred remaining Samaritans either live near Benyamim--in a city called Holon--or in the West Bank. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian, they feel slightly out of place in modern-day Israel, trying to remain friendly with both sides. As Benyamim puts it, "We dodge the political raindrops."

They weren't always such a minority. The Samaritans--who trace their descent to ancient Samaria, which was in northern Israel--reached a peak in the fourth century BC with more than a million followers. They were wiped out in the centuries that followed by Romans, Ottomans, and the plague. Benyamim and his fellow Samaritans believe that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel, upholding the true biblical tradition.

"Should we take a walk?" asks Benyamim.

We step outside and into the Samaritan enclave--a quiet little maze of backstreets. We see no one except for a half dozen teenagers playing soccer and a neighbor out for a late-night errand. Benyamim points out that each house's exterior has a stone tablet with a biblical passage carved into it, their way of writing on doorposts.

About three blocks from Benyamim's house, we arrive at the Samaritan temple--a squat white-walled structure--which is closed for night. But inside, says Benyamim, is the Samaritan Bible.

It's a fascinating thing, the Samaritan Bible. Because it's almost exactly like the Hebrew Bible--with one key difference. The Ten Commandments aren't the ten that we know. Instead, one of the commandments tells followers to build an altar on Mount Gerizim, which is located on the West Bank. To the Samaritans, Mount Gerizim is the most sacred place in the world, the mountain where Noah beached his ark, where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son.

To this day, it is the site of their annual lamb sacrifice. Yes, unlike the Jews, the Samaritans still practice animal sacrifice. Every year on their Passover, the head of each Samaritan household slits the throat of a sheep. Then all the sheep--about forty of them--are skinned, put on stakes, and roasted over pits for eating.

"It's a beautiful ceremony," says Benyamim. "The smell is delicious. It's next week--you should come."

I had enough trouble with the chickens.

"I'll be back in New York, I'm afraid."

When we get back to the house, Benyamim introduces me to his wife, a short-haired woman who, frankly, doesn't seem in the mood to chat with me. She nods her head, and that's about it. Benyamim's wife is a convert from Judaism. Apparently there are a sprinkling of Jewish women who make the switch, but not too many. As one commentator points out, the Samaritans' superstrict menstruation laws are a hard sell.

"In the Torah, a woman in her period has to be departed," says Benyamim. This is why, he explains, Samaritan houses have a special room for women in their cycle. "My wife has her own TV and small refrigerator. It's like a hotel room."

Can she come out?

"Yes, and we can talk, but not face to face, because of the saliva. And we do talk. Mostly about my cooking."

Benyamim must cook the meals, since his wife cannot touch the food. Benyamim tries to put an upbeat gloss on it: It's a vacation from household chores for the women.

"Fifty years ago, there was a special tent for the women. And I believe it was the happiest tent in the camp."

I don't know. I still have trouble accepting the menstrual laws, whether Jewish or Samaritan.

Before I leave, I ask the obvious question: What do the Samaritans think about the parable of Good Samaritan? Well, not surprisingly, they don't object. They like it. There is even a Samaritan-owned Good Samaritan Coffee Shop in the West Bank.

Benyamim tells me he has given Jesus's parable a lot of thought and has his own take on it: It was autobiographical. Benyamim believes that the wounded man is meant to represent Jesus himself. And Jesus chose to have a Samaritan rescue him because he'd had a good experience in Samaria. When Jesus fled the Pharisees and passed through Samaria, the locals treated him kindly and believed he was the savior (John 4).

On the cab ride back to the hotel, my mind keeps coming back to the Samaritan Bible. So similar, but so different, too. What if history had taken a left turn? What if the Samaritan Torah had become the standard, and millions of Semitic faithful flooded to Mount Gerizim every year to sacrifice lambs, except for a few hundred people called the Jews, who worshipped at an obscure site known as the Western Wall?

I give thanks to thee, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify thy name for ever.

--PSALMS 86:12

Day 204. I can't stop thinking about the two praying guys in Yossi's story: the one who emerges refreshed and the one who emerges more harried than before. Sometimes I'm the first guy, sometimes the second.

Today I'm taking a rest from a walk on a set of stairs near the Jaffa Gate. Or maybe near the Lion's Gate. I'm not sure. Frankly, I'm lost. But I'm resting here on the stone steps, which are cool and shaded and have a bumpy surface that makes them look like a Rice Krispies treat.

I have my head bowed and my eyes closed. I'm trying to pray, but my mind is wandering. I can't settle it down. It wanders over to an Esquire article I just wrote. It wasn't half bad, I think to myself. I liked that turn of phrase in the first paragraph.

And then I am hit with a realization. And hit is the right word--it felt like a punch to my stomach. Here I am being prideful about creating an article in a midsize American magazine. But God--if He exists--He created the world. He created flamingos and supernovas and geysers and beetles and the stones for these steps I'm sitting on.

"Praise the Lord," I say out loud.

I'd always found the praising-God parts of the Bible and my prayer books awkward. The sentences about the all-powerful, almighty, allknowing, the host of hosts, He who has greatness beyond our comprehension. I'm not used to talking like that. It's so over the top. I'm used to understatement and hedging and irony. And why would God need to be praised in the first place? God shouldn't be insecure. He's the ultimate being.

Now I can sort of see why. It's not for him. It's for us. It takes you out of yourself and your prideful little brain.

Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the sabbath . . . --EXO D U S 31:16

Day 205. As I wander over to a cafe near the hotel for a bagel, I realize something: Walking around Jerusalem in my biblical persona is at once freeing and vaguely disappointing. In New York--even though it's home to the Naked Cowboy and Gene Shalit--I'm still unusual enough to stand out. But in Israel I'm just one of the messianic crowd. A guy with strange outfits and eccentric facial hair? Big deal. Seen three dozen today. Jerusalem is like the Galapagos Islands of religion--you can't open your eyes without spotting an exotic creature.

Speaking of which, it's Friday. The day I'm finally going to meet him, the most exotic creature of my family, the official black sheep, the man who gave me the germ of the idea for this book: Guru Gil.

When I called up Guru Gil a couple of weeks ago, he said he wanted to meet me at the Western Wall, the holiest site for Jews in Jerusalem. He's there every day. I arrive on a drizzly, chilly Friday afternoon. It's an amazing place: dozens of mostly Orthodox Jews chanting and swaying, their fringes swinging, some so deep in ecstatic prayer that they are clenching their fists and shuddering. It's impossible not to be moved by the combined kilowatts of faith.

Gil is nowhere to be found. When I ask his whereabouts, I discover that my family isn't the only one with mixed feelings about Gil. An Orthodox man from the Netherlands tells me that he and Gil no longer speak. What's the feud about? He won't say. But whatever Gil did, he did "these things again and again and again!"

Finally I spot Gil. I recognize him from the many, many photos on the cover of his book. He's walking down the steps, his long beard forked in half by a headwind, a big white tuft blowing over each shoulder.

"Gil? It's A. J. Jacobs."

"You're A. J? You look so religious," he says, eyeing my beard. "I was expecting something else."

"Well, it's not as long as yours."

"You'll get there," says Gil.

He's smaller than I thought. Somehow, in my mind, thanks to years of family legends, he had grown into a Paul Bunyanesque super-Jew. But in real life, he's far south of six feet. And with the beard, he looks his sixty years.

I tell him I'm in the middle of reading his book.

"In the middle of it? Well, you're the first person to ever put it down."

I can't tell if he's joking or if he's actually offended.

He grabs a chair and a prayer book, and we sit down to worship next to the sixty-foot wall. It turns out that this is Gil's second trip to the wall today. Every day he wakes up at 1:45 a.m., takes a ritual bath, then arrives at the wall at 3:00 a.m. He stays there for a few hours, wrapping tefillin--the leather prayer straps--on willing tourists, then goes home for study, only to return in the afternoon. If you think, as I did, that 1:45 a.m. is an ungodly hour, you'd be wrong. At least according to Gil, the most spiritual time of day is midnight to eight.

After an hour or so of prayers, we head back to Gil's apartment for Shabbat dinner. His guests arrive a few minutes later.

"Come in and sit down," he says sternly. "You're late."

Gil's dinner is quasifamous, a minor tourist attraction for students and seekers. Tonight we've got a couple of Russian yeshiva students, a pair of rabbi's daughters from Jersey, an Orthodox shrink and his wife, and this spaced-out Berkeley dude in a rainbow-colored yarmulke. Gil warned the Berkeley dude not to hit on the rabbi's daughters, or "I'll break both your legs."

"Hello?" shouts Gil, after we're seated. "Shut up! Earth to people! Earth to people!"

We stop chattering. Time for the ground rules.

"Whoever asks the most questions gets the biggest dessert. But they have to be good questions. They can't be 'What's for dessert?'"

Gil runs the dinner like he's still head of his yurt cult in upstate New York. Though nowadays he talks. And during two minutes of the introductory prayers, no one else does--or else you have to go wash your hands, as required by Orthodox custom.

He looks at the Berkeley dude.

"Are you going to talk?"

"Uh . . . no."

"You just did. Go wash your hands."

The Berkeley dude is already walking on eggshells. He was the first guest to arrive and made the mistake of touching his cutlery prematurely, prompting Gil to snap, "Stop with the plates, stop with the spoon, knock it off!"

Not wanting to make eye contact, I glance at the surroundings. The dining room table takes up most of the floor space. The walls are filled with photos of white-bearded rabbis. In the corner, I spot a snapshot of Gil playing a . . . ten-string harp. Yes, one alarmingly like mine. Gil tells me later that he designed the harp himself. "I based the notes on the sounds of a Hawaiian waterfall," he says.

One of Gil's big themes is that everything has a reason. Julie has the same point of view, but Gil takes it to the extreme: Absolutely nothing is an accident. A few years ago, he tells us, he got bird droppings on his tefillin. He was devastated. "I thought, 'God hates me! He hates my prayers. All these years I've been trying to please him, this is how he feels about me.' He took the tefillin to an expert, and it turned out that one of the parchments was upside down. God didn't hate him--He was just letting him know.

Each of the Bible's laws has a reason, too. A perfectly rational explanation.

"I thought some of them we don't know the reason for," I say. "Whoever told you that wasn't a deep person," says Gil. And remember, the little rules are just as important as the big ones.

"If you were in medical school to study brain surgery, would you want to follow all the rules? Or just the 'main ones'?" asks Gil.

One of the rabbi's daughters has a question:

"Why is it important for a guy to have a beard?"

"Because Abraham had a beard."

"He also had two wives," replies the rabbi's daughter.

"I beg your pardon. One was a concubine."

"Solomon had seven hundred wives," I pipe up.

"Shut up," says Gil. "In those days you could. But since it was going to be forbidden later, Jacob was buried with Rachel, not his other wives."

The rabbi's daughter isn't satisfied. Gil tries again:

"If you see a guy with a long beard, you know he's not a warrior. There's no way. You can't fight with one of these things. The first they'd do is grab your beard. It's a handle on your head."

That is one I hadn't heard. Gil takes a big swig of his red wine, about half of which dribbles into his beard. He gets up to clear the first course, a vegetable soup. The chatter at the table devolves to whom we know in common. Gil comes back. He is not well pleased.

"Only holy topics!"

"But what is holy?" says one of the twentysomething Russians. "Every topic can be holy."

This guy had given Gil some lip earlier in the night--he kept asking to sing a Russian song--and now Gil has had enough.

"You have no idea how hot things can get around here," Gil thunders. "One time, I had a guy from a yeshiva sitting right over there, and he was giving me a hard time. And I said, 'Look, I have two black belts in judo.'

"And you know what the guy says?

" 'Oh, yeah? I know martial arts too.'

"So I jump up and grab him in a choke hold, and he turns blue in the face and goes 'Ahhhggghghh!' And I let go, and from then on, he was the sweetest guest I ever had.

"Don't . . . push . . . the . . . buttons, kid. OK?"

The Russian says nothing.

I decide that Gil's shtick is part bully, part vaudevillian, part charismatic leader. He's an ultrareligious Donald Trump, and this is his boardroom. Maybe because I'm ex-family, I never get fully shellacked. He doesn't call me "klutz" or "idiot," as he does the others. The most I got is a "bozo!" when I wash my hands incorrectly.

I can see how he was a cult leader. You can't take your eyes off him. When he's telling a story, he'll jump out of his wicker chair to preach an important point. He'll laugh for no apparent reason--during prayers, he just started giggling, his face reddening, apparently filled with the joy of God. He also weeps. He was talking about a rabbi he knew, stopped midsentence, looked away, and cried for a good minute, as the rest of us silently contemplated our wineglasses.

He talks about his days as a cult leader only occasionally. At one point he grouses about the burden of having forty servants. "You know what I said every day? 'God, get them out of here!' What a pain in the tuchus to have to tell forty people what to do."

When he finds out that one of the girls speaks American Sign Language, he boasts of the sign language he invented as a cult leader--and how it swept New York in the 1970s.

"I found that a lot of my signs were the same as deaf sign language. Like the word understand."

Gil puts two of his fingers on his palm.

"You just did the sign for toast," says the girl.

Gil shrugs.

"Well, it wasn't the most important thing that I invented in my life."

At about nine o'clock, Gil says it's nearing his bedtime, so we say the final prayers and pass around a cup of water for hand washing. At least the men do. When the shrink's wife tries to, Gil explodes.

"Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhh!! No woman will wash hands at my table!!!"

Gil is not a feminist. He calms down, tries to soften it.

"No foxy woman, anyway. A short, fat woman, yes."

I look at the shrink's wife, a sixtyish woman who would fit in well at a Palm Beach bingo game. She isn't in the traditional sense foxy.

"Why not women?" she asks.

"Because you'll give this guy bad dreams!" says Gil.

He points at me. I smile weakly.

After the hand-washing incident, I get ready to go. Gil grabs my hand, looks me in the eyes, and says, "I love you." Oh man, my family would have a heart attack if they heard that one. How to respond?

"Uh . . . thanks for dinner!" I say.

As I walked down the cobblestone streets of the Old City, I remembered that Gil, when he first met my aunt Kate at a party, said those same words: "I love you." I can understand my grandfather's alarm. I sure wouldn't want my daughter marrying the Guru Gil of the twentyfirst century.

Granted, he didn't end up strangling that Russian. In fact, he seems to me more of a religious clown than a felon. And I even agreed with a couple of his teachings. This one seemed kind of wise: "Whenever you're sad, things aren't working out for you, look around, see if there's someone else in trouble, go and help them. And I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, your problems will be solved."

But, overall, what I found offensive and subtly dangerous about Gil was that he claimed to have all the answers. As he reminded me several times. "I'm glad you found me," he said. "Because I have all the answers." And later: "If you have any questions, call Gil. Others will lead you astray."

He's a spokesman for the arrogant side of religion. My favorite parts of the Bible are the ones that take the complete opposite tack, that admit that we don't know everything, that stress the mystery of God and the universe. Like Ecclesiastes 6:12 says:

For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?

Month Eight: April

Let my people go. --EXO D U S 5:1

Day 215. I've been home for a week. Julie's still recovering from her stint as a solo mom, and I'm still trying to decompress from Israel.

Israel was so intense, I need a week of as little activity as possible. I've been spending a lot of time slack jawed on the couch watching Scripture-themed movies. Julie ordered me Charlton Heston's The Ten Commandments on Netflix. Man, I hadn't remembered it being quite so gloriously cheesy as it is. God sounds like Darth Vader. The seductive bare-midriffed Egyptian dancers look like they strayed off the set of Elvis's Clambake. And director Cecil B. DeMille is the most unhumble man in the world. Just in case there was any question of who is responsible for this masterpiece, he fills the screen with DIRECTED BY CECIL B. DEMILLE in 8,000-point font. He gets higher billing than God.

It's a nice break from ruminating about Israel. Because Israel has got me tied up in knots. On the good side, it can humble you. Even physically it humbles you. The vastness of the desert humbles you. The height of the Western Wall humbles you. The echoing interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre humbles you. And the history. All those millions of seekers who have walked the exact same cobblestone streets asking the exact same questions--it's hard not to feel like you're part of something much larger than yourself.

But Israel can also be dangerous. It can bring out the fundamentalist in all of us. It can bring out everyone's inner Guru Gil. It can nurture your self-righteous side. I saw this even as I took the cab back from Newark Airport. I looked at the pedestrians yammering away on their cell phones, no doubt speaking evil tongue and coveting. Ugh. "I'm not like that," I tell myself. "I'm so much more biblical than these people. These secular losers." Which, I know, is a completely unbiblical way to think.

You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother . . .

--DEUTERONOMY 15:7

Day 219. One unavoidable side effect of biblical living: You think a lot about your forefathers. In my case, I find myself fascinated by my father's father.

My grandfather, who died when I was in high school, wore a gray fedora and lived by the Hudson River in an apartment with a plasticcovered couch. I remember him being perhaps the gentlest man I've ever met, a man who spoke so quietly that you'd have to lean forward to hear.

And I remember him giving away money. Whenever we'd go for a walk--which usually meant that we were either traveling to or returning from moo shoo chicken at Szechuan Palace--we'd inevitably pass a homeless person, and my grandfather would inevitably fish a couple of quarters out of his pocket. No doubt it was a reaction to his past. He grew up in a tenement on the Lower East Side. He'd never tell you, but his stepmother-- a woman straight out of Grimms'--kept a lock on the icebox so that my grandfather wouldn't try to sneak an extra slice of bread.

Today, I'm waiting on the subway platform for the downtown B train, trying not to get annoyed that express trains keep whooshing by while the local is MIA. About twenty feet away, I spot a woman in an Adidas T-shirt and blue jeans. She is working the platform, going from commuter to commuter asking for change.

She is making absolutely no headway. These people have perfected the art of ignoring the homeless. Their body language is very clear: "I am unable to look up for even a second because I am so deeply involved in observing this discarded Tropicana pineapple juice carton on the track." It's heartbreaking.

The homeless woman does her best; she stares at them, open palmed for a good half minute, then moves on. She comes to me. I am biblically obligated to give, so I get out my wallet and hand her a dollar. She takes the money and smiles. I feel good.

And then she throws open her arms for a hug. I wasn't expecting that. As a germaphobe, I've never been a hugger. More of a polite nodder. And with my biblical living, I've become even more leery of hugs, seeing as the Hebrew Scriptures caution against touching women. But what am I going to do? Be a callous schmuck? I hug her.

At which point she goes for a kiss. I swivel my head in time so that she misses my lips and gets my cheek.

She steps back and looks at me.

"Did you just take advantage of me?"

I laugh nervously. "No."

"I think you took advantage of me. I think you made a pass at me."

More nervous laughter from me.

"I'm going to report you!" she says, her voice rising. She isn't smiling. She just glowers at me as I sputter denials and apologies for any misunderstanding. By this time, most of the commuters have stopped reading their papers to check out this grabby, hirsute, fringe-wearing pervert who has tried to fondle the panhandler.

"I'm going to report you," she repeats.

The C train comes. It's not the train I need, but close enough for me. "Sorry, I have to go."

As I sit down, I look out the window to see if the Adidas woman is following me. She isn't. She is, instead, cracking up--having a good stomach-clutching laugh. She'd been playing me. She'd homed in on a lanky guy with a beard and decided to spice up her day. Can't blame her for that. Maybe it was an even better gift than the dollar.

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. --PROVERBS 11:1

Day 222. Julie is feeling slightly better about the impending three-sons situation. Part of her problem had been that the male-female ratio in our house will be 4:1. She'll be outnumbered. She'll be the One Who Doesn't Belong.

As self-prescribed therapy, she's made a big list of sons who treat their mothers well. And, conversely, another big list of sons who have terrible relationships with their dads. She consults this list often. It doesn't seem quite biblical. But I'm not about to stop her. In fact, I decide to throw in a couple of dysfunctional father-son Bible stories to help her cause.

"Absalom led a rebellion against his father, King David," I tell her. "OK," she says.

"And you know Reuben?"

"The firstborn son of Jacob," she says. (Julie's favorite musical is

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. )

"Well, he slept with his father's concubine. And his father was so

angry, he took away Reuben's birthright."

By the way, I can't tell you the number of people who try to console

us by telling us that, with our three boys, we can start our own team.

They never say what kind of team. Three-man bobsled? Arena polo?

The options seem somewhat limited.

Julie's also feeling better because she's been able to avoid getting too

huge, at least so far. Her legs, arms, and face look remarkably unbloated.

Her stomach, though, is hard to ignore. It looks like she ate a wrecking

ball for breakfast.

She's off to the ob-gyn's office for a checkup this morning. "I hate

the scale there," she says. "It's always two pounds heavier than the one

at the gym. Plus, the nurse rushes me. I never have time to take off my

sneakers before getting weighed."

I nod. I decide not to tell Julie, since I know I'd be met with an eye

roll, but she's hit on an important biblical theme: inaccurate scales. I'm

guessing that the scales in question measured barley and spelt, not wives

in their second trimester, but, regardless, the issue gets a lot of play. How much? The law of fair weights and measures appears an impressive six times in the Bible. By way of comparison, the passages often

cited to condemn homosexuality: also six.

The laws about weights and measures are generally given a wide interpretation; the Bible here is demanding fair business practices. Which

does seem like a good idea. But if frequency of mentions counts for anything, I should probably be focusing my wrath on improperly calibrated

truck weigh stations.

Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

--PROVERBS 20:1

Thou dost cause . . . wine to gladden the heart of man --PSALMS 104:14-15

Day 223. I'm in the kitchen drinking a glass of red wine as Julie microwaves some pizza. Julie tells me that she wants me to give up alcohol for the rest of her pregnancy.

"It'll be a sign of solidarity," she says. "Paul did it when Lisa was pregnant."

I make a note to have a discussion with our friend Paul.

"And isn't there something in the Bible about not drinking?" she asks.

I tell her it's complicated. After a couple of minutes of back-andforth, Julie reveals her true motivation: She thinks a few weeks of abstemiousness would help shrink my gut.

"Look at that stomach," she says. "How many months are you? Four? Five? You having twins too?"

OK, OK, very good. And, yet, there must be a better way to shed pounds. I'm no wine enthusiast--despite the bizarre and inexplicable fact that I edited the wine page at Esquire for a few months (it mostly involved spell-checking words like Gewurztraminer)--but I do like an occasional glass.

Before I started living biblically, I had feared that I'd be forced into a year of sobriety. After all, I knew some Puritans banned booze. And certain fundamentalist Christians think of alcohol as up there with adultery, idol worship, and South Park. A few even argue that the "wine" drunk in the Bible is not wine at all but actually grape juice. This was the thinking of a temperance advocate named Thomas Welch, who tried to sell "unfermented wine" in the late nineteenth century for communion services. He failed. At least until his family changed the name to grape juice and marketed it to the secular.

The truth is, biblical wine is wine. But is it a good thing or a bad thing? In some passages, wine seems like a gift from God. In other passages, it's portrayed as a wicked toxin: "[Wine] bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast" (Proverbs 23:32-34).

To clear things up, I found the expert of all experts, a conservative Christian oenophile named Daniel Whitfield. Whitfield has made an astoundingly exhaustive study of every alcohol reference in Scripture--all 247 of them. I quote his findings here:

On the negative side, there are 17 warnings against abusing alcohol, 19 examples of people abusing alcohol, 3 references to selecting leaders, and one verse advocating abstinence if drinking will cause a brother to stumble. Total negative references: 40, or 16 percent.

On the positive side, there are 59 references to the commonly accepted practice of drinking wine (and strong drink) with meals, 27 references to the abundance of wine as an example of God's blessing, 20 references to the loss of wine and strong drink as an example of God's curse, 25 references to the use of wine in offerings and sacrifices, 9 references to wine being used as a gift, and 5 metaphorical references to wine as a basis for a favorable comparison. Total positive references: 145, or 59 percent.

Neutral references make up the remaining 25 percent. If I could add one observation to Whitfield's study: There is also one reference to medicinal alcohol: "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23).

It comes down to the battle between the Bible's gusto for life, and the Bible's wariness of excess. Between its Epicureanism and Puritanism. You can find both themes in the Scriptures. The Epicurean side is best seen in Ecclesiastes:

"There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

The key seems to be to enjoy wine as one of the many great things that God has provided us. But don't enjoy it too much. Use what AnheuserBusch public service announcements call "responsible drinking."

Otherwise, bad things happen. For instance, there's the remarkable story of what happened when Lot--the one who fled Sodom--drank too much. Lot had escaped to a cave with his two daughters (his wife, as you know, had been turned into a pillar of salt). The daughters, thinking all other men in the world had died, got their father very, very drunk--and slept with him. Both got pregnant. Their incestuous offspring founded two nations, Moab and Ammon, which became enemies of Israel.

Too much wine is an abomination. But a glass or two? That seems fine. I show Julie the results of Whitfield's wine study. I tell her I'd be willing to water down the wine a bit, since most scholars think that biblical wine had a lower alcohol content.

Incidentally, I just did an internet search for marijuana and the Bible. As I suspected, someone has figured out a way to make the Bible seem in favor of pot smoking. Not only does the website Equal Rights 4 All! quote Genesis 1:29 ("Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth . . . To you it will be for meat"), but it claims that Moses's holy anointing oil contained a high concentration of THC. This, as my high-school hero Jeff Spicoli used to say, seems totally bogus.

"You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread."

--EXO D U S 12:20

Day 229. It's April 12, perhaps the most famous biblical holiday of them all: Passover. If you're even remotely Jewish, you know it as the religiously themed, springtime version of Thanksgiving. And if you're Christian, you probably know it, at the very least, as the meal that Jesus was eating at the Last Supper.

Secular as my family was, even I have attended a handful of Passover dinners, mostly at my dad's cousin's house in Long Island. We'd tell an abbreviated story of the Jews' flight from Egypt, eat our matzoh, and then talk about movies. They were lovely meals, but biblically literal? Not so much. To give you an idea: We recited the Nine Plagues. The tenth one--the killing of Egypt's firstborn--was left out for being too harsh. Which seems like leaving that unpleasant throwing-herself-infront-of-the-train business out of Anna Karenina.

This year I wanted an uncensored Passover. I wanted to tell the whole story of the Exodus. More, though, I wanted to try to re-create that very first Passover as much as I could. Today's seders--even the strict ones--bear little resemblance to that original meal. Which I discovered may be a good thing.

I hold my attempted biblical seder at our apartment. My parents and parents-in-law show up around five o'clock. I greet them in my biblically mandated outfit. Exodus says to eat with your "loins girded"--I wear a belt around a white robe. "Your sandals on your feet"--Tevas. "And your staff in your hand"--the maple-wood "Walden Walking Stick" I bought on the internet.

We sit down, and I pass around a plate of unleavened bread. I had made this myself; no store-bought matzoh for me. That very first unleavened bread, the Bible says, was cooked by the Israelites as they wandered out of Egypt. They didn't have time to put the bread on stones, so they put it on their backs and let the sun harden it.

I decided to do the same. That morning, I had taken some kosher flour, added water, made a hubcap-sized pancake, slipped it into a plastic Ziploc bag, and slapped the whole mixture on my back. I walked, hunched over, a few blocks to the hardware store, bought some C batteries for Julie, and came back. Maybe the dough was too well-camouflaged by my white shirt, because the guy at the hardware store didn't bat an eye.

The plate returns to me untouched. No one has taken a piece. "I had it in a plastic bag," I say. "It's not like I sweated on it." They shake their heads. Not surprising, I guess. "More for me." It

isn't bad; kind of chewy, what I imagine pizza dough tastes like after thirty seconds in the toaster oven.

As I am eating the matzoh, I lose control of the table. I am supposed to be the leader, the one telling the great story of the Exodus, but already the topic of conversation has lapsed into a discussion of the prices at local parking lots. I think back to my ex-uncle Gil, and how he screamed, "Only holy topics!" I wish I had his maniacal charisma.

Instead I go to fetch the lamb from the kitchen. The ancient Israelites ate the sacrificed lamb--all of it, from head to feet. (Today many Jews don't eat lamb on Passover, as it can't be sacrificed properly without the Temple.) The closest I could get to this original meal was a fifteen-pound hunk of kosher lamb I bought at an Upper West Side butcher, and which I somehow conned my mother-in-law into roasting.

The lamb at that first Passover was key, because it provided the blood that saved a nation. God ordered the Israelites to paint the lamb's blood on the doorposts--the secret sign so that the Angel of Death would know to skip over their houses and not slay their firstborn.

That's another thing: lamb's blood; I needed to do something about that. After several phone calls, I had determined that selling lamb's blood in the U.S. is illegal. Which was a relief. I didn't really want a bucket of blood in the fridge--too Dahmer-esque. Instead I improvised by using the lamb juice from the saucepan, which I figure contains at least a hint of blood. And as for painting it on my doorpost? The paintbrush, says the Bible, should be made of hyssop, a minty herb. I discovered an online store called Blessed Herbs--cofounded by Martha Volchok, "herbalist and mother of four home-schooled children"--and ordered a bag that looked alarmingly like something I would buy in senior year of high school from a guy named Boo on 68th Street.

"If anyone wants to watch me paint the doorposts, come with me now," I announce.

Most everyone stays at the table, but Julie comes along to supervise, and my nieces follow out of curiosity. I go into the building hallway and carefully dab lamb juice on the sides and top of our door frame, leaving brownish stains and a couple of stray hyssop leaves. Julie isn't happy about the stains but is more worried about our neighbor Nancy's dog.

"He's going to go berserk when he smells the blood."

Back at the table, I take out my ex-girlfriend's Bible and read a section from Exodus. I figure this is better than trying to summarize the story myself. I read for about three minutes, starting with this passage:

"Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness."'"

I close my Bible and let the story sink in. "Does anyone else have anything they want to say?" I ask.

My dad does. He has brought a packet of photocopied handwritten pages. They are a collection of childhood memories that his mother--my grandmother--had written before she died. My dad reads the section about her memories of family seders in the 1920s.

Before the seders, my mother would buy a very large live carp and bring it home (how, I don't know). She put it into the bathtub to swim until it was time to prepare the gefilte fish we all relished so much. We kids loved watching it swim, but it was so big it could barely (and sometimes not at all) negotiate a turn at the end of the tub. We all took our showers downstairs until after the fish was removed.

She wrote about how the kids would file up and down the stairs carrying the kosher-for-Passover dishes, "all of us like ants, trip after trip, one after the other." And about how Uncle Oscar once ate a dozen hardboiled eggs on a dare. About how, when the seder dragged on, the prayers went "express, no local stops."

Her writing is vivid, fresh. The references to the customs are no longer confusing or foreign. The whole thing felt familiar. My Biblical rituals--the door painting and sandal wearing--were interesting on an intellectual level, but, frankly, I wasn't as moved as I hoped I might be. I didn't feel like I had been swept back to the time of the Pharaohs.

But this writing from my grandmother--that did sweep me back. Perhaps to make a ritual resonate, I can't skip directly from my stain-resistant dinner table in New York to a desert three thousand years ago. I need some links in between. I need my grandmother and her memories of the leviathan-sized carp of Hinsdale Street in Brooklyn.

Do not boast about tomorrow . . .

--PROVERBS 27:1

Day 230. Here's a sample from a phone conversation I just had with my wife. I was at the Esquire office for a meeting.

"What time are you coming home?" Julie asks.

"Six o'clock, God willing."

"Also, John Munzer left a message on the answering machine."

"Thanks. I'll call him back, God willing."

"See you soon."

"God willing."

It's not an atypical snippet. For the last month, I've been saying "God willing" at least eighty times a day.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament say this is a good idea. Proverbs advises us, "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth." In the New Testament, James 4:13-15 cautions against saying: "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city," but "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that' " (NAS).

It has become a reflex. Every time I use the future tense, I try to tag on those two words: "God willing." My mother hates it. She told me I sound like someone who sends in videos to Al Jazeera. And I know my verbal tic comes off as weird in secular settings. But I find it a profound reminder of the murky instability of the future. Yes, I hope to return home at six, but God or fate might have other plans. This, in turn, makes me value the present even more. As James 4:14 says, "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" (NKJ).

I've got to try to squeeze all I can out of that vapor.

When her time of delivery came, there were twins in her womb. --GENESIS 38:27

Day 232. Julie and I spend the morning at the doctor's office to get another sonogram. Julie lifts her shirt, and the boys pop up on the little monitor. They're starting to look human now. They both have the oversized skull of a bobblehead doll or talk show host, perched on a tiny body with reptilian limbs. You can see them move--they wiggle and jostle and . . . um . . . smack each other.

"Did you see that?" Julie asks.

"I saw it."

The boy fetus on the right had given the boy fetus on the left a jab to

the head. Actually, more of an uppercut. He just took his olive-pit-sized fist and thrust it directly into the ovarian wall, stretching it till it cuffed his brother in the face.

"You think it was intentional?" asks Julie.

"I don't know. Could have been a spasm. Though it did kind of look intentional."

"Oh, man. These next few years are going to be hard."

Of course, being Bible-obsessed as I am, my mind goes straight to the Scripture's most famous twins: Jacob and Esau, who also waged war in utero. A far more serious war.

The children struggled together within [Rebecca].

And she said, "If it is thus, why do I live?"

So she went to inquire of the Lord.

And the Lord said to her,

"Two nations are in your womb,

and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided" (Genesis 25:22-23).

I've been thinking a lot about Jacob and Esau lately (the real Jacob, not my biblical alter ego). The brothers are relevant--almost eerily relevant--not just to my family life, but also to my quest for biblical truth.

The story of Jacob and Esau provides a classic example of the gap between, on the one hand, what the Bible literally says, and, on the other, the centuries-old layers of interpretation that have built up around those words.

If you read the Bible cold, as if you'd been raised on one of Jupiter's moons, you would, I'd wager, have this reaction: Jacob is a conniving scoundrel. And Esau, though maybe not a Mensa member, got a raw deal.

But the tradition--at least the more conservative tradition--says just the opposite: Jacob is a righteous man. And Esau, if not totally evil, is certainly depraved and impetuous and untrustworthy.

How does this work?

Consider the story of the swapped birthright. Esau, the older brother, owned the birthright, a privilege that Jacob coveted. The Bible says:

Once when Jacob was boiling pottage, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished.

And Esau said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of that red pottage, for I am famished!" . . .

Jacob said, "First sell me your birthright."

Esau said, "I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?" Jacob said, "Swear to me first." So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:29-33).

My first thought on reading this was: What kind of demented brother is Jacob? Why wouldn't he just ladle out a bowl of red pottage for his starving sibling instead of blackmailing the poor guy?

But the tradition has a different read: Esau wasn't really about to die; he was just hungry. He's a slave to his urges, pure id, and an exaggerator to boot. He'd do anything for a snack, including selling the sacred birthright; he showed no respect for what God had given him.

Just a few pages later, Jacob dupes his brother again. This time, their father, Isaac, who is blind and on his deathbed, wants to give a blessing to his eldest son. He sends for Esau. But Jacob--at his mother's urging--disguises himself as Esau, putting a goatskin over his hands and neck to mimic his brother's hairiness. Jacob announces himself as Esau. Isaac checks by feeling the faux hairy hands and proceeds to give Jacob the blessing. Again, a first-time Bible reader might think Jacob a rascal for fooling his dying dad. But the tradition says that Esau deserved it.

You have to remember that Jacob is a patriarch, one of the original fathers of God's people, so biblical interpreters had all the reason in the world to put a positive spin on his exploits. Esau wasn't a patriarch. Well, not of righteous people, anyway: In the rabbinic tradition, Esau spawns an evil race--either the Romans or the Edomites, depending on the source (both were frequent enemies of the Israelites).

Even when Esau seems to act with nobility and forgiveness, the tradition doesn't buy it. Take Jacob's and Esau's reconciliation. The two brothers, estranged for twenty years, finally meet up in the desert.

The Bible says: "Esau ran to meet [Jacob], and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept" (Genesis 33:4).

Sounds innocent enough. But my friend Nathaniel Deutsch, who teaches religion at Swarthmore College, told me about a fascinating midrash--a Jewish legend--about what really happened. The midrash says that Esau's "kiss" was not a kiss at all, but actually an attempt to bite Jacob on the neck. And not a love bite, mind you, a malevolent bite. Jacob, being a man of God, was saved when his neck miraculously turned to marble.

I'm not immune to the interpretative tradition. Now that I read the Bible again with the rabbinically tinted lenses, I agree that Esau sold his birthright too quickly. He needed to engage in more long-range thinking. And Jacob is surely the smarter of the two--and a homebody like me--so maybe it's a good thing that he tricked the doltish Esau to become the patriarch.

Still, I don't want to whitewash Jacob. I love the complexity of the patriarchs, that their flaws are as numerous as the stars in the sky and, in some cases, come close to eclipsing their righteousness. And I am awed by the profound and extraordinary fact that the entire Judeo-Christian heritage hinged on a bowl of soup.

"You shall not join hands with a wicked man . . ." --EXO D U S 23:1

Day 233. I hate the nonsensical, bacteria-ridden custom of the handshake. And the Bible project--with its many purity laws--has given me an excellent excuse for avoiding shaking hands with women. Now I have figured out something beautiful: I can expand my prohibition to the rest of the population too.

The Bible says not to join hands with a wicked man. And what are the chances of a man being wicked? Remarkably high, especially with the strict standards I'm employing nowadays. So I find it's best to keep my hands in the pockets of my white pants and just nod politely.

To be fair, the "not join hands" command occurs in relation to conspiring to give false evidence. So maybe it doesn't apply all the time. Which is why I've come up with a backup excuse.

The Bible's female impurity laws are more famous, but there are, in fact, corresponding laws of male impurity. Men don't get off scot-free. Leviticus says that a man shall be unclean for the day after his "emission of seed," as the Bible phrases it, and must take a bath to purify himself. In the twenty-first century, the male impurity laws are rarely observed, even by the strictest of the strict. The reason given is that such laws applied only in the era of now-destroyed Jerusalem temples. But if I'm trying to re-create biblical life, I should probably pay heed to the male laws.

My male friends usually assume that I'm evading the handshake because of germs. Since I'm biblically required to tell the truth, I say, "No, not germs." And then I explain. Which somehow turns out to be even more awkward than discussing the monthly cycles with women. Men just don't like talking about their emissions.

"Well, I haven't in a week," said John. "Not that it's any of your business."

I've learned that men of my vintage aren't having a whole lot of sex. I think I'm hanging out with too many new fathers.

I like the male purity laws, and not just because they allow me to stay in my antiseptic bubble. I like them because they make the female impurity laws seem much more palatable. It's not only women who experience a miniature loss of life and must be avoided. Men do, too. The Bible has its moments of egalitarianism.

"Honor your father and your mother . . ." --EXO D U S 20:12

Day 234. I feel like I've dishonored my father and mother by even embarking on this quest in the first place. They wanted me to write a book about something safer, like taking a year of salsa lessons. Worse, I still haven't told them about my visit to Gil.

Tonight Julie and I are going over to my parents' house, and I plan to make a conscious effort to be more honorable. Honoring your parents is not one of the inexplicable chukim. It's eminently rational, perhaps even more so in biblical times.

If you were a nomad--as many ancient Israelites were--the aging parents would be cumbersome. They couldn't help with the heavy lifting or nailing down tent pegs. The temptation to leave them behind must have been great. But you couldn't. Because God commanded us to honor them.

I've read objections to this commandment. The problem is the absolute nature of it. What if your parents don't deserve honor? Should Stalin's daughter honor him? It's a hard question, and I don't have an answer. But in my case, my parents do deserve honor. Despite the embarrassingly early curfew they gave me in high school, despite the daily guilt trips about not seeing them enough, despite the quibbles, they've been, on balance, very good parents. Just last week I figured out something about my dad. I realized that he checks my Amazon.com page every day, and if there's a bad review up there, he clicks on the "Not helpful" box. It makes me want to hug him--if we weren't both so repressed.

I don't treat them nearly well enough. I honor them only in a lip-service way. I call them every weekend, but I spend the twenty minutes of the phone call playing hearts on my PowerBook or cleaning the closet while tossing out the occasional "mm-hmmm." I delete without reading my mom's emailed jokes about vacuous blondes or wacky etymology. And when I do reply to her emails, I often do the I'm-so-important-Idon't-have-time-to-capitalize-or-punctuate thing.

So in this biblical year, I've been on a mission to reform. I've been trying to capitalize my emails to my mom. And to actually listen to what my parents say during our weekly calls. Listening is a key theme in the Scriptures. Or, in Hebrew, Shema. In fact, the Shema--a passage from Deuteronomy that begins "Hear, O Israel"--is considered the most important prayer in Judaism.

Tonight it's dinner and a DVD. They chose Gods and Generals, a civil-war movie that opened to wide apathy a few years ago. The title smacks of polytheism to me, but I don't object, and we settle into our respective chairs to watch it.

About forty-five minutes in, during another musket loading scene, I look over and notice my mom asleep in her chair. And not just light dozing. We're talking mouth-agape, head-slumped-on-the-chest deep slumber.

I nudge Julie. At this point, I am planning to whisper something clever along the lines of "Looks like my mom is really enjoying the movie." Or perhaps I would have gone with a sight gag--an impression of my mom with her jaw slack. But I stop myself. This isn't good-natured jesting. It has a tinge of mockery to it. And the Fifth Commandment kicked in. So I just smile vacantly at Julie, who then goes back to watching Jeff Daniels.

I realize I nearly committed a major biblical sin. Or at least a G-rated version of one.

Consider this story from Genesis: After the floodwaters had receded, Noah planted a vineyard, grew some grapes, and made wine. One day he drank too much and passed out in his tent, naked. Noah's bare body was spotted by his son Ham, who then told his brothers about it--we assume in a disrespectfully jovial manner. For this, Ham would pay. Or more precisely, Ham's son Canaan would pay. Noah thundered, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers."

What exactly was Ham's sin? Perhaps seeing his father's nakedness. Or maybe Ham did more than just look: Some believe that Ham perpetrated something X-rated on his dad, though this isn't stated in the text itself. To me, perhaps the biggest offense was that Noah was asleep. We're never more defenseless and vulnerable than when we're asleep. If you mock a napping person, you might as well be putting a stumbling block before the blind (to use another biblical phrase).

So as difficult as it is to restrain myself from teasing my mother, it's best that I did. When I get home, I check in on Jasper, who is sleeping as soundly as a drunken Noah. He is in my favorite sleeping position: on his knees, kowtowing before some invisible Chinese magistrate. I watch him for a good three minutes and smile like an idiot the whole time.

"When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to fetch his pledge."

--DEUTERONOMY 24:10

Day 236. The writing on our doorpost is starting to attract more attention. The building manager--a tall Russian guy with a goatee--knocks on our door today. He tells me I have to paint over it. Someone has complained. I ask him if I can wait a few months, till my year ends.

"Why so long?" he says.

"Well, I'm--"

"What is the writing, anyway?"

"It's the Ten Commandments. From the Bible."

"The Bible? Oh, religious?"

He puts his hands in the air and backs away. He looks flustered, like

he just stepped on my cat's tail or got caught feeling up my wife. "Leave it there, leave it there."

It certainly wasn't our neighbor Nancy who was doing the complaining. I run into her in the hall while she is walking her dog.

"I love the writing," she says. "I was thinking of doing it to my door."

Excellent! My first disciple.

"Anytime," I say. "I'll write it for you myself."

"OK, I may take you up on that."

She pauses.

"You know what? Wait here."

Nancy vanishes into her apartment and emerges with a blue

paperback.

"I'm not very religious," she says, "but I like this book. It's Pirkei

Avot: Ethics of the Fathers."

She flips to a page with a passage highlighted in yellow. She reads: "'In a place of no humanity, strive to be human.' That's

my motto for living in New York."

That's good wisdom. It may not be from the Bible itself, but it's

good.

"Here, take it." Nancy says. Before I can say no, she's shoved the

book into my hands and is on her way into the apartment. "How's your Hendrix proposal?" I ask before she shuts the door. "Just a few thousand more pages, and I'll be done."

You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt . . .

--DEUTERONOMY 16:12

Day 237. I got an unexpected email today. It arrived in my in-box at 1:07 p.m. from a guy named Kevin Roose. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm an eighteen-year-old native Ohioan in the middle of my first year at Brown."

Kevin went on to explain that he's going to be working at a cafe in New York this summer, but he wants to be a writer, and he noticed I went to Brown as well, and . . . would I be willing to take him on as a part-time personal intern?

This was an unusual request in several respects. First, there's the fact that he wants to be a writer in this day and age, since it seems about as pragmatic as getting into Betamax sales. Second, that he took the initiative to email me. I don't inspire many groupies. I still have a special place in my heart for my one and only rabid fan--the guy who took off his sweatshirt at a Texas signing to reveal passages of my book scrawled on his T-shirt in Magic Marker. Other than that, I'm not in the market for bodyguards. I wrote back to Kevin saying I'd hire him sight unseen on one condition: that I could call him my "slave." Now this might seem flip, and maybe it is, but slavery is a huge part of the Hebrew Bible, and I'd been struggling to figure out a way to include it in my biblical year. The closest thing to legal slavery in modern America? An unpaid internship. And here it was. Heaven-sent.

Kevin accepted.

His internship is still a few months off. Which is fine by me, because it'll give me plenty of time to figure out biblical slavery. There are some interesting rules. Like:

* You can beat your slave as hard as you want--as long as he survives a day or two postbeating (Exodus 21:21).

* But if you beat him with a rod and he dies immediately, you will be punished (Exodus 21:20).

* You also can't pluck out the slave's eye, or else you have to set him free. Likewise, you can't knock out his tooth, or you set him free. (Exodus 21:26-27).

* If the slave was born to the Hebrew race, then, regardless of his eye and tooth situation, he gets his freedom after six years. If he opts to refuse his freedom, you must put him against a doorpost and drill a hole in his ear with an awl (Exodus 21:6).

As much as I can't wait for Kevin to take over my Kinko's duties, the existence of slavery in the Bible is bewildering. It points to a bigger puzzle. Namely: Judaism, as practiced today, when practiced at its best, is a compassionate religion, just as Christianity, when practiced at its best, is a compassionate religion. Compassionate Judaism fights for the oppressed, encourages generosity, and so on.

But if you read the Hebrew Bible literally, it's often not compassionate at all. Huge chunks of it seem downright barbaric. You've got slavery. An eye for an eye. Capital punishment for everything from adultery to checking your horoscope. God-approved genocide against the Canaanites. And sexism: a girl's consecration price is three shekels to a boy's five shekels, making her only 60 percent as valuable.

So how to reconcile modern Judaism with the realities of the Bible? In my journey, I've heard three main approaches:

1. Ancient Israel was, in fact, barbaric. It was sexist, racist, and violent. Judaism has simply evolved past that.

2. Ancient Israel was not barbaric at all. Quite the opposite. It was compassionate, even by today's standards. You'll hear this view from some hardcore traditionalists. An eye for an eye doesn't mean what you think; it really means the plucker must pay the pluckee money. Or consider slavery, they say. Biblical slaves were not treated like slaves in antebellum Georgia. They had a much better life. One Orthodox Jew I know--who happens to be smart, funny, and sane--compared the biblical slaves' status to that of English butlers. It wasn't a bad job at all. The Scripture's many slavery laws were there to ensure their safety.

3. Ancient Israel was barbaric by our standards, but it was morally evolved compared to other societies of the time. Yes, there was cruel slavery. But at least there were limits, including setting Hebrew slaves free after six years and forbidding murder. Yes, an eye for an eye did mean to pluck out the offender's eye. But it's better than a head for an eye, which is what other Middle Eastern societies were doing. An eye for an eye was a way to limit the cycle of violence. And sure, there was capital punishment, but for far fewer crimes than in the code of Hammurabi over in Mesopotamia.

From what I can tell, this option number 3 seems the most accurate. Or, actually, option-number-3-with-a-slight-tweak seems most accurate. The writers of the Bible were reformers. As one rabbi told me, the Bible is a "minority report." The society portrayed by the biblical stories was probably more advanced than true Israelite society.

Now, there is an option number 4, but it doesn't really tackle the issue directly. It's more of an elegant look-over-here! decoy.

One of my spiritual advisers, Julie Galambush, a professor of religion at the College of William and Mary, explained this tactic to me: You simply act as if the Bible doesn't say what it says. There's a passage in Deuteronomy that says the Israelites should offer peace before attacking a city outside the land of Israel. If the city accepts, you take the residents as your slaves. If the city rejects your offer, you kill all the males and make everyone else slaves. For cities inside the land, you don't even offer peace. You just kill everyone: men, women, children, cattle--"save alive nothing that breathes." Pretty shocking stuff. But when talking about this in the midrash, the rabbis completely ignore the bloodletting. Instead, they focus on the part in which the Israelites offer peace. They say, See! The passage is all about compassion (I'm paraphrasing). "It's clear the rabbis have moral objections to this passage," professor Galambush says. "So they pretend it says something they do believe in--peace-- rather than something they object to. You can't underestimate the radicalness of the rabbis."

My slave Kevin seems like a nice guy, so I'll probably take option number 4 on those passages that allow me to give him a biblical beat-down.

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer . . . --PSALMS 86:6

Day 237, afternoon. Jasper got out of his cast a couple of weeks ago. But the medical traumas never end. Today he trips and falls while dancing a bit too enthusiastically to The Wiggles masterpiece "Fruit Salad." I watch him as he tumbles face forward and smacks his forehead hard against the door frame. It makes a horrible sound, a crack like a line drive off the wall at Shea Stadium.

I pick him up. He is crying by now. I inspect his forehead--a small bump.

"Should we get you some ice?"

He just keeps wailing, openmouthed.

I look at the bump again. It is bigger. Scarily bigger. It has become a bump you'd see on Fred Flintstone's head after he got hit by a rock at the quarry. It looks like a golf ball had been sewn into Jasper's skin.

I run into our bedroom to show Julie, who is still sleeping. We call the doctor, who tells us that if he starts vomiting, bring him to the ER. Otherwise, just ice it down and expect him to have a black eye tomorrow. Toddler's foreheads apparently distort like that.

It's a horrible moment--and also a milestone of sorts. My first reaction, as I was running to show Julie, was to pray to God for Jasper to be OK. It was like reflex praying. Unplanned, unforced.

Can . . . the leopard change his spots?

--JEREMIAH 13:23

Day 238. A spiritual update: I'm all over the place. My belief in God changes by the hour. I have three phases, about evenly split throughout the day. As I type this, I'm in phase two. But that could change by the time I finish the next paragraph.

First, there's the comfortable old position: agnosticism. I haven't erased that totally, and it especially pops up whenever I read about religious extremism.

The second phase is all about a newfound reverence for life. Life isn't just a series of molecular reactions. There's a divine spark in there. The official term is "vitalism." I'd always thought of vitalism as a nineteenth-century relic--in the same category as leeches and phrenology. But now I'm a believer, at least sometimes.

The third phase, the highest level, is when I believe in something more specific, a God who cares, who pays attention to my life, who loves. Why wouldn't there be a God? It makes just as much sense as having no God. Otherwise, existence itself is just too random.

Phase three is an amazing and uplifting state. For instance, my Hollywood dreams are in meltdown mode. My previous book--the one about the encyclopedia--was optioned for a movie. But now the director won't email me back. And when I call his assistant, she always tells me to hold, then returns to report--surprise!--he's not there right now but I am welcome to leave a message. Hmmm. I wonder: Could he be breaking the commandment not to lie?

It's annoying, but things happen for a reason, right? It wasn't meant to be. Perhaps something better will come out of it. Maybe Scorsese will call me out of the blue and tell me that encyclopedias have replaced bloodshed as his new obsession.

Julie always told me that things happen for a reason. To which I would reply, Sure, things happen for a reason. Certain chemical reactions take place in people's brains, and they cause those people to move their mouths and arms. That's the reason. But, I thought, there's no greater purpose. Now I sometimes think Julie's right. There is a reason. There has to be. Otherwise, it's all too absurd. The world can't be that Dadaist.

It's certainly a healthier way to look at life. I feel better when I see the world this way. I ask Elton Richards, the pastor out to pasture, about this. Maybe I should commit myself to believing in God for the simple reason that it will make my life better.

"You could," he says. "But it feels a little too calculated for me."

It smacks of Pascal's wager. This was devised by Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century French mathematician. He said we should believe in God because the cost is minimal, but the potential benefit of heaven is huge. Believe in God just to avoid hell. Pretty cynical, really. Or to use a more recent metaphor, maybe it's the Matrix wager. Am I taking a blue pill just because it's a happier worldview?

"I think you should believe for a more organic reason," says Elton. "If you're going to believe at all."

He who pursues righteousness and kindness will find life and honor. --PROVERBS 21:21

Day 239. I've been trying to be as compassionate as possible. Often this requires energy and planning--going to the soup kitchen, for instance.

But today God or fate gave me a big, juicy softball: An old lady asked me to help her across the street. Never in my thirty-eight years has an old lady asked me to help her across the street. I didn't think those things happened anymore. I thought it was just an expression, like kittens getting stuck in trees.

But after lunch, outside the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I was meeting a friend, this kindly old octogenarian woman tells me that she is worried about making it across Broadway's six lanes alone, and could I maybe help.

I'd be glad to. Though actually ecstatic is a better word. She locks her arm in mine--I figure she's safely past the age when I can't touch her--and we walk across, me holding my right hand out in a stern stoptraffic position, which was totally unnecessary, since the cars were safely motionless at the red light.

I am so happy about the situation, I stay with her for another several blocks, which, oddly enough, doesn't creep her out.

Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

--PSALMS 32:11

Day 240. Mr. Berkowitz is over to pray again today. I can only say no to him so many times. He's giving me another kind but stern lecture. "You have to say a prayer in the morning," says Mr. Berkowitz.

"Right," I say.

"You have to say a prayer over bread."

"Right."

"Did you say the prayer over bread today, Arnold?"

"Right."

"Arnold, I asked you a question. Are you paying attention?"

I am busted. I had tuned out. Mr. Berkowitz is frustrated; not angry, but frustrated.

"Yes, yes, I said the prayer over bread."

"OK," he says.

Then it's on to learning the Hebrew alphabet.

"Aleph, beth, daleth."

"No, aleph, beth, gimel."

"Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth."

It's a time-consuming visit--a ninety-minute chunk out of my day. But in the end, I'm glad he came over, because Mr. Berkowitz said two things that struck me as astoundingly wise.

The first was about how much he loves doing the commandments. "To me, going to pray is like going to do a hundred-thousand-dollar deal," he said.

This is a mind-set I'm trying to adopt. I shouldn't look at the Bible as a collection of pesky tasks on my to-do list. I have to look forward to the commandments. I have to love them.

And in a few cases--just a handful, really--I'm starting to. Like, with the Sabbath. I used to orient my week around Monday, the start of the secular workweek. Now it's the Sabbath. Everything leads up to the Sabbath. On Friday morning I start prepping for it like I'm going on a big date. I make a huge pot of coffee so that I don't have to do anything resembling cooking on the Sabbath. I pile my research books in a corner.

And when the sun sets, I flip off my computer and get to work not working. Because resting is, paradoxically, difficult. The writer Judith Shulevitz talks about how avoiding business requires much effort. She's right. You can't talk about work, you can't even think about work. A notion about Esquire will creep into my brain--I have to write that article on weddings for Thursday--and I'll squash it down. Another will pop up. It's like mental Whac-a-Mole. By the end of Saturday, as the sun finally sets, I feel as if I've done something strenuous but healthy, like I've taken a run through Central Park. I feel good, like I deserved the endorphin rush the Sabbath gave me. And then I start to look forward to next week's Sabbath.

The second thing Mr. Berkowitz says is this: "It's a different way of looking at the world. Your life isn't about rights. It's about responsibilities." It's the biblical version of that famous quote from our first Catholic president: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." It's a good way to think. It's not my natural mind-set, far from it, but I'm giving it a shot.

Consider speech. As a journalist--even though I spent most of my career as a frivolous entertainment journalist--I've been obsessed with my right to free speech. If I was an absolutist in any sense, then it was as a zealot for the First Amendment. Journalists should be allowed to say whatever they want. It's our right. The American way. Take no prisoners. But now I'm trying to balance that mind-set with my responsibility not to engage in evil tongue or the written equivalent. In my article on tuxedos, do I really need to make a cheap joke at David Arquette's expense? Does it make the world a better place? As much as it pains me, I leave my article free from Arquette abuse.

Month Nine: May

In the beginning was the Word . . . --JOHN 1:1

Day 243. Today is the first day of my New Testament life. I'm as nervous as I've been since the start of this experiment, more nervous than even the very first day, more nervous than when I called up Guru Gil.

On the one hand, I can't wait to dive in. It should be a massive education. Before this year, I knew only the very basics of the New Testament and Christianity. Well, the basics plus the random facts that I still remember from the encyclopedia (for example, some early Christians believed that the creation of the world was equivalent to conception, and it occurred on March 25, lending symbolic weight to Jesus's birth nine months later on December 25). But I want more in-depth knowledge. So this will be good for me.

Plus, it feels timely. It's hard to argue with the fact that the New Testament holds more sway in America today than the Old. Or, to be more precise, the Christian literal interpretation of the Bible holds more sway than the Jewish method of exegesis. I don't buy that we're on the verge of a theocracy, but certainly evangelical Christianity--both in its conservative and progressive forms--has a massive impact on our lives.

On the other hand, I'm freaked out. I've already been overwhelmed by the complexity of my own tradition, and now I'm going to venture into even more foreign territory. I told Julie I had a stress headache.

"You don't have to do it, you know," said Julie.

"If I don't, I'll only be telling half the story," I said.

"But it's a big half."

True. But like Nachshon, the Israelite who marched into the Red Sea, I'm going to wade into the water and see what happens. Before I do, though, I have to wrestle with a bunch of Big Issues.

The first Big Issue is this: If I'm going to switch my focus to the New Testament, should I continue following all the rules of the Hebrew Bible? In other words, should I keep my beard and fringes? Or should I break out the Gillette Mach3 and order shrimp fajitas?

After asking this question to pretty much every Christian expert I meet, I've come to this definitive conclusion: I don't know.

You can find a small group--a very small group--of Christians who say that every single Old Testament rule should still be followed by everyone. The ultralegalist camp. They quote these words from Jesus found in Matthew 5:17-18:

Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Jesus is God, but he affirms that the laws of the ancient Israelites still stand.

On the other end of the spectrum are those Christians who say that Jesus overrode all rules in the Old Testament. He created a new covenant. His death was the ultimate sacrifice, so there's no need for animal sacrifice--or, for that matter, any other Old Testament laws. Even the famous Ten Commandments are rendered unnecessary by Jesus.

Consider Matthew 22:37-39, in which Jesus is asked by a lawyer what is the great commandment of the law.

Jesus responds:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Some Christians say all of the other eight commandments flow from those two. You love your neighbor, so you don't lie to him. You love your neighbor, so you don't steal from him. The Old Testament is important historically, but as a moral guidebook, it has been superseded.

And then there's the vast middle ground. Most Christians I met draw a distinction between (a) moral laws and (b) ritual laws. The moral laws are the ones such as those found in the Ten Commandments: no killing, no coveting, and so forth. Those we still need to follow. Ritual laws are the ones about avoiding bacon and not wearing clothes of mixed fibers. Jesus made those laws obsolete.

What does obsolete mean? Is it a sin to keep a beard and avoid shellfish? Or is it just unnecessary, like wearing sunscreen indoors? Ask ten people, and, once again, you'll get ten different answers. But most seem to say, go ahead, wear that sunscreen. It won't hurt. You need to accept Jesus, but you don't need to shave the beard.

Which is a relief. I want to keep the beard. I'm not ready to give up my rituals. That would feel like I ran seventeen miles of a marathon. So unless there's a contradiction in the laws--for instance, the literal interpretation of eye for an eye contradicts the literal interpretation of turn the other cheek--I'll follow both Old and New.

My second Big Issue is this: As a Jewish person, how do I treat the issue of the divinity of Christ?

For the bona fide literal New Testament experience, I should accept Jesus as Lord. But I just can't do it. I've read the New Testament several times, and though I think of Jesus as a great man, I don't come away from the experience accepting him as savior. I've had no road-to-Damascus moment yet.

The closest I've come to such a moment was probably during college when I grew strangely envious of my best friend's Catholicism. He went to mass several times a week and did the sign of the cross before every meal. We ate together at least once a day, and I always felt awkward while I waited for him to finish his prayer. Awkward and superficial. Here he was, funny and smart, but he had something deeper going on than I did. I'd pretend not to look, but I was fixated by the sign of the cross. It's such a simple and beautiful ritual. What if I started doing it with him at dinner? Just to see what it's like? To see if I felt anything? Would my friend be weirded out? Probably. So I never tried it.

Same goes for now. I could adopt the cognitive-dissonance strategy: If I act like Jesus is God, eventually maybe I will start to believe that Jesus is God. That's been my tactic with the God of the Hebrew Bible, and it's actually started to work. But there's a difference. When I do it with the Hebrew God, I feel like I'm trying on my forefathers' robes and sandals. There's a family connection. Doing it with Jesus would feel uncomfortable. I've come to value my heritage enough that it'd feel disloyal to convert.

Which naturally leads to this quandary: If I don't accept Christ, can I get anything out of the New Testament at all? What if I follow the moral teachings of Jesus but don't worship him as God? Or is that just a fool's errand? Again, depends whom you ask.

The more humanist mainline Christian denominations say, yes, it's OK to follow Jesus's ethics without converting to Christianity. Ask a Unitarian or more liberal Lutherans, and they'll tell you there is much to be learned from Christ the moral teacher. This is Christianity with a strong dash of Enlightenment.

The most extreme example of this comes from Enlightenment's archbishop himself, Thomas Jefferson. His version of Christianity is so one-sided it almost seems a parody of this position. In the early 1800s Jefferson created an edition of the Bible called the Jefferson Bible. He stripped away all the supernatural references. Gone was the Resurrection. Gone was the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Gone was the virgin birth. Jefferson's idea was that Christ was a great moral philosopher. So Jefferson kept only Christ's moral teachings: forgiveness, loving thy neighbor, and striving for peace. He called them "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."

The Da Vinci Code tilts the way of Jefferson. Dan Brown doesn't come right out and say that Christ was totally human, but a Christ who marries and has kids sure makes him seem more like us mortal men.

So that's one side. On the other side, most evangelical Christians would say that simply paying attention to Jesus's moral teachings is missing the point. The central message of the Gospels is that Jesus is God, He died for our sins, and He rose again on the third day. You need to accept Him.

The emphasis on faith is a key difference between modern Judaism and current evangelical Christianity. Judaism has a slogan: deed over creed. There's an emphasis on behavior; follow the rules of the Torah, and eventually you'll come to believe. But evangelical Christianity says you must first believe in Jesus, then the good works will naturally follow. Charity and kindness alone cannot save you. You must, as the saying goes, be "justified by faith."

Here's an email I got from a conservative evangelical Christian I contacted. He runs a website that tries to reconcile science with biblical literalism. He wrote:

It is through being in Christ and following Him that we become transformed. Unless one takes this step, one cannot be truly transformed. So, after your year is over, you will go back to being a man who finds purpose in weird projects and writing assignments. Becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is much more rewarding.

In short, I got schooled.

And yet . . . I still want to explore Christian biblical literalism. It's not a minor thing. It's hugely relevant to my quest. So here's my revised plan: I'm going to visit some Christian communities that interpret the Bible literally. I will try to learn about them. And, when inspired, and when possible, I've decided that I should try to experience some of their teachings firsthand. Overall, it will be much less Do It Yourself than my trip through the Hebrew Scriptures. It'll be more like a guided tour.

Which brings me to my final Big Issue. Where to go on my tour? Christian biblical literalism comes in dozens of flavors. No way I could cover them all. I'll do my best. But I'll spend much of my time looking at the two poles that shape our moral debate:

1. The Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell-style conservative fundamentalists, who place a lot of emphasis on the issues of homosexuality, abortion, the Apocalypse, and George W. Bush's foreign policy.

2. The Red-letter Christians, a growing evangelical group that focuses on social justice, poverty, and the environment.

Both accept the Bible as the word of God, both accept Jesus as their savior, but they come out with radically different agendas.

A disclaimer: I'm going to try to be fair, but I'm probably going to fail. It's the same problem I had when I went to the Creation Museum. There are limits to how far my mind can leap. I've been a moderate New York liberal all my life. Will I really be able to get inside the mind of a conservative evangelical from Virginia?

"Judge not, that you be not judged."

--MATTHEW 7:1

Day 247. This evening I spend an hour on the phone talking to Pastor Elton Richards. He wants to give me a theological inoculation.

I tell him I'm about to make a road trip to Jerry Falwell's church, and he wants to make sure I know that, in his opinion, Falwell's version of Christianity bears practically no relation to Jesus's message.

"Take what they say, and in most cases, it's the exact opposite of Jesus's message. Jesus's message was one of inclusion. Theirs is of exclusion."

"OK," I say.

"And they're so focused on the other world and the end times. Jesus cared for the downtrodden and outcasts in this world."

"Got it," I say.

"It's this god-awful certainty that they have."

I promise him and promise him again that I'll spend as much time looking at other, more progressive interpretations of Christianity.

Falwell--who died several months after my visit--embodied a certain ultraliteral brand of Christianity. For decades he was the go-to guy when the mainstream media wanted a quote from the Christian right about homosexuality or abortion. He was the liberal's nightmare, the man who launched a thousand Aaron Sorkin plotlines.

Here's my chance to see Falwell unfiltered. I take a flight to Richmond, Virginia, and drive a rental car to Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg. It's a big week in the Falwell universe. For its fiftieth year, the church has moved from its three-thousand-seat house of worship to a splashy new six-thousand-seat one.

At nine-thirty in the morning, I park my car along with hundreds of others, pull open the glass, mall-like front doors, and step inside Falwell's enclave. Like all megachurches, it's not just a church. It's a complex.

There's a massive, brightly lit walkway called "Main Street." There's a playground with a Noah's ark theme featuring pairs of wooden zebras and tigers, along with a huge whale's mouth that kids can climb into a la Jonah. There's a Starbucks-ish coffee shop called The Lion and the Lamb Cafe, where I get a pretty good iced coffee. Nearby a player piano tinkles Mrs. Falwell's favorite hymns.

Services don't start for a while, but at ten, many of the parishioners attend one of the Bible studies in the classrooms off Main Street. You have an astounding range to choose from--thirty-eight in all, from a tutorial on the Apocalypse to a meeting targeted at Christian biker dudes.

With the imminent increase in my household, I opt for a class called Growing Families, in room 255. There are about thirty churchgoers already assembled, mostly white, mostly crisply dressed, engaging in a prestudy mingle.

"Hello, I'm glad you could come," says a fortysomething woman. She eyes my beard. "We welcome people from all, uh, walks of life."

"Thanks."

"Do you have a growing family?" she asks.

"Yes, I have a son--and two more on the way."

"Wow! And you live here in Lynchburg?"

"No." I pause. "New York."

"Great! What are you doing here?"

"Um, just traveling around the South a bit."

Oh, man. Biblically, I should have been honest and told her about my book, but I only have a day here at Falwell's headquarters, and I didn't want to waste any time.

"You're here with your wife?"

"Uh, yeah. She's back at the hotel."

Another lie. I didn't want to seem like a lout who abandoned his pregnant spouse, which is what I did.

"She didn't want to come?"

"She was going to, but, uh, she had morning sickness."

And on it grows, the tangled web. She keeps asking questions, I keep spitting out lies.

Mercifully, the meeting starts. The pastor, a man who looks like a thinner, younger, brown-haired Falwell, has some announcements. An upcoming luau, a couple's twentieth wedding anniversary--and a welcome to me, soon-to-be-father of twins. The parishioners applaud. I wave a sheepish thank-you.

Man, these people are friendly. That's the overwhelming first impression: They're disorientingly friendly. When I walked into the church, an official greeter named Tip said "Good morning!" with such enthusiasm, I'd have to append a half dozen exclamation points to get across his tone. Nobody is aloof. Everybody keeps eye contact. Everyone smiles. In my four hours there, I got more pats on the back, arms on the shoulders, and double-handed clasps than I've gotten in ten years in New York.

I know that this friendliness has limits--and disturbing ones. I know that Falwell has said "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." I know that after 9/11 he said "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians . . . the ACLU . . . I point the finger in their face and say 'You helped this happen.' " I know that he recently said that we shouldn't worry about so-called global warming because, in Psalms 119:90, it says God has "established the earth and it abideth." I know that his magazine crowbarred poor pursecarrying Teletubby Tinky Winky out of the closet.

Presumably, Tip and others share these views. But that intolerance coexists with a stunning bonhomie. The place is a study in sweet and sour.

After about fifteen minutes of announcements with no end in sight, I decide I need to get out of there. This was no different than a thousand other churches or temples in America. I need something more spicy.

"Be right back," I lie to the guy next to me, as I slip out. "I have to go to the bathroom."

I wander down a flight of stairs to the singles seminar. That could be good.

The woman at the singles welcoming table asks how old I am.

"Thirty-seven," I say.

"You're right in there," she points. "It's for singles thirty-five to fifty."

That hurts. I am in the oldsters' group. By the way, another fib. I am thirty-eight. Vanity.

The leader of the singles group is a burly ex-military guy with a bald head, a gray goatee, wire-rimmed glasses balanced on his forehead, and a huge amount of energy. He seems more into tough love than the folks at the Growing Families class.

He paces back and forth, telling us that we should give up the idea that we're perfect.

"Anyone ever say bad things about other people?"

We nod.

"Anyone ever think bad sexual thoughts?"

Yes.

"Anyone ever have envy?"

Yes.

"Anyone ever lie?"

It's a sermon directed at me.

"Did I ever tell you the story of when I was working as Dr. Falwell's bodyguard?" says our leader. "I handed him the mail one Tuesday, and he says to me, 'Did you vote today?' And I said, 'Um . . . um . . . um . . . yeah.' But I hadn't. I lied. I lied to Dr. Falwell. I had forgotten that it was Election Day. But I know that I have voted in every election since."

I can't figure out how this applies to dating, but there's no time for questions. The class ends at eleven o'clock, and the featured show begins right after: Falwell's sermon.

The sermon takes place in an enormous room with comfy, Loews Cineplex-style seats; three swiveling TV cameras; and two huge screens that display the hymn lyrics karaoke-style over photos of seagulls and purple orchids.

On the side are two "Cry Rooms." When I saw the words Cry Room on the church map, I thought it was for parishioners who became too wildly emotional. Actually, it's a soundproof space for screaming babies.

Falwell himself walks onto the stage. There he is: He's got that familiar silver hair with the tidy part. He's packing a few more pounds than he used to. As the three-hundred-person choir sings a hymn, Falwell leans way back on his heels, his hands clasped together in front of him, smiling beatifically.

Falwell starts with some announcements of his own--that the cafe is open from eight in the morning to eleven at night, that Rick Stanley, the stepbrother of Elvis Presley, is visiting today. And then Falwell puts his hands on the pulpit and begins his sermon proper. And here's the thing about the sermon. It is kind of . . . bland. There was no fire, no brimstone, no homophobic remarks, no warnings of the imminent Apocalypse.

I've read dozens of Falwell's sermons online since that visit. And this wasn't a total aberration. More than half of the content is run-of-the-mill stuff: the importance of passing the baton to today's youth. The suggestion to keep a prayer journal. A moral lesson about being optimistic, another about having patience--both of which I find hard to argue with.

I noticed the same thing from watching hours of Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Sometimes you'll get a crazy "Let's assassinate Hugo Chavez"-type comment. But a lot of it is indistinguishable from standard morning TV: an interview with a gospel singer, or a health segment on the club's weekly "Skinny Wednesday" feature (the wackiest thing I learned there was that Robertson has a side business in "age-defying protein pancakes").

That's the big secret: The radical wing of the Christian right is a lot more boring than its liberal detractors would have you believe.

Falwell's sermon today ties his church's fiftieth anniversary to the concept of the Jubilee in the Bible, which occurs once every fifty years. He encouraged us to be "soul winners" and win over the two hundred thousand souls in the Lynchburg area.

It's not a particularly offensive sermon, but I will say that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Jubilee the Bible talks about. The Bible's Jubilee year is about forgiving debts and returning all property to the original owner, about social justice, about evening the balance between rich and poor. Falwell's was about expanding his church.

After the service, the curious seeker can get one-on-one counsel with one of Falwell's pastors. I am assigned to Tom, who looks to be in his twenties, and has a spiky boy-band hairdo to offset his suit and tie.

Tom works at Liberty University, Falwell's nearby college. It's an amazing place, Liberty, the total opposite of my permissive, grades-optional alma mater. The Liberty rulebook contains such items as: "Six reprimands and $25 fine for attendance at a dance, possession and/or use of tobacco" and "twelve reprimands and $50 fine for attendance at, possession or viewing of an 'R,' 'X,' or 'NC-17' rated movie, or entering the residence hallway of the opposite sex."

I decide I have to redeem myself. I have to stop lying, so I tell Tom that I'm Jewish and writing a book about my spiritual quest. He's interested. I ask if I could gain anything from following the moral teachings of Jesus without being born again.

"It's OK to follow his teachings. It can make you a better person," he says. "But it's not enough. You need to accept Him, to be born again.

"I got saved when I was a freshman in high school," Tom continues. "I was a good Christian already. I went to church. I acted as morally as I could. I had accepted Jesus here." Tom points to his head. "But not here." He points to his heart. "I was off by twelve inches."

He talks so passionately, so intensely, with such freedom from irony, I feel myself becoming unanchored. Perhaps to counter this, as a defensive measure, I bring up the gay issue.

"I have a lot of trouble with the Bible's stance on homosexuality," I say. Adding somewhat lamely: "I have a lot of gay friends."

"So do I," Tom says.

This takes me aback. A Falwell pastor hanging with Lynchburg's gay community? It turns out, Tom meant formerly gay people trying to overcome their gayness, which made more sense.

"Yes, homosexuality is an abomination," says Tom. "But I'm a sinner too. We're all sinners. You just have to love them."

This is a pretty mild stance--the hate-the-sin, not-the-sinner idea. I'm guessing he toned the rhetoric down for his Northeastern Jewish audience of one. But, still, I find this stance intolerant in its own way. It's like saying that we should love Jesse Jackson, except for the fact that he's black.

After about a half hour, my questions slow, and Tom asks if we could pray together. We close our eyes, bow our heads, put our elbows on our knees, and he begins addressing the Lord. "Thank you, Lord, for giving A. J. and me the time to talk today. And may you give him more guidance in his spiritual journey, Lord."

More guidance--that I need for sure. We can agree on that.

. . . The men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

--ROMANS 1:27

Day 256. Back in New York, I'm continuing my tutorial in evangelical Christianity. It's Friday night, and I'm sitting in on a Bible study group. The group has been around for thirty years and meets every week on the Upper East Side of New York. Tonight we'll be delving into the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter three. We'll be led by a man named Dr. Ralph Blair, who is a hardcore Christian evangelical.

Oh, I should mention one other thing: Ralph Blair is gay. And outof-the-closet gay. Not, mind you, the I-once-was-gay-but-now-am-cured type of gay. Ralph--and all the other men in his Bible group--embrace their homosexuality with the same zeal that ultraconservative evangelicals condemn it. They're the anti-Robertsons.