We have spoken about love for the Bible. But let me lift up the larger aspect of this love and refer you toward the end, to one of the most beloved passages in the beloved book: I Corinthians 13, the Ode to Love. Here Paul has to deal with the question, How can diversity and pluralism be an asset instead of a liability? How can we learn, as some of the feminist theologians have taught us, to turn the old statement around and say, How much diversity do we need? How much unity can we afford? We are used to asking, Can the center hold? How much unity do we need? How much diversity can we allow? Paul has an image that love is measured by how much diversity can handle. And he had to learn it hard, because in Galatia, in an earlier part of his ministry, he thought that by stamping his foot, he could get his way. You remember what he says in Galatians I: If anybody preaches and teaches otherwise than I do, be it so an angel form heaven, damned be that one. That's chutzpah. But now he knows in Corinth that he is one of the many, and he is even, perhaps, low man on the totem pole, so he gets ecumenical.

It's so moving. Oh, how I love that book which tells me these things. It's so moving: he says that we now see like in an old-fashioned bad mirror, in a glass, darkly. And now our knowledge is only partial. That's called relativism. It is when he thinks about the diversity that he has to tell us: Don't be so cocky about the truth. You have your insights, but you are just at the beginnings. And then he ends by saying, so there remains those three: faith, hope, and love, and greatest of them is faith. Well, that's what he should have said, according to his own thinking.Love: It's the best The basic line: He is the apostle of faith, everything depends on faith. But here, suddenly, there is a breakthrough in his thinking, and he says: And the greatest of these is love, agape, esteem of the other, not "insisting on its own way," as the RSV puts it.

So, it is proper for me to end these five points where the Bible teaches us to deal with it-as a friend, not to give it honor by just inflating it, but to hear it as that strange way in which the divine has broken in through human thought and human words and human experience.

Finally, let me leave you with a word which is the one that, in my own long love relationship to this book, I want to have in my mind when my end comes. It reads, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, like this: "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit."

Ultimately, I came to learn that there are at lest three quite distinct symbol systems, or paradigms, for Christian theology coming out of the Bible. One is dominated by the idea of God as the judge, and what is going to happen to us on the day of judgment.God is the judge: Arnold is the bailiff

Everything circles around God's judgment, and sin and forgiveness and redemption and the cross-that's Western Christendom in Catholicism and Lutheranism. Then there is God as Lord. And that has to do with God as Lord and we as subject, and the world is full of covenants-that's Calvin and also the Jewish tradition. And the model gave the basic model for the federal structure of the United States; foedus in Latin means convenant. It's the sociopolitical model of God.

And then there is the third, the Johannine. It's all about life. Sin is sickness, not primary guilt. It's not about obedience and Lordship. It's life: He came that they should have life, and have it abundantly. In him was life. Out of his innermost parts, streams of living water will flow (John 7). And everything is to be born anew, born out of water and blood (John 3). That's John, and that's Eastern Christendom. There is no crucifix in an Eastern church; there is the icon, where the divine life shines through the human image.

These are three different ways of thinking about God. What a richness. And you don't see them until you lay them apart. Of course they flow into one another, in all our traditions. But it is by studying the scriptures to get the integrity of each of these that they come to life. It is a little like the Gospels: if you mix them, you don't get the feel of how many theologies there are in scripture. It's like with homogenized milk: when you homogenize milk, you can't make whipped cream anymore.Dairy products: Thick like Scripture And for sermons, that's a deadening thing.

So when the preacher preaches Luke, it should sound like Luke. And even the Lutherans should not mix in a little Paul to make it kosher. So, not so uptight. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Richness. Plurality. Plurals. Yes, meanings is better than meaning. Isn't that, in a way, what the Trinity is about? Isn't that odd, these confused monotheists who speak about the Trinity: We couldn't quite settle for something which was just oneness, we had to have more of a fullness of an interplay, of a giving and receiving. Do you remember how it is with the oneness in John 17, where Jesus prays that they all be one? And you, father, are in me, and I am in you, and they are in us. It's like the biological world: Everything is interdependent. It's a giving and receiving. It's a oneness that is not a glob, but a living interplay. Plural.

Which leads me to the fifth point: Not so universal. And here I come full circle. I said in the beginning that I read the Bible as if it was just about me. And now I say, the Bible, my beloved Bible, it is indeed my Bible. There might be other holy scriptures-and that might not be as threatening as some people think. Not to claim universality and uniqueness? I always felt that to speak about the uniqueness of Christianity or the uniqueness of Christ does more for the ego of the believer than it does for God. Has God Only One Blessing? is the wonderful title of a recent book. How can I sing my song to Jesus with abandon, without telling negative stories about others? What one religion says about another religion, what one beloved scripture claims to be over against other scriptures, comes pretty close to a breach against the commandment "Though shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." What we say about the others is usually self-serving. We say, Is it self-serving? Oh no, it is just giving God honor. But think about it. Think about the scriptures themselves. Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before people that they see your good deeds and become Christian." That's not what it says. It says, "Let your light shine for people so that they see your good deeds and praise your father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5). Your father-so that people have a reason to be happy that there are Christians in the world, instead of getting irritated at them, if not worse. Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." But who wants the world to become a salt mine?

We are born as a minority religion, as a religion among religions. And we are heirs to the Jewish perspective on these things: that's what I learned from the scriptures. It says, to Israel, that Israel is meant to be a light to the nations. That's what Jesus speaks about: a light to the nations. The Jews have never thought that God's hottest dream was that everybody become a Jew. They rather thought that they were called upon to be faithful and that God somehow needed that people in the total cosmos. What a humility, but we called it tribalism. From the enlightenment, everything had to be universal. But when Christianity started its universal claim, and got power, it led to the crusades. We couldn't really think that it was not God's hottest dream that everybody be like us. So I say, no, the Bible is my Bible. The milk of salvation: Suckling from the gospelsThis is the breast that I, as a child of God, have been nourished from. And for the little child, when the child is born that's the whole world, the mother's breast. But maturing means to recognize that other kids have sucked other mothers' breasts. That belongs to growing up.

Now this is my Bible. It was given to me as a gift, and it is full of love, for which I am grateful. If I have found a doctrine, that is my doctrine. I don't need to bad-mouth all others. This is theology for the next generations. Paul was on to that. Paul, late in his mission, had to learn to deal with plurality.

PART FOUR: Final Thoughts 

In my first post, I explained the first wrong way to read the Bible; the second lesson is that the Bible is not always as deep as we think. Of course, because it is the word of God, it is going to be bottomless, and the deeper you can make it, the more honor to God. I think about that passage where Paul says in Romans 14 that everything that is not done in faith is sin—and any theologian who reads that statement gets the existential quivers. What a wonderful statement. But when you read it in context, it seems to mean that whatever is not done out of conviction, but just to play up to somebody else’s opinion, lacks authenticity and is sin. Or, when Paul says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for God works in you both to will and to work—that’s what they call a paradox. But it’s no paradox there in Philippians 2—Paul is just saying: You were pretty good when I was with you, but now I’m gone; but remember, God is with you, so there is no reason why you should not work just as hard.

Light and quick: Float like a Lutheran, sting like a BaptistBut we like it to be so terribly deep. One of the best rules for reading scriptures is the very same as for preaching: It should be light, it should be quick, and it should be tender. It should not be ponderous, it should not be labored, and it should not be heavy.

Third, in the scriptures, sometimes it ain’t as sure as you think. St.Paul—I like him, but he was arrogant. He had a lot of human flaws, but he was great. He was a great, great theologian. A theologian is someone who sees problems where no one else sees problems, and sees no problems where other people see problems. Once, when he is speaking (I Cor.7)—it happens to be about family matters, divorce, and sex, and things of that kind—he says: On so-and-so, I have a word from the Lord, but then on so-and-so, I have no word from the Lord. I think he was the last preacher in Christendom who had the guts to say that. New situations come, really new situations. What shall we then do? And Paul says: I have no word from the Lord, but I’ll give you my advice. I’m doing as well as I can. And I think I am right…. That’s wonderful insight. What a lovely Bible that tells us that sometimes we might need to think, and not just to think that it is settled.

The fourth “no”: not so uptight. Apologetics, defending the Bible—defending God, for that matter—is a rather arrogant activity. Who is defending whom? I love to use the old Swedish expression, “It is pathetic to hear mosquitoes cough.” I don’t know why that is funny, but in Swedish it is funny. And apologetics is mosquitoes coughing. It kills so much of the joy in reading and practicing the love of the scriptures.

It is always a little moving when believers want to help God. There was a man in the second century of the Christian era whose name was Tatian, and he was so terribly bothered that, in the various Gospels, Jesus seemed to say things a little differently. And some things that were described in one Gospel were described otherwise in another—not to speak about the Gospel of John. So he thought he should help God by creating a unified Gospel. It’s called the Diatessaron. And it was very tempting for the church, because those who wanted to attack the church said: What is this? Jesus says that, and then Jesus says that. And the apologists tried to say: Of course he said it more than once, but a little differently.

The Gospels don't match: But they'll set your world on fireWell, that wasn’t quite convincing. So we got four Gospels, which do not always match, but Irenaeus, blessed be his memory, decided that it was more valuable to have the richness of the four than the streamlining of the one. And so the four Gospels are wonderful lessons in the fact that God is not pedantic when it comes to telling the story; rather, God wants it told a little different to catch as many aspects as possible. As I like to say, when you have four portraits of the somebody you love very much, you don’t make transparencies of them and send the light through—that becomes blur, holy blur because it is the Gospels, but still blur. You look at one portrait of a time. And actually where they are different is usually where the artist has something important to say. If you get the apologetic devil in you, then you get bothered by the richness and by the variation. And the more I have lived with the scriptures, the more loving my feelings for them have become. The more important thing for me is to make them as different as possible, in order to catch as many insights and as many perspectives as possible.

PART THREE: Who Owns God?

To give reasons for one’s love feels awkward. You might be able to give reasons for your choices, but before I fell in love with the Bible, I never went to the library to read the Holy Qur’an, or the Bhagavad Gita, or even the Book of Mormon. That’s not how love happens—because love does happen; it happened to me.

What else can one do—what else can I do—but tell my story, the story of my love for the Bible: how to read, to study, to ponder, to preach the Bible; how it became my professional, even professorial, career, as that study watered, even lubricated, my soul.

For the longer I live, the less adequate and less useful become all those stifling distinctions between academy and church, faith and reason, the intellectual and the spiritual. There is such an interplay between those fabricated distinctions that one cannot live without the other. So here is the story, the story of my love relationship with the scriptures.

PART 1: GETTING HOOKED

Somehow it did not start with the Bible. In my home, the Bible was supposed to be a little too Methodist. It started with Jesus, mainly as he had come to me through the hymn book, which is used as a spiritual guide in the piety of the Church of Sweden, and which we read a hymn from on Sunday morning. To go to church was a dangerous sliding into Phariseeism, as I was brought up. Somehow, what I had gathered about Jesus spoke to me, fascinated me. The image I had was of an incredibly interesting mixture of strength and kindness—strength so different from the bully world of the school yard.

Jesus became not my hero, but rather my friend. I guess I was 12 or so when I sneaked away to church on Sunday mornings—in spite of the risk of Phariseeism—to be where Jesus was supposed to be. But then in fall 1935, I was invited to something called a Bible study group. And I was given a pocket New Testament, both as a symbol and as a text, and I was told to read it as if it was all about me—my life, my conscience, my duties to God and to my neighbor. I was hooked, for life.

Not about him: The Prodigal Son

The old principle tua res agitur—it’s all about you, or, it is your case—carried me for a long time. And I got a language for my faith; I got words for my feelings; I got pictures for my dreams. And my image of Jesus became more multifaceted.

When I thought I understood, there was always more and more and more. I had begun to feed on the mysteries of God. And it was intellectually a most stimulating awakening. That way of reading served me well, for a while. This was the time when I was naïve and arrogant enough to identify with the people I read about, or whose writings I read. I felt like Peter and I felt like Paul—especially when they had negative feelings. I felt like all the disciples. I felt like the Prodigal Son—I had not yet learned that the story in Luke 15 was actually about the older son, who is the one who is like church people, those who stayed on the farm (somebody has to), but couldn’t take it unto himself to be grateful when his brother came home. I wanted to become more like Jesus, wondering what he would say or do had he been where I was.

That way of reading lasted for a while, and who would say that it isn’t the way I still read and feel from time to time. But my love for the scriptures led me to ways of reading that were so much less ego-centered. The Bible was really not about me. It was many other things—in the long run, much more interesting things. It was about many things in distant lands, from many distant ages.

I came to read it more and more like a book, perhaps more as a “classic.” Now it spoke to me from a great distance, of centuries and cultures deeply different from my own. And it began to be, just by its difference, that the fascination grew, that it had a way of saying to me, there are other ways of seeing and thinking and feeling and believing than you have taken for granted. And it just added to my love—for love is not just fascination.

When I short-circuited my reading in those earlier days of having it just be about me, I slowly learned that this was a greedy way to deal with the richness of the scriptures.

PART 2: FIVE WRONG WAYS TO READ THE BIBLE

So let me share with you as a tribute to the Bible—and perhaps in a strange way—five “no” statements. It is usual when one is describing love to describe it in positive and glowing terms. But my friendship with the Bible gave me the joy, and the courage, to express my love in five statements of “not.” The first one I have pointed at: It is not primarily about me. Second, it is not always as deep as we think. Third, even Paul isn’t always totally sure. Fourth, don’t be so uptight. And fifth, it is probably not as universal as we think.

Friendly debate: In the Jewish tradition, God likes the argumentative

It is perhaps odd to express my love in such negative terms. But it is also perhaps in the line of that wonderful word of Jesus in chapter of John: I do not call you any longer servants, but I call you friends. Somehow I became friends with the Bible. In the biblical tradition, and in the Jewish tradition, to be called the friend of God, you had to be one who argued with God. Abraham, arguing about Sodom and Gomorrah, was called a friend of God. Job was called the friend of God. To me, Jesus is the friend of God, because he argues with God. And so, these five “no’s” of mine I bring to you as a sign of love and friendship.

The first “no” is the one which became the watershed in my love story with the Bible: It is not about me. In Galatians 3 it says that the law became, as many people translated, the tutor unto Christ. And I had learned, in good Lutheran theology—and John Wesley was on that line, too—that the law was for the preparation of my conscience. The law was the tutor, and tutored me so that I could fully understand not only what I should do, but also that I couldn’t live up to it, and hence needed a savior. The law was a tutor unto Christ, preparing, tendering my conscience, so that my need for forgiveness would become so great.

Then I learned Greek. That sometimes has its value. And it seemed to me very clear that the text actually said something quite different. It said that the law for the Jewish people had been a kind of harsh babysitter who saw to it that they did not raid the kingdom until it was Gentile time, so that the Gentiles could also be in on the deal. That’s what the text actually said: The law had been tutored until it was time for the Gentiles to come in. That was confusing. Then I looked in my concordance, and I found that what the preachers had been preaching about when they preached about Paul, the forgiveness of sins, was never mentioned by Paul in either Galatians or Romans.

It's all about me: Uh, no it's not

I started to recognize that when Paul spoke about justification by faith, he was really giving the argument in favor of his Gentile converts. He had to come to grips with how, in God’s word and God’s mind, his mission to the Gentiles fitted into God’s total plan. It was about the Jews and the Gentiles and not about me. What an awakening. And I read in Romans 7: I cannot understand that I act as I act, because the good things I want to do, I don’t, and the bad things I do not want to do, I do. I, wretched human being—who is going to rescue me? And I thought that at least it was about me. I mean it was psychologically sound and easy to show that that’s the way it is. But then I found that Paul said: If I act as I do not want and I do not act act as I want, then it isn’t I who do it. That’s what the text says. Then he said: Then I agree to the law that it is good. This sounded strange. He wasn’t very bothered, was he, by his inner conflict. He described something quite different. He used this wonderful psychological example to prove that the holy law and the commandment was holy, righteous, and just. I hadn’t cared about that, because I thought it was about me. And then I read: We have the God who justifies the ungodly. And Abraham believed, and it was counted him unto the righteousness (Rom. 4). And I thought that this had to do with God’s grace, by which we are forgiven. But it seemed that the point here was quite simply that Abraham was a gentile when he believed, because the circumcision didn’t happen until chapter 17 of Genesis and we were only in chapter 15.

So, Paul had found a wonderful exegetical key to the mystery of his Gentile mission. It wasn’t about me. And I read in Chapter II in Romans where Paul says: You Gentiles had gotten a little uppity toward the people of Israel, and I’ll tell you a secret, lest you be conceited, and that is that all of Israel will be saved, so that’s none of your business. So it was about Jews, about people.

And, imagine, I read these things during the end of the Second World War, when the camps in Auschwitz and Dachau opened up, and I still thought that Romans was a theological tractate about my soul. And I didn’t feel that it was about people. And I didn’t feel that Paul had fathomed that this Gentile condescension toward the Jewish people had started to happen already in his own time. How come the greatest missionary of the Bible warns his converts of missionary zeal? Isn’t that strange? Or, is it not so strange? Paul had been burned once. It was out of religious zeal that he had committed his only sin-—no, perhaps not his only sin, but the only sin he ever mentioned that he committed, namely, that he had persecuted the church. And he saw that now perhaps it started all over again with the Christians toward the Jews. Oh, that we had listened to him instead of to the tradition that didn’t see the Jews, but just made them a kind of brick in the game of interpretation.

I learned that it was not about me, but it was teaching me about God’s way of dealing with the world, with people, with tensions between people of different faiths. What an insight. What a wonderful book that I had claimed for my own soul game instead of feeling the big drama of God, in which I was very little.

PART TWO: How Not to Read the Bible 

My earliest crush was on Shaun Cassidy. Oh, he was hot. I played that damn “Da Doo Ron Ron” song over and over, traded pictures with other Tiger Beat readers, put his toothy dimply poster on my bedroom door. And of course, I watched “The Hardy Boys” obsessively. My favorite episode was the one in which Shaun is in a terrible accident and has to be rushed to the hospital on a gurney, shirt opened to the waist. His naked, concave chest is as hairless as an egg. In an early act of pre-teen rebellion, I decided to feign illness and play hooky from a Holocaust-remembrance service simply to watch a rerun (A RERUN!) of this episode.

Hairy or Hairless: Dare to bare your hair. Today, I promise you, I would not skip a Holocaust-remembrance service so I could salivate over this man-child’s baby-rat-like smooth sternum. As a fully formed sexual grownup, I prefer my men with hair. And not just a tasteful little patch, dead-center, either: I like a full-on chestal pelt, hirsute arms, be-furred legs, even a butt rug. Body hair turns me on. Once, when I was on a blind date with a reasonably cute boy, we sat next to each other in a restaurant, forearms on the table, almost touching. I looked at his tanned, hairless arm and knew I could not have sex with this person. I’d like to think I’m open-minded, but he looked like a fetus.

To some, body hair is icky, smelly, sticky. It gets in the sheets and clogs the drain. But to me, it’s primal, manly, sexual. I view my Lycanthrophilia (ok, I made that word up—it means love of werewolves in Greek) is a sign of sophisticated taste. Hairy men are mysterious, Other. Hairless men are…well, girlie. Comfy. Familiar. They look like…me. Hairy men are imported dark chocolate; hairless men are drugstore malted milk balls.

Of course, teenyboppers have always loved and will always love the hairless boys. They’re training wheels on the road to real men. They’re slender, feminine girl-boys: Unthreatening. (There’s a reason Justin Timberlake was the cute one and Joey Fatone was the funny one.) But why do so many grown women skeeve at the sight of male fuzz? Is it because they see hairless men as gentler, more likely to respect a woman’s equality? Is a womanly preference for dainty smoothness a statement about our growing economic power and the mainstreaming of feminism? Or does it show our own ambivalence about gender roles?

Hugh: Your mutton chops are dreamy. What am I, a social scientist? I do know that the average human has 5 million hair follicles, as many as an ape, and I want to see a hair sprouting from every single one. OK, that’s an exaggeration; no one loves back hair. I used to make fun of it, same as everybody else, while worshipping at the altar of the Baldwinian chest. But when you actually fall in love with a guy who has a dorsal rug and doesn’t wax, well, you start not caring. Love doesn’t start off blind, but it becomes kind of nearsighted.

Luckily, I’ve got some friends who share my predilections. My friend Margaret calls her hirsute honey Randy “my mink husband.” My friend Daryl-lynn and I sat glued to HBO for the entire run of "Six Feet Under,” jabbering over our shared crush, Peter Krause. During an extended shirtless scene, we observed that our man was sporting much more hair than he did a few years ago, during his lone topless scene on ABC's "Sports Night." (Yes, it’s stalkerishly tragic that we tracked this. Shut up.) I maintained that he’d grown extra fuzz. Daryl-Lynn blamed his earlier sparseness on chest clippers. (I will never understand this grooming choice, beloved of gay men and actors. I understand the love of bare skin, though I don’t condone it, and I endorse the love that dare not speak its name: the love of full-on fur. But why would you want a chestal crew cut? That’s not a happy medium; it’s an abomination.) I have yet to see Dirty Sexy Money, Krause’s current show, but my friend Jessica has kept me apprised of Pete’s peltal progress: “Not too much, but it’s there,” she emailed. “Also a little fuzz on the upper belly. DO YOU NEED THIS LEVEL OF PELT GRANULARITY?” Yes. My friends are givers.

David Hasselhoff is back: Now here is a man that I wouldn't mind being saved by. Still, one generally sees shaven and waxed chests everywhere one looks, despite Tom Ford’s determination to make chest hair the new black. Many people positively associate hairlessness with youthfulness; others think bareness looks neater; others think hairlessness shows off musculature better. The critic Clive James once described the look of a tanned, hairless, bulging body builder as “a condom filled with walnuts.” Ew. I find it curious that testosterone plays such a large part in male features like body hair, and testosterone is so fetishized by body builders (who may chug it, pop it or shoot it), yet they choose to pair their bulging muscles with skin as hairless as an Olsen twin’s. The guys on the covers of Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness look scary to me. All those bald chests surging, so pumped, so empty. Nair for Men was introduced in 2003, a dark year in hair history.

Fortunately for those of us who like to objectify others while cattily dismissing tastes that are different from our own, there are always Bears, happily hairy big gay men. I used to retreat to a delightful outpost called Fur on Film. I was not the demo, but I adored this exhaustive compendium of images of hairy movie stars, modern-day and historical (James Gandolfini, William Holden, Chris Isaak, Hugh Jackman…oh, I could go on and on in alphabetical paroxysms of joy). Tragically, the site is now called hairyceleb.com and is no longer free. And I am a cheap Jew.

Tom Selleck: I'd shag you any day. But here’s a sample of its genius: the entry for Liev Schrieber. “In the film Denise Calls Up, none of the characters ever speak face to face…there are great fur scenes as Liev dabbles in some phone sex. The camera follows his hand as he runs the hand piece all over his hairy torso. In another scene we see Liev completely naked with a telephone carefully positioned over his genitals. This is a great film if you have a fetish for hairy men & telephones.” Okay! The site also features debate from purists wondering whether stars like Antonio Banderas and Val Kilmer are hairy enough to warrant inclusion. (Hey, I'm open-minded. I’d let them stay. However, I'd suggest you avoid clicking on the pics of Ed Asner in the bathtub.)

A wonderful Nick Cave song begins, “Last night my kisses were banked in black hair.” He’s not talking about chest hair, but the song speaks to me. There’s no feeling like being nestled in forests of dark, warm fur, safe and loved and warm. You girls who are still loving the Shauns and Justins of the world don’t know what you’re missing.

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ALSO IN JEWCY:

Izzy Grinspan and Andy Selsberg debate hipster beards. Are they creepy and dad-like? Or do they speak to some kind of primal male fashion urge?

 

RELATED STORIES OUTSIDE JEWCY:

Andrew Sullivan says "I am bear, hear me roar" in Salon.

Charles Paul Fruend considers the connection between Jews and our furry ancestors the Neanderthals in Slate.

Christopher Hitchens gets his thighs waxed in Vanity Fair.

Most people my age would take a trip to a village ruled by fortunetellers for its ironic value, but when I pulled up to the spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, I genuinely believed I would reach the ghost of my father. After all, I had in the past.

My father died when I was 20. We held the funeral service in the same Roman Catholic Church where he had been an altar boy. All three of his wives—two Jewish and named Linda, one Catholic and named Ginny—and all six of his children sat in the front row. As the rest of our dad’s family stuck out their tongues for communion and made the sign of the cross, my Jewish brothers Paul and Daniel and I stayed in our seats. The priest talked about how we’d be reunited with my dad in heaven, and I wondered whether this applied to us as Jews. If someone had told me that forsaking my Jewish beliefs meant I’d see my father again, no doubt I’d have done it.

Song of faith: The single of "Only the Good Die Young" Here was my basic understanding of the two faiths present in my family: one focused on what happened when you were alive, and one on what happened after you were dead. So once someone close to me was dead, I shifted from a Jewish to a Christian point of view. The night before my father was buried I prayed to God to be reunited with him, and I fell asleep fantasizing about blasting Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young,” his favorite song, from a boom box outside his funeral. I hummed it under my breath during the service, clutching the crucifix the priest had given me in one fist and the hand of my six-year-old brother in the other. Losing my father convinced me that Christianity was like magic life insurance: Believe and there was no death.

Once I started thinking about the afterlife, I began to notice all the opportunities society offers to connect with the dead, from the five-dollar fortuneteller living next door to me in a basement apartment in the West Village to the young man in pancake makeup who came on TV every afternoon with the promise of “crossing over.” Because my father’s religion was all about saints and spirits and holy ghosts, it was easy for me to believe in his spirit. Suddenly I found profundity in things that had once seemed invisible or ridiculous to me before his death.

I'm not the only one willing to pay for a conduit to the Great Beyond. Around the country, an entire movement has been summoned up to service the needs of bereaved relatives desperate for one last chance to commune with the dead. TV psychic John Edward (watch him here) has managed to cash in on the trend twice, starring in shows on the SciFi Channel and Lifetime. Even science is getting into the game: University of Arizona psychology professor Gary Schwartz has published The Afterlife Experiments, in which he scrutinizes published, peer-reviewed studies of mediums to figure whether they pass muster with the scientific method. They do indeed, he says.

Ten years after my father’s death, I decided it was time to see whether he was still with me. I wanted to hear from him, but even more, I wanted confirmation that he was hearing me every time I spoke to him silently, with my eyes closed. And consulting a spiritualist medium didn’t feel like a compromise to my Jewish identity. It was my Jewish mother who’d long ago given me faith in after-death communication.

Just after my father died, on a trip to England, my mom met with a man named Mr. Molinari, a medium at the Hogwarts-esque London College of Psychic Studies (LCPS). At dinner the next day she insisted I visit him as well.

Medium not-so-rare: Once you start looking for them, psychics are everywhere I protested. I was about to be 21 and what had happened seemed so unreal to me—my healthy, 54-year-old father rendered paralyzed and speechless, then dead, of a spontaneous brain hemorrhage—that I had to work constantly to convince myself of the reality of it. If I was ever to "get over it," I couldn't allow myself to believe contact was possible.

A waiter appeared at our table with a silver platter of marzipan fruits. I had always hated the chalky paperweights—simulacra of more delicious things. My mother reached for a "grape," then offered the tray to me.

"Yuck!" I said, "I hate marzipan."

"Fine by me," she said, in a singsong voice, "But Daddy loved it."

"OK," I said, gesturing up to heaven, "Daddy, if you like marzipan, tell me tomorrow."

At LCPS the next day, Mr. Molinari gestured for me to follow him into a musky room on the third floor. "Different mediums work different ways,” he said. “I see things. I am going to close my eyes, and I want you to do the same. Then concentrate on nothing. Just be here and give me a minute. Then I'll tell you what I see."

He had a soft British accent and he didn't seem at all the type of person to be involved with the dead. If I saw him on the street, I probably would've taken him for a small business owner—the kind of man who runs the family sweet shop. I closed my eyes and put my hot palms on my knees, thinking, Please God let this be real.

First, Mr. Molinari saw a woman. He thought it was my grandmother, and she said my apartment needed plants. Disappointing. Then another woman, this one all in black. With her was, according to Mr. Molinari, “Your father.”

Chills. I was a reasonably young girl—anyone would assume both my parents were still living. And my mother had promised she'd told Mr. Molinari nothing. She'd made my appointment over the phone, giving the receptionist just my first name, so as not to give anything away. I stayed silent, waiting for more. He said some cheesy things, the sort of things a person would think a grieving child would need to hear—be strong, follow your heart, your father will always be with you—but then there was a surprise.

"One more thing before you go," said Mr. Molinari, "And I must admit, this has me confused. Your father is holding out a tray of those little fruits Italians make out of almond paste, and he says, "This is not just for proof, but also to remind you to treat yourself once in a while.’ Do you understand what that means?"

Afterlifeville, USA: The gates of Lily Dale Wow, right?

This story has served me many times in the past eleven years, most recently to justify my trip to Lily Dale. Founded in the mid-1800s, this town of small, ramshackle, pastel-colored Victorians—more summer camp than gothic hideaway—about an hour southwest of Buffalo, in Chautauqua County, not far from Lake Erie, is the home of the spiritualist movement. While its members consider themselves a congregation, they are much more focused on connecting with the dead than with God.

Driving there with my friend Betony, who also doesn’t not believe in ghosts, I was sick with anticipation. I had reserved a reading via email and immediately regretted it because, as all my friends said, “She can just Google you then!” But I didn’t care if my medium had access to facts about me—if she said something authentic, I would recognize it.

We rang my medium’s doorbell, but no one stirred. Inside the screen door was a little podium covered in pamphlets with the medium’s headshot and posters listing her upcoming talks, as if she were a life coach rather than a conduit for the dead. I motioned to one of the more ridiculous posters and whispered, “Maybe it’s best if I miss this appointment!”

Just as we were skulking out the screen door, we heard a frantic voice coming from inside. “Just a second! I hear you!” A plump, sixtyish lady with thinning white hair and the face of the fairy godmother in Disney’s Cinderella emerged from the house, radiating heat.

“I was answering some emails because I assumed you had cancelled. You’re late. Which one of you is Rebecca? Come on in. You,” she said, motioning to Betony in an oddly accusatory fashion, “can sit outside here, or you can go over to the Crystal Cove and do some shopping.” She said “Crystal Cove” with the same anticipatory tone one might use for “Barneys Warehouse Sale.”

Betony scurried off and I entered the inner sanctum, which was a heavily calicoed room punctuated by a loud yet ineffective air conditioner. My medium, shiny with sweat, opened the reading with a prayer and asked in a snobbish, world-weary tone whether I wanted to connect with any loved ones. “Of course,” I answered, sounding more hostile than I meant to. “Why else would I be here?”

“Well, I also provide general advice and guidance,” she said, clearly a bit insulted I hadn’t grasped her role as a New-Age shrink.

Getting into the spirit of things: A ghostly urbanite I wish I could say this bumpy beginning was in no way indicative of the amazing insights revealed by my medium as she became a conduit for my father. I wish I could tell you she’d given me news direct from Daddy: he had heard everything I said to him in ICU, he loved my New York apartment, he’d left me a fortune in a Swiss bank account and here was the number.

But our reading, which was five minutes shorter than I had paid for ($60 bucks), consisted of my medium telling me my maternal grandmother was in the room (Rosie is not dead, thank God) along with my brain-injured brother (he’s not dead either!). Then she asked me about my ghostwriting projects in New York and bragged about her own, insisting we compare rates. Finally, she asked me who my agent was.

I left the reading livid. Betony could tell immediately by my expression that my medium had been a sham, but I think we were both surprised by how emotional I was. It was clear I’d really believed I would hear from my dad.

On our second day at Lily Dale, we stopped at a yard sale in front of a church. Among the piles of trinkets, LP’s, old toys and dresses was a solitary 1980’s-album-cover button: a young Billy Joel, leaning against a brick wall. Betony pressed it into my palm and said, “Your dad sent this to you.”

After all the little moments like this—the time I got lost in a part of Queens I’d never been to, only to end up at the cemetery where my dad is interred, the time I put a dollar in a slot machine I knew he’d love, and hit the jackpot—why did I need to pay someone to connect with my father when it was so clear I was already connecting with him myself? Commodifying something this ethereal was vaguely pathetic.

I still believe there is some life beyond this one—I just finally see through the people who claimed to be the gatekeepers to it. I’ll admit that I’m mystified by the persistence of my belief amidst such convincing proof to the contrary. But believing in a dead loved one is just faith, and what is faith if not the refusal to buy what everyone else is selling?

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY:

Professors Out to Prove the Paranormal
YouTube's Top Psychics
Five Skeptic Blogs for Unbelievers

Rebecca Diliberto has previously covered beloved-but-irrational phenomenons in her stint blogging The Secret. She's previously written about being the child of intermarriage in "The Play-It-Down Jew."

A.J. Jacobs spent the past year living according to the Bible as literally as possible. That meant no pork, no sitting on a chair on which a woman has previously perched (you never know if she might be menstruating), and no mixing fibers. In this excerpt from his book, The Year of Living Biblically, he wades gingerly into the world of Biblical punishment.

* * *

Everybody must get stoned: PebblesThey shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them.
—Leviticus 20:27

The Hebrew scriptures prescribe a tremendous amount of capital punishment. Think Saudi Arabia, multiply by Texas, then triple that. It wasn’t just for murder. You could also be executed for adultery, blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, perjury, incest, bestiality, and witchcraft, among others. A rebellious son could be sentenced to death. As could a son who is a persistent drunkard and glutton.

The most commonly mentioned punishment method in the Hebrew Bible is stoning. So I figure, as the very least, I should try to stone. But how?

I can’t tell you the number of people who have suggested that I get adulterers and blasphemers stoned in the cannabis sense. Which is an interesting idea. But I haven’t smoked pot since I was at Brown University, when I wrote a paper for my anthropology class on the hidden symbolism of bong hits. (Brown was the type of college where this paper actually earned a B+.)

Instead I figured my loophole would be this: The Bible doesn’t specify the size of the stones. So…pebbles.

A few days ago, I gathered a handful of small white pebbles from Central Park, which I stuffed in my back pants pocket. Now all I needed were some victims. I decided to start with Sabbath breakers. That’s easy enough to find in this workaholic city. I noticed that a potbellied guy at Avis down our block had worked on both Saturday and Sunday. So no matter what, he’s a Sabbath breaker.

Here’s the thing, though: Even with pebbles, it is surprisingly hard to stone people.

My plan had been to walk nonchalantly past the Sabbath violator and chuck the pebbles at the small of his back. But after a couple of failed passes, I realized it was a bad idea. A chucked pebble, no matter how small, does not go unnoticed.

My revised plan: I would pretend to be clumsy and drop the pebble on his shoe. So I did.

And in this way I stoned. But it was probably the most polite stoning in history— I said, “I’m sorry,” and then leaned down to pick up the pebble. And he leaned down at the same time, and we almost butted heads, and then he apologized, then I apologized again.

Highly unsatisfying.

Today I get another chance. I am resting in a small public park on the Upper West Side, the kind where you see retirees eating tuna sandwiches on benches.

“Hey, you’re dressed queer.”

Dreaming of GMILFs: Recent studies confirm that people's sex lives don't end once they hit 70 I look over. The speaker is an elderly man, mid-seventies, I guess. He is tall and thin and wearing one of those caps that cabbies wore in movies from the forties.

“You’re dressed queer,” he snarls. “Why you dressed so queer?”

I have on my usual tassels, and, for good measure, have worn some sandals and am carrying a knotty maple walking stick I bought on the internet for twenty-five dollars.

“I’m trying to live by the rules of the Bible. The Ten Commandments, stoning adulterers…”

“You’re stoning adulterers?”

“Yeah, I’m stoning adulterers.”

“I’m an adulterer.”

“You’re currently an adulterer?”

“Yeah. Tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, two weeks from now. You gonna stone me?”

“If I could, yes, that’d be great.”

“I’ll punch you in the face. I’ll send you to the cemetery.”

He is serious. This isn’t a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him.

I fish out my pebbles from my back pocket.

“I wouldn’t stone you with big stones,” I say. “Just these little guys.”

I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then flinging it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.

I am stunned for a second. I hadn’t expected this grizzled old man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye.

I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it at his chest. It bounces off.

“I’ll punch you right in the kisser,” he says.

“Well, you really shouldn’t commit adultery,” I say.

We stare at each other. My pulse has doubled.

Yes, he is a septuagenarian. Yes, he had just threatened me using corny Honeymooners dialogue. But you could tell: This man has a strong dark side.

Our glaring contest lasts ten seconds, then he walks away, brushing me as he leaves.

Teaching kids that violence doesn't pay since 1971: Meathead and crew When I was a kid, I saw an episode of All in the Family in which Meathead— Rob Reiner’s wussy peacenik character— socked some guy in the jaw. Meathead was very upset about this. But he wasn’t upset that he committed violence; he was upset because it felt so good to commit violence.

I can relate. Even though mine was stoning lite, barely fulfilling the letter of the law, I can’t deny: It felt good to chuck a rock at this nasty old man. It felt primal. It felt like I was getting vengeance on him. This guy wasn’t just an adulterer, he was a bully. I wanted him to feel the pain he’d inflicted on others, even if that pain was a tap on the chest.

Like Meathead, I also knew that that this was a morally stunted way to feel. Stoning is about as indefensible as you can get. It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality? Later that week, I ask my spiritual adviser Yossi about stoning. Yossi was born in Minnesota and calls himself a “Jewtheran”— Jewish guilt and Lutheran repression mesh nicely, he told me. He’s an ordained Orthodox rabbi but never practiced, instead opting for the shmata trade— he sold scarves to, among others, the Amish. He’s tall and broad shouldered with a neatly trimmed beard. In his spare time, Yossi writes wry essays about Jewish life, including a lament about how his favorite snack, Twinkies, recently became nonkosher. I met him through Aish Ha Torah, an Orthodox outreach group.

He isn’t fazed by my question at all.

We don’t stone people today because you need a biblical theocracy to enforce the stoning, he explains. No such society exists today. But even in ancient times, stoning wasn’t barbaric.

“First of all, you didn’t just heave stones,” says Yossi. “The idea was to minimize the suffering. What we call ‘stoning’ was actually pushing the person off the cliff so they would die immediately upon impact. The person getting executed was given strong drink to dull the pain.”

Plus, the stonings were a rare thing. Some rabbis say executions occurred only once every seven years, others say even less often. There had to be two witnesses to the crime. And the adulterer had to be tried by a council of seventy elders. And, weirdly, the verdict of those seventy elders could not be unanimous— that might be a sign of corruption or brainwashing. And so on.

I half-expected Yossi to say they gave the adulterer a massage and a gift bag. He made a compelling case. And yet, I’m not totally sold. Were biblical times really so merciful? I suspect there might be some whitewashing going on. As my year progresses, I’ll need to delve deeper.

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY

A.J. Jacobs kept a Jewcy blog last week in which he wrote about

• how his project worked
• the Biblical injunction against mixing wool with linen
• visiting a Creationist museum
• observing Shabbat by spending four hours in the bathroom
  

Jon Papernick tried a similar experiment in observance as "The Perfect Jew," in which he embraced Jewish rituals such as

• wearing a kippah for a week
• bathing in a mikvah
• negotiating like a macher
• keeping Shabbat

After finding out that the cutest boy she'd ever seen in real life was sending her dirty text messages from his honeymoon, Tamar Fox looked into Jewish laws around adultery.

Speaking of religious literalism, stoning still happens in some parts of the world. Ali Eteraz discusses America's role in promoting Iraq's new, not-exactly-woman-friendly constitution.

Last week I fulfilled my obligation as a Jew by apologizing to eight people. Only one forgave me. Apparently I’m that much of an asshole. The rabbis tell us that we must seek forgiveness directly from people we’ve harmed. Many modern Jews have diluted the confession to a half-assed “please forgive me for anything that I may have done intentionally or accidentally, that you may or may not know about.” Some have even stooped to anonymously blogging their apologies. But this gets you no Judaic brownie points at all: the rabbis are clear that it’s not enough just to say you’re sorry. We’ve also got to tell the person exactly what we did wrong.

If the person refuses to forgive us—which is virtually guaranteed if we apologize on an anonymous blog—we have to ask again on two separate occasions so that God will give us credit for trying. Maimonides says it’s best to repent in front of witnesses, but in true Generation Y fashion, I sent the majority of my apologies via Facebook’s messaging system. Here are the results of my experiment in groveling for absolution.

……………….

Star-crossed lovers: Freshman year can be so cruelGirl Whom I Dated Freshman Year of College: She lived on my dormitory floor. We hooked up after I convinced her to cheat on her boyfriend back home. (She turned her photographs of him facedown after we messed around the first time; this actually almost made me feel like an asshole.) I comforted her on 9/11. But she wouldn’t have sex with me after a couple weeks of dating, not even in the wake of the first terrorist attack on American soil—not even the oral variety—so I dumped her.

My Apology: “Wow, I was a dick to you freshman year, huh? I can't imagine you remember me too fondly but I've definitely mellowed and I try to treat people a little better, and women with more class, so for what it's worth.... I hope all’s well with you.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………….

The old sock-on-the-doorknob method: Essential for roommate harmonyMy Roommate Freshman Year of College: An Orthodox Jew. We had absolutely nothing in common. He never brought girls back to the room because of his religious beliefs and therefore refused to work out a “sock on the door” system, subsequently walking in on me and the girl whom I dumped after 9/11, not like it mattered because we weren’t having sex anyway. In retaliation I masturbated in our room while he tried to do homework, and I once smoked a cigar with the window closed, which triggered his asthma. (The stench seeped into everything: clothes, towels, sheets, toothpaste. He had to sleep on a couch in the student lounge for three nights. I did too, and I don’t have asthma.)

My Apology: “I definitely was a prick to you freshman year and probably could’ve handled the situation with more maturity. I hope that’s all a distant memory for you and that all is well in D.C. or wherever you’re living these days.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

………………

How many apologies?: Maimonides recommends threeGirl Whom I Made Cry in High School: On a class trip to New York sophomore year, a bunch of my friends spent the night in our hotel room talking dirty about chicks. We didn’t know that the girls were eavesdropping on our conversation through the door. At one point I compared two of them thusly: “[Girl #1] should give her tits to [Girl #2] because they’re totally going to waste considering her troll face.” Girl #1 spent the night sobbing in the stairwell. The other chicks forced me to apologize, but frankly she should have apologized to me for spying.

My Apology: “I'm sure you remember a certain incident on our New York trip. Well, I still feel pretty bad about that one, so I hope it didn't cause any long-lasting psychological trauma and you've long since moved on. I hope all is well w/ you and look forward to your response!”

Response to My Apology: No response.

………………

African-American Friend to Whom I Made Offensive Comment: His mother drove us home when we were in junior high since we lived in the same neighborhood. I honestly do not remember saying this—and frankly I have trouble believing it—but apparently at one point I rolled down the car window and screamed, “HELP! I’M BEING KIDNAPPED BY A BLACK FAMILY!” (Hey, at least I have an African-American friend… well, at least I did.)

My Apology: “Holy shit, did I really say that?!?!?!?!”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………….

Whisker sour: Would you forgive?Girl Whom I Mocked for Having a Mustache: In her words on my Facebook wall, “Last time I remember talking to you I think I was still in junior high and you were making fun of me for having a mustache. It was a pretty good time.”

My Apology: “Wow, I am a dick and I am sorry! How’s it going?”

Response to My Apology: No Response.

………………..

"I'll tell YOU when I've had enough!": Yes, you have to repent for things you don't rememberGuy Whom I Insulted at His Own Party: My girlfriend and I were invited to a house party a year ago. I had never met anyone in attendance but she knew a bunch of people from her classes. I had a bit too much to drink—Tanqueray Rangpur, truly vile shit—and whispered in the host’s ear, “I know you’re a fucking pervert, you sick motherfucker; I can see it in your eyes.” As I was dragged out after a litany of subsequent accusations, I kept screaming, “You’re a fucking pervert; I can tell it, you sick son of a bitch.” My girlfriend covered her face in shame but had a wonderful time the next morning with her favorite game: Do You Remember What You Said Last Night?

My Apology: “I guess that was a pretty bad first impression. Just because you’re a Catholic doesn’t mean that you’re a pervert.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………………..

Party fowl: But it led to love!Friend Whom I Cock-Blocked for Love: I met my girlfriend four years ago at my friend Greg’s nineteenth birthday party. He had a crush on her, which I knew—and he had recently lost fifty pounds in an effort to make himself attractive to females—but she and I had amazing chemistry from the beginning and wound up in bed together that night. Anyway, my friend actually cried over it because he really liked her and really trusted me, which was a pretty big mistake on his part.

My Apology: “That was wrong, man. I betrayed you…I betrayed ‘bros before hos.’”

Response to My Apology: “I accept your apology. If you hadn’t taken her, I wouldn’t have met [my long-term girlfriend], so it all worked out for the best. Plus you’ll never forget to wish me a happy birthday.”

………………………

Total landmine: Approach with cautionMy Current Girlfriend: A week ago she suggested that we should have pizza for dinner. “We haven’t exercised once this summer,” I said. “Don’t you think we need to lose some weight?” (She has commented for months that we need to lose weight, but God forbid that I acknowledge the same thing.) “What do you mean WE?!?” she bellowed, proceeding to not speak to me—or acknowledge my existence—for the next four hours, until I walked into the bedroom buck-naked, flexing my biceps and jiggling my flabtastic belly, also known as “the Lovechild.”

Response to My Apology: Orgasm sounds.

………………………

So there you have it: Eight apologies, only one absolution. Maybe Maimonides was right about not using Facebook.

[This article has been edited since publication.]

Listen closely: You can hear the stomachs rumblingI decided that I wanted a bat mitzvah when I was 20. I had been living in South Africa and spending a lot of time with Jews whose lives seemed enriched by their faith. Though I had not been raised religious and wasn’t looking for a holy-roller conversion, I wanted to do something to mark my Jewishness. The plan dissipated upon my return to the States, but my desire to participate in some of Judaism’s more meaningful rituals—an excuse to celebrate with people I love—did not. I have not lived up to my plan.

When a friend invited me to her break-fast this year, I made up my mind not to fast unless I had a good reason. Taking a random sampling of Jewish friends, I found that most observed because of their parents, because that’s what you do on Yom Kippur. But we’d never done the High Holidays in my home, so the tradition was really mine to take or leave.

Consulting Rabbi Leonard Gordon about the fast’s biblical roots was informative, but predictable. I knew I’d need to find a more tangible reason than souls and spirits. I liked the drama inherent in Rabbi Alan Flam’s description of the fast as a “structured encounter with death,” and I was drawn to the possible peace of mind that I imagined confronting mortality might bring, but I worried that I’d be too self-conscious trying to achieve this state. I did not want the pressure of trying to feel something as massive as death. I wanted a reason that wasn’t shrouded in religion.

Dr. Myron Yaster insisted both to my relief and disappointment that so long as you have a functional metabolism, your body will be fine. Where I had thought that the fast was something to struggle through, Dr. Yaster made it sound like half of America is fasting. (Which of course they are.)

Help yourself: Is Yom Kippur really about body issues?Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair suggested that rather than being an excuse not to eat, Yom Kippur can be used as a way to forgo body issues for a little while. This self-help-y language, while perfect for a self-help column, was not entirely convincing.

It was Wendy Shanker, a regular (and insightful) Jewish girl, who finally convinced me I should fast. For Shanker, a day shouldn’t require deprivation to be holy, but it does require doing things outside the norm: not checking email, not putting on makeup, not having sex, and yes, not eating. It means going to synagogue and being reminded of family and thinking about what is important in the coming year.

I have decided to fast on Yom Kippur because I want to be with a community of people who are also trying to feel something. I know I won’t be the only person in the congregation who is perplexed by why it’s important to spend the day starving. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to “check in” or “turn inward,” or even keep quiet during shul, but I will make an attempt, and if I fail, I’m not a bad Jew.

Having trouble finding time for a meal?: You are not alone.For my final day of decision-making, I didn’t want to talk to an expert. I didn’t want to hear what the Torah had to say, or how my cells would dry up and die, or how fasting contributes to body dysmorphia. I just wanted to talk to a Jewish girl like me, someone who had a flexible relationship with the faith, and who practiced on her own terms. I wanted to know what her reasons were for fasting, if she did it just because, or if there was intention in the ritual.

I met Wendy Shanker at New York’s City Bakery. She daintily picked at black rice, snow peas, and chickpea-encrusted chicken, and sipped an ice coffee. I ate three vanilla bean cookies. Shanker is 34 years old, the author of the memoir The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, and the kind of person you want as your friend. She’s warm, she’s proud, and she laughs easily.

Shanker, who doesn’t belong to a shul but keeps Shabbat and fasts each year, grew up believing that Yom Kippur was about suffering for sins, since for Jews, not eating is a major concession to God. As she got older, she found that a 24-hour fast doesn’t really work as punishment. It’s not long enough to cause much discomfort or to achieve elevated peace of mind, let alone a transformation. And fasting, as she noted, is not so different from what has become normal eating behavior. These days, it’s not only obsessive Jewish girls saying, “I had a huge dinner last night so I’m going to skip breakfast and lunch today,” but a good portion of everyday working stiffs who try to wedge their first bite of the day in at 4 p.m. If abstention is the status quo, does the Yom Kippur fast work as atonement?

Sweating off the pounds: Why Yom Kippur brings back unpleasant memories for some womenTalking to Shanker helped me understand on a personal level what Rabbi Gordon meant when he assured me that guilt and suffering weren’t the ultimate goals of the holiday. But I was still concerned about the way fasting echoes unhealthy eating behavior. I had perversely thought of the fast as having added weight-loss bonus, but for Shanker—who’d spent years trying to lose weight with various dieticians and trainers—not eating comes with an entirely different kind of guilt. Rather than giving her the secret pleasure of being allowed to skip meals, Yom Kippur instead roused unpleasant memories of being told not to eat. She’d had enough trouble dieting for her own well-being; why was it so much easier to do for God?

To make the fast meaningful beyond punishment-lite or indulging Jewish-girl body neuroses, I did not want to do it for an abstraction like God, or transformation, or even forgiveness. Shirking dogma and religious obedience, Shanker finds the fast significant partly because it reminds her of childhood and family, and partly because it makes the day different. There is no expectation of transformation, no half-hearted nod to forgiveness; she draws meaning from the day by designating it meaningful.

This is usually the kind of thing I hate—deciding something is meaningful just because. Unlike most mass holidays, there’s nothing particularly fun about Yom Kippur. There are no gifts, you can’t observe it until you’re old enough to at least fake solemnity, there’s even a special prayer just for the dead. And so unless you have a deep-seated faith or are just going through the motions, finding meaning in the ritual can be a struggle. This is what finally appeals to me, what makes me almost want to start fasting this instant—being in a room full of other people who are also trying to find meaning in what we have been told is a holy day.

Next page: Hunger Pangs