Daniel Radosh, author of the new book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, interviews friend and fellow Jew writer A.J. Jacobs, contributing editor at Esquire, on his year-long road trip (or rather, home-trip) through the Old Testament, documented in The Year of Living Biblically. A.J. will be giving an in-depth talk on his experiences at the 92nd Street Y on April 1.

The facial hair of our forefathers: Jacobs with Biblical beardYou followed the Bible literally for an entire year. If you had to do it again for one month, which month would you choose and why?

Can I make my own month? And choose to do 31 Saturdays in a row? Is that allowed? The Sabbath was one of the most life-altering parts of my year. As a workaholic, the line between weekend and weekday didn’t exist for me. But here was a mandated day of rest and joy, a "sanctuary in time," as Rabbi Heschel called it. When I first tried Shabbat, I got the shakes, but by the end of the year, I had come to love the ritual.

You came out of your experiment with a deeper sense of transcendence and sacredness in life. Have you been able to maintain that now that you are no longer doing your biblical study and practice?

To some extent, yes. I started the year as an agnostic and I ended the year as what a minister friend of mine calls a ‘reverent agnostic.’ Which is a phrase I love, however oxymoronic it may seem. Whether or not there’s a God, I believe in the idea of sacredness, and that rituals or the Sabbath or prayer can be sacred. I still observe the Sabbath – in the sense that I try not to email or make phone calls or write on Saturdays. I still pray, even though I’m not sure what I'm praying to. And I try to maintain a sense of wonderment, which is something I gained in my biblical year (I also gained it sophomore year of high school after a night with an apple bong, but the feeling from my biblical year was more lasting).

For your previous book, The Know-It-All, you read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Which contains more wisdom, the encyclopedia or the Bible?

That's a hard call. If forced, I'd say the Britannica, since it has huge sections about the Bible. So you kind of get a two-for-one deal. You get biblical wisdom, plus wisdom from modern thinkers like Horace Mann ("Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.") and Ian Fleming, author of the great philosophical work Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. ("Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say yes otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.")

You found that following biblical rules dovetailed with your tendency toward obsessive compulsive disorder. If somebody who doesn't have OCD did the same experiment, would they end up with it?

I think you have to be a little obsessive to do the experiment in the first place. So the question is probably unanswerable. It was fascinating, though, to see the overlap between OCD and religious rituals – an overlap Freud talked about. I actually found it comforting. Why should I come up with my own idiosyncratic rituals, when the Bible has ones that my ancestors have practiced for thousands of years?

The good book: The Year of Living BiblicallyIf you could pick three biblical rules to teach your children, what would they be?

Aside from honor your parents, which seems the go-to answer, I’d say these three:

1. Be thankful. That was one of the big lessons of the year. I was saying all these prayers of thanksgiving, and they really started to sink in. I started to shift my perspective. I found myself being thankful for the 100 things that go right every day as opposed to focusing on the three or four that went wrong.
2. No gossiping. It sounds like a minor thing, but it wasn't. I found that the less I gossiped, the fewer petty thoughts I generated, which caused a decrease in jealousy which led to greater happiness. So for selfish reasons alone, it's a good rule. And of course.
3. Do not marry your wife's sister while your wife is still alive (Leviticus 18:18).

Who would you rather have running the country, someone who believes the Bible is the literal word of God, or someone who doesn't think it's important at all?

Neither sounds appealing. Biblical literalism is filled with dangers, as I discovered through my year. (We both visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which seems a three-dimensional example of biblical literalism gone awry). But if you don't think the Bible is important, then you are a stiff-necked fool, as the Bible would say. Whether or not you believe in its historical or theological truth, the Bible is hugely important for sociological, ethical and literary reasons alone.

Sam Harris says it would be easy to come up with principles that are more ethical than those taught in the Bible? Do you agree?

More ethical than Deuteronomy 25:11? Well, yes, maybe. (In case you forgot, that one says that if two men are fighting, and the wife of one of the men reaches out and grabs the private parts of the other man, then her hand shall be cut off.) But more ethical than "Love thy neighbor as thyself" or "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" I'm not so sure. I couldn't come up with anything better than that. What I'm saying is the Bible is not monolithic. Some parts are incredibly compassionate; others are better applied to an ancient tribal society. Also, of course, there's the difference between the ethics of the Bible and the ethics of rabbinical tradition.

Which rituals do you miss the most?

I've gotten lax with the dietary laws. I still don't eat pork or shellfish (and I also studiously avoid eagles, ospreys and hawks, as the Bible commands), but I've let a lot of the other rules go. And I do miss it a bit. When you are strict with what goes into your mouth, you gain a sense of mindfulness about the act of eating.

In your blurb for my new book, Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, you said, "Daniel Radosh writes about evangelical culture with brilliance, humor, and understanding." Can you elaborate on that?

Yes, this Radosh guy has written a really good book. But I still mourn the loss of the chapter on Christian mimes. I hope you’re considering using it in the sequel.

Previously:
Jacobs Introduces His Guest-Blogging Stint
No Mixed Fibers
Indulging Creationism
Midweek Shabbat 
Throwing Rocks at Old People

There is at least one thing I like about the creationist worldview.

Before I get to that, let me back up. In my year of exploring the Bible and biblical literalism, I made a pilgrimage to the just-opened Creation Museum in Kentucky. For those who missed the recent spate of news stories, the Creation Museum is the $25 million museum founded by the evangelical Christian group Answers in Genesis, and devoted to proving the earth is 6,000 years young.

It’s a fascinating place. You can see a scale model of Noah’s Ark. You can watch animatronic dinosaurs playing next to animatronic cave people (they lived at the same time, in the creationist scenario). There’s a screening room with sprinklers to simulate the Flood.

There’s also a bookstore that includes such titles as Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, which spends 300 pages outlining the brilliant engineering that made the famous boat possible. There are chapters on the ventilation system, on-board exercise for the animals and the myth of explosive manure gases.

The book is beautifully argued – and I don’t believe a syllable of it. Which I know is counter to my quest. I went down to the museum with an open mind, but while down there, I realized my mind wouldn’t open that far. I could understand being open to the existence of God and the beauty of rituals and the benefits of prayer. But the existence of a brontosaurus on the ark? And an earth that’s barely older than Gene Hackman? I have to go with 99 percent of scientists on this one.

That said, I did spend some time trying to imagine what it would be like to be a creationist. I tried a little method acting and put myself in the mind of someone who believes the earth was formed 6000 years ago. I couldn’t 100 percent believe, but for a few minutes, I almost believed it.

And it was an amazing experience. Most notably, I felt more connected. Consider this: If everyone on earth is descended from two identifiable people – Adam and Eve – then the “family of man” isn’t just a vague cliche. It’s true. The guy who sells me bananas at the deli on 81st street – he’s my cousin. Sure, you can have the same notion if you accept the reality that humans have evolved over several millennia. But it’s not nearly as concrete. The creationist mindset made me feel closer to my fellow humans. It made me want to invite strangers over to dinner.

I’ll never convert to creationism, but I have tried to keep that palpable sense of ‘we’re-all-related’ that came with it.

The Bible has nothing against polycotton T-shirts. Neither does it condemn lycra-Spandex combinations. But it does forbid the wearing of wool and linen jackets.

When I first started my year, I made a list of the Top Five Most Perplexing Rules in the Bible. One of them: The ban on wearing clothes made of mixed fibers. (Deuteronomy 22:11).It’s such an odd proscription, I figured there was zero chance anyone else in America was trying to follow it.

Of course, I was flat wrong.

My friend Eddy Portnoy – who teaches history at the Jewish Theological Seminary -- told me shatnez testers. Shatnez, he informed me, is the Hebrew word for mixed fibers. Specifically, wool and linen. That’s the forbidden combination, according to the Hebrew.

A tester will come to your home and inspect your shirts, pants, sweaters and suits to make sure you have no hidden mixed fibers.

I had my wardrobe tested by a shatnez expert. And he found that my wedding suit was, in fact, shatnez. I had to mothball it for the year.

Now it’s easy to chuckle at shatnez. And I did. But it also provides a fascinating entry point into a profound question: Should we ever follow completely bizarre and inexplicable traditions just because they have been followed for thousands of years? I think Zero Mostel sang a song about it in Fiddler on the Roof. Me? I don’t have no easy answers.

Before and After: A.J. Jacobs, Bronze Age and Now Hello. Welcome to my guest-blogging stint.

I'm going to be blogging about my Judaism-heavy new book The Year of Living Biblically.

I wrote up an official introduction and everything. Which I'm pasting here:

For a long time, I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world. The potential for abuse too high. I figured it would slowly fade away like other archaic things. Science was on the march. Someday soon we’d all be living in a neo-Enlightenment paradise where every decision was made with steely, Spock-like logic.

As you might have noticed, I was spectacularly mistaken. The influence of the Bible -- and religion as a whole – remains a mighty force, perhaps even stronger than it was when I was a kid. So in the last few years, religion has become my fixation. Is half of the world suffering from a massive delusion, as Richard Dawkins and his posse say? Or is my blindness to spirituality a huge defect in my personality? What if I’m missing out on part of being human, like a guy who goes through life without ever hearing Beethoven or falling in love? And most important, I now have a young son – if my lack of religion is a flaw, I don’t want to pass it onto him.

Which is why I decided to dive in headfirst and try to understand the Bible from the inside. To try to follow every rule in the Bible. From the famous ones like the Ten Commandments and Love thy neighbor, right on down to the lesser-known ones – don’t shave your beard, don’t wear mixed fibers and, yes, stone adulterers. All 613 commandments (plus a handful of regulations from other parts of the Bible, such as the Proverbs and Psalms). I wanted to see how living by the biblical laws would change my life.

I chronicled my journey in my new book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally As Possible. It was an amazing year – life-altering, fascinating and very strange.

I found myself moved by the Prophets’ message of social justice, loving Shabbat, and, oddest of all for a lifelong agnostic, enjoying prayer. I also found myself wearing sandals, herding sheep and eating the occasional cricket.

I had a spiritual advisory board made up of rabbis of all varieties. They gave me a crash course in the oral law, and how it intertwines with the Bible itself. I did some mitzvahs in the traditional way – wrapping tefillin with the Orthodox, for instance. I embedded myself with groups ranging from Hasidic Jews to Israeli Samaritans. But there was also a big DIY element to my quest.

In addition to a spiritual journey, book is also an argument against fundamentalism. I became the ultimate fundamentalist to show the error of that approach. I hoped to show that fundamentalism and extreme literalism is necessarily selective, though fundamentalists won’t admit it.

In any case, every day for the next two weeks, I’m going to post something I learned on my odd and enlightening year. I’d love any feedback, of course. Here, the first installment:

Saying 'mazel tov' could, conceivably, get you executed.

I met with a leader of an ultra-literal branch of Judaism called Karaites. The movement was huge in the middle ages, but has now dwindled to 30,000 followers split between Israel and, weirdly enough, Daly City California. I told the Karaite "Mazel tov" on the completion of his doctorate. He shook his head. "Mazel tov means good constellation," he told me. And astrology is banned in the Bible (Leviticus 19:26). The punishment? Execution.