There are Jewish Fundamentalists who believe every word in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament) is the Word of G-d; and there are Christian Fundamentalists who believe that every word in the Bible (Old and New Testaments) is the Word of God; both groups hold that the Rules and Regulations that He set forth should all be followed, literally. In practice, though, the practices that the Orthodox Jews follow are from the Hebrew Bible, but modified by the rulings of thousands of rabbis for several hundred years, while the practices that Christian Fundamentalists follow from the Old and New Testaments are, in practice, modified by whatever religious body they belong to (some bodies put a lot more emphasis on Mark 16: 17-18 than others). Basically, the author of this book decided to read the Bible, to pull out of it a list of Rules to follow, and then to follow that set of Rules as literally as possible for a year. (It’s a wonderful read, no matter what your religious affiliation; the author has a wonderful sense of humor.)
The author is an editor at Esquire Magazine in New York City, married, with a toddler son at the time he began this experiment; raised in a secular family, he describes himself as ‘Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say: not very.’ He read the Bible cover to cover (Hebrew Bible, and New Testament) and pulled out some 700 rules and regulations set forth by God; then, after exhaustive research and assembling a consulting group of religious experts from all faiths, he began his experiment, with the less than enthusiastic support of his wife.
The most visible manifestation of his literalness was not shaving (Leviticus 19:27); the book is provided with a photo array showing how alarming his beard became in a fairly short time. He also followed Leviticus 15:19, which holds that a woman is impure and should not be touched seven days from the start of her menstrual cycle; and since you really can’t ask any given woman on the street where she is in her cycle, he refrained from touching all women unless he was 100% sure they were not ‘impure’. Since anything that such a woman sits on is also impure, he took to carrying a HandyCane with him (the cane that folds out into a little seat on a tripod) to sit on in public, as you can’t be sure about the purity of a given subway seat that might have been sat upon by a woman who was ‘impure’.
In the course of his year (during which he and his wife did in vitro fertilization, and in due time were presented with twin boys), he also took field trips to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (to meet Amish), to Cincinnati, Ohio (to see the Creation Museum and to talk to creationists), to Crown Heights, Brooklyn (stronghold of the Hasidim), to Lynchburg, Virginia (home of Thomas Road Baptist Church, the megachurch headed (at the time) by Jerry Falwell), to Israel (where he met the Samaritan community, and felt out of place, as his particular observances were not in sync with anyone else’s), and Del Rio, Tennessee (home to the Church Of God With Signs Following, which handles snakes). During his year he also prayed; at first, with a great deal of self-consciousness (he characterized himself as agnostic, starting the project), and at the end, spontaneously (at which time he characterized himself as reverently agnostic).
This is a fascinating book; most of us belong to one religion or other, and follow various rules, or know that there are rules that we should be following, according to our particular Religious Authority; and even if we are 100% secular, we still have sets of Rules and Regulations that we follow, be they as humble as brushing and flossing each night. The author points out that any attempt to follow the Bible ‘literally’ inevitably becomes an exercise in interpretation, and so everyone whose religion is based on the Book practices cafeteria religion, picking and choosing what is important, and that there is nothing inherently wrong with cafeterias – the key is in picking the right choices.
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