Jacobs, A.J. Nw York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 388 pp., $25.00 U.S. ISBN: 0-7432-9147-6 (cloth).

[1] It should be no surprise that one of the hazards of attempting to obey all of the Bible’s commandments for a year is that one has to be honest (Proverbs 26:28). In The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs, an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine and a contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly, vows to do just that. Thus, very early on he has to admit that one of the reasons he decided to embark on this project is so that he’d have a book to write when he was finished, not unlike his experience reading—from cover to cover—the Encyclopedia Britannica for his previous project The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. He also hoped to prove that “[i]f you actually follow all the rules, you’ll spend your days acting like a crazy person” (119). But this is more than just a single note gag; against the background of his nearly thirteen month chronicle, Jacobs sensitively (and, at times, not so sensitively) reflects on religious thought and practice, biblical literalism, historicism and criticism, and his own life with his (to be sainted) wife and (mercifully oblivious) young son.

[2] After spending a month preparing for the endeavor by reading English translations of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures—deciding to spend a proportional amount of time devoted to each of the two testaments (eight months on the former, four months on the latter)—and struggling with issues such as which translation to use, how to approach literalism, and how to weigh outside influences (theological and scholarly works), Jacobs slowly acclimates into the world of biblical practice. He enlists a small community of religious studies and biblical scholars, clergy (rabbis, priests, and at least one retired “pastor out to pasture”), secularists, and family members. He intends to take all of the commandments literally, but freely admits that, as not all of the commandments are identified by “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not,” it will be up to him (in conversation with his advisory board) to determine what is and what is not a commandment. He therefore evaluates each commandment differently; some (like the injunction not to come into direct contact with women [Leviticus 20:18], based on the rules of ritual purity and concerns about menstruation) will be observed throughout, while others (like the requirement that one scare away a mother bird when taking eggs from her nest [Deuteronomy 22:6]) he fulfills once and then “checks” it off his working “commandments to do” list.

[3] Over the ensuing twelve months (and a bit more), Jacobs not only works his way through the various commandments, he also engages in a surprisingly sensitive journey of personal revelation as well. He grows his beard (Leviticus 19:27), completely overhauls his wardrobe (Leviticus 19:19, Numbers 15:38, Deuteronomy 22:5), identifies for a friend what he considers to be the strangest of all of the commandments (Deuteronomy 25:11-12; look it up), and conscientiously visits with representatives of various religious communities who purport to adhere to the letter of the Biblical law. He spends time learning the humour of the Amish, as a visitor at a creation science museum, attending services at a Holiness “snake handling” church, chatting with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and (most often) talking with ultra-Orthodox Jews. By the end of the project, Jacobs—an avowed secularist who qualifies his own Jewish identity before the project begins by mentioning his family’s Christmas tree—becomes what he calls “a reverent agnostic”; “whether or not there’s a God,” he reflects when it is all over, “there is such a thing as sacredness” (329). Still a bit skeptical, he reflects that “If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they’d get along OK, but they’d both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, ‘That guy is kinda delusional’” (7). In the end he concludes that the Bible “may have not been dictated by God, it may have had a messy and complicated birth, one filled with political agendas and outdates ideas—but that doesn’t mean the Bible can’t be beautiful and sacred” (316).

[4] Interestingly, Jacobs suggests throughout the work that doing leads to believing—as he puts it, “The outer affects the inner” (122)—a rather obvious conclusion of traditional Judaism, but a problematic notion for many Christians. Jacobs credits his appreciation of religious ritual to his obsessive compulsive disorder—the repetition, the need for categorization, and the fixation on purity and danger particularly—but the nature of the journey takes a noticeable turn when he makes the transition to Christian biblical literalism in the final four months. He spends most of that time talking with Protestant fundamentalists, who suggest that attempting to follow commandments without accepting Jesus as one’s personal saviour is a futile—and maybe even insulting—enterprise, and he realizes that he cannot “fake it.” Thus he encounters the often overlooked difference between Jewish and Christian ways of understanding commandments leading him to alter his original plan. Coupled with his own religious transformation (that is, a renewed appreciation for his own Judaism), he decides to spend the final four months as “much less Do It Yourself than my trip through the Hebrew Scriptures. It’ll be more like a guided tour” (257). The skeptic has come to realize the power of his project.

[5] This book is an enjoyable read and surprisingly full of insights about the communal nature of religion, the power of religious thought and action, the reality of limitations in the face of pious expectations, and the nature of religious rhetoric about religious “fundamentalism,” left or right, Jewish or Christian. Some of the humor may rely on some basic knowledge of Jewish practice—the image of a Hasid yelling “Hey, you with the beard” at a Simchat Torah celebration in Brooklyn (86)—but there is much for non-Jewish readers here as well. Though newly recommitted to his own Jewish identity, Jacobs exhibits both postmodern skepticism and traditional sensitivity (maybe even awe): “I thought,” he writes, that “religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world” (172). In the end he realizes that he shares more with other religious people than he may with his former secularist associates. “The guys with the fish on his bumper sticker. The black man with the kufi. The Hasidim with their swinging fringes. These are my compatriots,” he notes. “They think about God and faith and prayer all the time, just like I do” (201). In the end, Jacobs may not have discovered God, or even himself, but he does discover the humanity of people of faith who take seriously their religious commitments, a valuable lesson indeed.

Eric Michael Mazur
Virginia Wesleyan College
emazur@vwc.edu