Fundamentalist Trials

George of The Hour (CBC trying to be hip) recently interviewed AJ Jacobs, a New Yorker who spent a year living according to the tenets of the Bible. While I have often questioned fundamentalists on the convenient compromises they make to suit their lives while claiming to live biblically, I loved hearing about the Jewish embodiment of this quandry. Of particular note was the anecdote about him stoning an adulterer. You gotta love this guy's tenacity. And his wife's for that matter: he was not allowed to sit on a chair sat upon by his wife while she was 'unclean', so she went around the apartment and defiled every last one of them! Ah, the trials of living like our forefathers.... But on a more serious note, his book does address questions about the development of one's prayer life, and the issue of 'cafeteria religion'--picking and choosing what suits us in our faith.

You may know him from his articles and other adventures such as reading all 44 million words of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Here is an excerpt from his website : 'His father is a lawyer who holds the world record for the most footnotes in a law review article (4,824). His wife works for a highbrow scavenger hunt called Watson Adventures. He lives in New York. He wonders if he fooled anyone with this third-person thing, or if everyone knows that he wrote this bio himself.'