If you read A.J. Jacobs' new book - The Year of Living Biblically: one man's humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible - you will come to an inevitable conclusion. His wife is one patient woman. Jacobs (editor at large for Esquire) decides to spend 365 days following the commandments and proscriptions in the Bible to the letter. We're not just talking about observing the Sabbath and not swearing. He stopped shaking people's hands because he didn't know if they were 'unclean' (Exodus 23:1 and Leviticus 15:19). He stopped wearing colored clothing (Ecclesiastes 9:8) and stopped shaving (Leviticus 19:27). He wouldn't make Play-Doh animals for his little boy or take pictures at his mother-in-law's birthday (Exodus 20:4). The fact that his wife didn't violate the sixth commandment during this experimental year is a testament to her love and fortitude.
This book is not only funny, it is actually quite instructive. For each Biblical verse or commandment that Jacobs follows, he describes his difficulties in adhering to it's direction in a 21st century-world, and he also gives a little history of how the rule came about and its interpretations over the years. One thing his experiment does point out is the effects that centuries of translation have had on our understanding of the text. For instance, the Karaite sect of Judaism avoid eating eggs because they feel the list of taboo birds in Leviticus 11 has never been properly translated (they're not sure which birds are really on the list, so they avoid all eggs to be safe). This is a very interesting book, and Jacobs manages to be humorous without being irreverent. A nice, fun read.
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~All Praise to YHWH~
No. Only a rather small minority among Qaraite Jews avoids eating all kinds of eggs. All other Qaraite Jews happily consume eggs from Kasher birds, though the Kasher list is mired, of course, in controversy.
Qaraism encourages reading the Torah in the original Hebrew, so the difficulties posed by varying translations are discarded for a large part, leaving the problems posed by the supposed meanings of some of the birds on the roster in biblical Hebrew.
A.J. Jacobs' biggest mistake was the notion he must follow the Torah in the most *literal* sense instead of its commands' plain meaning.
The difference is that plain meaning occasionally entails interpreting by the allegorical or metaphorical sense rather than strictly literal.
Evidently A.J. Jacobs has fallen victim to some atrocious translations of the Torah in particular and Tanakh in general. This is borne out by his misunderstanding of Exodus 23:1 which has nothing to do with ritual uncleanliness. The command's plain meaning is metaphorical, fobidding one to join hands with a wicked or evil individual in the capacity of a malicious witness in a court of law.
I find it quite comical that Jacobs took the exhortation in Ecclesiastes 9:8 as a command. No religious Jews of any stripe considers this a command, especially when it figures in the Writings section of the Tanakh, far from the Torah itself.
Just like Second Temple era Jews, Jacobs also failed to read Exodus 20:4 in context. What this verse really means is to not make any image, carved or sketched, of any *foreign deity*. Therein lies the difference. That verse shouldn't be read in isolation from the entire passage, 1-6.
Jacobs' wife must really be a saint. He's one very fortunate man...
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