Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler Read Free Book Online

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    So where did this feeling come from? For most of my life, my religious identity was not connected to a particular place, and certainly not to any place in the Bible. As a fifth-generation American Jew from the South, I had a strong attachment to Judaism, but one based on family, community, ethics, public service; not spirituality or mysticism. And not on any deep-seated attachment to the Promised Land. Instead, I was attached to the South, and like many Jewish southerners, I struggled between a religion that gave me a sense of identity and a place that made me feel at home.
    I accepted this dichotomy because like many people my age I was not particularly defined by spiritual quests, or the search for higher meaning. I can be moralistic (I used to teach junior high school). I can be earnest (I briefly enrolled in a master’s program in peace studies). I have a high tolerance for public displays of devotion—and faith (I like country music). But I have never been particularly devout myself. This attitude was partly generational. I came of age at a time largely devoid of anguish and hardship; I never witnessed a war; few of my friends had suffered from personal tragedy. Instead, the hallmarks of my life were the emblems of America at the peak of its prosperity: opportunity, possibility, reinvention. Mine was the generation that could have it all. Our ethos was built on the belief that we could control everything: our bodies, our minds, our bank accounts. Got a problem? Change channels, switch jobs, take a pill, go to the gym. Our bibles were our Day-Timers. Our god was self-reliance.
    For me this sense of boundless freedom was bolstered by a desire totravel. I always believed that I was able to venture so far afield in my life because I had a strong sense of family and a stronger sense of place. I wasn’t looking for a new way of life, or a new place to call home. I have a home, which I happily carry around within me, and which inevitably lures me back from afar. I was like one of those bungee cords you pull out from a suitcase that briefly attaches to something else and then, when its task is complete, snaps back into place.
    Now, for the first time, the bungee cord seemed to be catching in another place. What happened that afternoon in Turkey was that some ill-defined part of me, some homeless portion of my consciousness that I hadn’t even realized was looking for a home, suddenly found a place where it felt comfortable and surged forward to put down anchor. Here was a piece of ancient land—completely alien, yet completely familiar—that seemed to draw me to it in a way I never thought possible outside my hometown. It’s as if my internal zip code were being recalibrated, as if my genes were being jiggled and respun.
    Once I recognized this feeling I recoiled at the implications: I was not a different person, I said to myself. I was not being remade. I just felt myself loosening a bit—sort of like you do to a pair of shoelaces before climbing a mountain—then tightening up for a better grip with the ground. This feeling triggered a question that would stick with me for the remainder of our travels. Was I imagining this connection because of a lifetime of biblical associations, or was this ground somehow part of me already? Was I reacting to a spirit that existed in the place, or did that spirit exist within me? Was it in my DNA?
    We arrived in Harran in midafternoon and were immediately besieged by another teenage boy anxious to give us a tour. We demurred. “But I know the famous archaeologist Abunar,” he said.
    “I am Abunar!” Avner said, using the Arabic pronunciation of his name. The boy slunk off, embarrassed. “I probably met his father sometime,” Avner said.
    We proceeded up the hill to one of the ghastliest places I’ve ever been. A panorama of isolation appeared, with a village and ancient ruinsburied underneath a coating of dirt the color of sour milk. One of the world’s earliest settled