Spiritual quest and crisis in biblical lands ; Review Religion FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Sun (Baltimore, Md. : 1837)
• Main Author: Kirsch, Jonathan
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore, Md Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 08.01.2006
• Subjects: Feiler, Bruce
• ISSN: 1930-8965

[Bruce Feiler]'s new book is an account of his recent travels, Bible in hand, through Israel and Iraq, with a short side trip to Iran. In Israel he ponders the biblical account of the Exodus, the conquest of the Promised Land, the kingdom of David and the glories of Solomon's temple. And his sojourn in the war zone of Iraq, site of biblical Babylon, allows him to conjure up the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel and the Babylonian exile, among other familiar biblical motifs. "[T]he first war in Iraq," he observes, "was between Cain and Abel." Iran is something of a stretch from the perspective of the Bible. "Closer to India than to Israel," he writes, "Iran is part of a different ecosystem than much of the Middle East and a different cultural tradition as well." But he points out that an ancient Persian emperor, Cyrus, is honored among "God's anointed" in the Bible because he put an end to the Babylonian exile and sanctioned the construction of the second temple. "No group benefited more from Cyrus's magnanimity than the Jews," writes Feiler, "and no document heralds his greatness more than the Bible." Nor does Feiler shrink from the harsh theological implications of violence in the name of God. "There is one God, and God controls the world," insists a Hasidic Jew in the aftermath of a terrorist suicide bombing in Jerusalem. "God controls the bomb, and the bomber." In fact, Feiler, who is Jewish, experiences a soul-shaking spiritual crisis after visiting the Jewish homeland, and he ends up distancing himself from the Bible: "I was learning that I could no longer rely on the once familiar pillars of my religious identity: King David, the Temple, the Western Wall. I had to find my own route to God."