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Author Bruce Feiler Recounts Personal Journey in Researching New Book Walking the Bible

By Judy Epstein, Director of Public Affairs

Launching the start of his book tour, Bruce Feiler, author of Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses (William Morrow & Co., April 2001),joined CLAL this week for an in-depth slide show and discussion on his historic journey. Feiler's 10,000 mile trek -- through three continents, five countries, and four war zones -- retraced the Five Books of Moses through the dessert. Along with an acclaimed Israeli archaeologist, Avner Goren, Feiler explored his own spiritual search, as a fifth-generation American Jew from Savannah with no strong Jewish ties, as he examined the relationship of the land to the story and ultimately, to his own sense of faith.

"I came to see that the text is not an abstraction," said Feiler, "It is a living, breathing entity." The project, which took a year to research and a year to write, left Feiler more grounded in his spiritual connection to Judaism and strongly attached to the land. "The stories live in the stones," he said.

He also pointed out, however, that the expedition was not about "proving the Bible." "If the text wanted us to know, it would tell us, but the meaning of the story is more important than in proving the facts. By leaving things open, we are asked to confront our own fears and doubts and engage in debate."

Feiler said that personally, the trip opened him up to beyond the rational mind. "I carried the landscape in my DNA…There is a spirit that lives in these places, and I find the heart of that spirit in me."

Rabbi Irwin Kula, CLAL's President, asked if in fact the promise of the land, as described to Moses at the end in Deuteronomy, was not an important lesson for us -- that we must look to our own inner geography as a place where the sacred resides. Feiler responded that for himself he found a profound sense of God, awe and humanity from the trip, but that each person had to answer the question, what does the Bible mean to you?

"Jewish history is about tension -- the tension of belonging and not belonging. Each side needs each other. But the grappling has become a part of my life," Feiler concluded.

Bruce Feiler came to CLAL through the Jewish Public Forum, an unprecedented effort to broaden the conversation about the Jewish and American future by creating a network of leading figures from diverse worlds, most of whom have not been involved in organized Jewish life.