Bruce Feiler

Forget Flowers, 5 Ways to Make Mom Happier

2013-05-07T15:40:08-04:00

Hey dads, this year, give Mom something she really wants. Flowers, breakfast in bed and girls' night out are all great (and, for some of us, obligatory), but the truth is, what moms really want these days is to reduce the chaos of their lives. Countless surveys have shown that mothers list stress as their number one challenge. Even with dads stepping up on the home front, moms still spend more time caring for kids, doing housework and tending aging parents.

But there is hope.

Since we know so much more about what makes Mom unhappy these days, we also know more about how to make her happier. I spent the last few years gathering best practices from contemporary families about how to improve day-to-day life, from cutting down morning chaos to making peace between squabbling siblings, from rethinking the sex talk to making summer vacations more fun. (See my book, The Secrets of Happy Families.)

In honor of Mother's Day, here's a bouquet of alternative ideas to make mom happier.

1. De-stress her morning. Researchers have found that the highest stress times in families occur in moments of transition. The hour after everybody wakes up in the morning and the hour after everyone comes home in the evening are particularly vulnerable. Tired of nagging your kids to hurry up, get dressed, drink their milk and brush their teeth? Here's a radical idea: Don't.

Though it seems counterintuitive, one strategy that's proven to work is for parents to cede more authority to the children. Create a morning checklist where kids are responsible for checking off their own obligations. Or, choose alternate weeks where different members of the family play "morning captain." Or, assign days of the week where children either prepare breakfast or serve as sous chef for a parent. Besides reducing parental yelling, you'll help your kids. Children who plan their own schedules and evaluate their own work build up their brains and learn to take more responsibility.

2. Reduce sibling squabbles. Siblings between the ages of 3 and 7 clash three and a half times per hour, studies have shown, with those fights taking up ten minutes out of every hour.

To help address this problem around my house, I took a course from the team at the Harvard Negotiation Project. My wife and I now use a watered-down version of the Harvard technique with our daughters. When problems erupt, we separate them to allow them to cool off. Then we ask each party for three alternatives. Usually, they insist theirs is the only option, but eventually, they relent. Then we bring them back together. At that point, with so many options on the table, a solution usually arises fairly easily.

3. Boost your child's self-esteem. A fascinating new body of research suggests one of the best things you can do for your children is to tell your family history. Researchers at Emory found that children who know more about their family history have a higher degree of self-confidence and a stronger sense that they can control their lives. It was the single biggest predictor of a child's well-being. As Marshall Duke, the chief researcher, explained to me, kids needs to understand not just their family's positive moments, but their negative moments as well. The healthiest children know they "belong to something bigger than themselves." And as all harried moms know, if your children are happier, you're feeling happier.

4. Spice up date night. All couples have been told to schedule regular one-on-one time. "Date night" is the default answer to most problems in modern marriages. And research backs this up. The National Marriage Project released a study in 2012 showing couples who have weekly time to themselves are 3.5 times more likely to be happy, including sexually happy.

But not just any date will do. A growing body of research suggests simply going to dinner and a movie has little impact. If you want to improve your relationship, try something novel with your partner. Helen Fisher of Rutgers has observed that couples who participate in activities that are unusual or different, from taking an art class to driving to a new part of town to cooking a new recipe, flood their system with the same chemicals as couples just falling in love. The best way to bring the butterflies back may be to go butterfly hunting.

5. Let her win every argument for a month. All families have conflict; those who control and manage that conflict can make their family happier. One way to do this is to do what Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages, calls "take the fight out of the night." As he put it in a marriage seminar I attended with my wife: "Guys, I'm going to give you a sentence and encourage you to write it in your notebook," he said. "I guarantee it will change your life forever: Honey, what you're saying makes a whole lot of sense. You say that, you are no longer her enemy. You are her friend who understands her."

So, if you agree to let her win every argument for a month, long after those flowers wilt, she'll still be reaping the benefits of Mother's Day. By then, Father's Day will be just around the corner, and maybe she'll return the favor.

Bruce Feiler writes a column about contemporary families for the New York Times and is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers. This piece is adapted from his latest book, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More.

How Easter and Passover Can Make Your Family Happier

2013-03-22T07:55:20-04:00

Over the next week, tens of millions of people will do something so familiar it's easy to forget how radical it is: They will commemorate the worst moments of their past. For Jews, the occasion is Passover, in which they relive their four centuries of slavery in Egypt. For Christians, the occasion is Easter, in which they painstakingly mark the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.

Sure, both stories come around to happier endings. The Bible says the Israelites ultimately escape slavery, and Jesus is ultimately resurrected. But the larger question is still worth considering: What rightful people put their most ignoble days at the heart of their identity?

The answer: a people that wants to survive.

I spent the last few years trying to figure out the secret sauce that keeps families strong, effective and resilient. I talked to cutting-edge scholars, innovative brain researchers, leaders of business, sports and religion, as well as countless everyday moms and dads, who, like me, were struggling so mightily to get through every day we had no time to ask the larger question of how to teach our children values. In effect I was trying to find out: What do happy families do right, and what can I learn from them to make my family happier?

The good news is there is lots of knowledge these days to answer that question. I lay out what I found in "The Secrets of Happy Families," a playbook for contemporary families, covering everything from rethinking mornings to revamping dinner to rejuvenating date night. But of all the counterintuitive ideas I encountered, one, above all, changed my view of parenting -- and of religion.

The most successful families embrace and elevate their family history, particularly their failures, setbacks and other missteps. In 2001, two researchers at Emory, Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, gave 400 children a simple test about their family's past. Do you know where your grandparents were born? Do you know where your parents went to high school? Do you know an aunt or other relative who had an illness they overcame. They also gave them a battery of other psychological tests.

The children who knew more about their family's history had higher self-esteem, a stronger sense that they controlled their lives, and a deeper belief that their family functioned well. The "Do You Know?" scale, as the researchers dubbed it, turned out to be the best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness.

"We were blown away," Dr. Duke told me.

Two months later came Sept. 11. Though the families lived far away, all the children had experienced the same anguish in the same way. The researchers reassessed the children. "Once again," Dr. Duke said, "the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress."

Why does being aware of your family's history help children in times of stress?

"The answers have to do with a child's sense of being part of a larger family," Dr. Duke said. Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative, and they tend to take one of three shapes. First, the ascending narrative: We had nothing; we worked hard; now we have a lot. Second, the descending narrative: We had a lot; then there was a recession, a war, a storm; we lost it all. Third, an oscillating narrative: We worked hard; we achieved some success; but then your grandfather lost his job; we rallied as a family and came back; but then your aunt developed a drinking problem.

Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong "intergenerational self." They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.

And that's where religion comes in. One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God's role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day. So when Jews relive the Passover seder as their ancestors have done for thousands of years or Christians recreate the final steps of Jesus as their forebears have done for centuries, we are directly extending a line from our children to their past.

And the fact that those traditions include moments of hardship makes them even more memorable. As Dr. Duke has found, the best single thing you can do for your children is create, refine and retell the story of your family's positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That will give your children confidence that when they encounter hurdles, they can push through as well. The fact that Passover and Easter elevate suffering to a core part of the story helps those celebrating to draw closer to one another and to better prepare themselves for their own ups and downs.

The bottom line: If you want a happier family, bring those skeletons out of the closet. Celebrate your family's bleakest moments and how your relatives overcame them. In doing so, you will encounter darkness, but you'll give your children the confidence that they, too, shall overcome.

Bruce Feiler is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including Walking the Bible and Abraham. This piece is adapted from his latest book, The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More, which was just published.

5 Secrets to a Happy Family

2013-02-19T18:30:00-05:00

Here's a confession: I hate parenting books. I hate the ones that are earnest and repetitive. (If one more self-help guru tells me to listen actively, repeat what my child says... ) I hate the ones that promote a country. (Be strict like the Chinese! No, be lax like the French!) I hate the ones that have handy checklists. (What if I disagree with no. 2 or can't remember no. 4?)

And yet as a parent, I found myself incredibly frustrated. My wife and I were screaming ourselves hoarse in the mornings; beating ourselves up for not being home every night for family dinner; finding time to fight all the time but rarely seeing each other naked; and generally making every mistake those books try to prevent.

So I set out to write an anti-parenting parenting book. I wouldn't talk to any shrinks or other "family experts." (I violated this only once, when I met a Belgian sex therapist.) I wouldn't shill for a country or adopt a mascot. I would go looking for solutions wherever I could find them. This ultimately led me to elite peace negotiators at Harvard, top game designers at Zynga, a "Sex Mom" in Connecticut, and Warren Buffett's bankers.

And I certainly wouldn't make any lists.

Yet now that my book, "The Secrets of Happy Families," is being published, people keep asking me, "What's the most surprising thing you learned?" or "What's your favorite tip?" So I have no choice: Time to eat crow.

Here is my non-list of five secrets to make your family happier. All are backed by research. All have been tested by families. Feel free to ignore them. They're not all or nothing. They're just five of the 200 new ideas I've tried to gather in one place in the hopes that a few might be helpful.

1. Let your kids pick their punishments.
Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around. It's easier, and we're usually right! But it rarely works. Cutting-edge brain research shows that children who set their own goals, make their own schedules, and evaluate their own work, build up their prefrontal cortex and take greater control over their lives. The number one lesson we've taken from this is to let our kids pick their own rewards and punishments. Following the lead of other families, we hold weekly family meetings where we all vote on two things to work on (this week it's overreacting) and ask our kids what will motivate them. (Their choice: Under five minutes of overreacting, they get a sleepover; over 15 minutes, it's one pushup for every minute.) The point is: If we want our children to have the skills to make good decisions, we have to give them practice when they're young.

2. Don't worry about family dinner.
Sure, we've all heard that family dinner is great for kids, but for many of us, it doesn't work with our schedule. Dig deeper, though, and the news is brighter for parents. Turns out there's only ten minutes of meaningful conversation in any meal; the rest is taken up with "Take your elbows off the table" and "pass the ketchup." You can take those ten minutes, place them at any time of the day, and have the same benefit. Can't have family dinner? Try family breakfast, meet for a bedtime snack, even one meal on weekends can help. Time-shifting isn't just for work or your favorite TV show; it also works with family time.

3. Tell your family history.
The most important thing you can do may be the easiest of all: Tell your children the story of their own family history. Researchers in Georgia have found that children who know more about their parents, grandparents, and other relatives - both their ups and their downs - have higher self-esteem and greater confidence to confront their own challenges. Knowing more about family history is the single biggest predictor of a child's emotional well-being. Grandparents can play a special role in this process, too.

4. Ditch the sex talk.
This may have been the hardest lesson for me to learn. As the father of girls, I was tongue-tied when it came to talking about sex, even body parts. Then I read that a majority of boys and girls know that boys have penises and girls have "down there." Guilty! Even the American Academy of Pediatrics says we should talk to kids as early as 18 months about proper names for their body parts and other age-appropriate issues. And as kids get older, it's much easier to talk about sexuality when kids are under ten, because as they get older, they tune us out. As one group of girls told me, "It's not 'The Talk.' It's a series of talks. It's a conversation."

5. Change where you sit.
There's tremendous know-how out there about how we rearrange our spaces to make our families function better, but most of it has remained hidden from parents. An environmental psychologist gave me some helpful advice. If you sit at hard surfaces, you'll be more rigid. If you sit on cushioned surfaces, you'll be more accommodating. "When you're disciplining your children, sit in upright chairs on cushioned surfaces," she said. "The conversation will go better." My wife and I even changed where we have difficult conversations, moving from my office, where I was sitting in the "power position" with her six inches lower, to a window seat in our bedroom, where we can be side by side at the same level.

The bottom line: Tolstoy was right. Happy families do have certain things in common. Today we finally have the knowledge to know what those things are.

This piece is adapted from The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, & Much More, by Bruce Feiler, which has just been published. For more information, please visit www.brucefeiler.com.

Pharaoh in a Cage: Five Lessons from the Mubarak Trial

2011-08-03T12:16:32-04:00

The Mubarak trial might be symbolic, but what a symbol!

The sight of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and other members of his regime in white prison fatigues, behind bars, in a cage in Cairo is the most significant event in the Arab Spring since his ouster six months ago. It's a much-needed boost for the beleagured youth movements across the region, and a chilling reminder to other strongmen across the Muslim world (including Iran) that history is being remade before their eyes.

The trial couldn't come at a more important time. Egyptians have grown increasingly frustrated with the pace of reform; President Assad is stepping up his massacre of protestors in Syria; Libya and Yemen are increasingly chaotic. Plus, all this is happening against the religious backdrop of the holiest month of the Muslim year, Ramadan, giving it a powerful, spiritual dimension.

So what is the significance of the Mubarak trial? Here are five lessons.

1. Visuals matter. Until Mubarak was actually rolled into court this morning on a gurney, his voice weak, his hair still dyed, (once even picking his nose), most people in Egypt doubted he would even show up. Twitter feeds breathlessly documented every step of his journey from a Sinai hospital to the cage in Cairo. Even his sons stood directly between him and the television cameras (and later swiped at still photographers), like henchmen protecting a Hollywood starlet from paparazzi. The reason: Pictures matter. And this picture sends a very clear message that nobody is above humiliation.

2. The Arab Spring is still alive. The conventional wisdom in Egypt of late has been that the youth protestors of Generation Freedom have been marginalized, and the real battle for power is between the armed forces and well-organized, if fractious Islamic groups. But the fact that this trial is being held at all -- and televised -- is testament to the continuing influence of youth protestors, who held several rallies this summer to demand accountability for the over 800 people during the revolution. The youth movement may be lacking in organized political clout, but it can still drive events.

3. Revolutions matter. The real significance of the Arab Spring lies in the coming of age of a new generation of Muslim youth, who represent 60 percent of the Arab world and a total of 1 billion people across the globe. One in seven human beings alive today is a Muslim under 30. For the last three decades, the only narrative of change these better-educated, economically frustrated young people have been offered is that of the extremists. The uprisings in up to 20 Muslim countries have given them a new narrative, and they've proven this generation will no longer passively accept the backward status their parents did. While political progress has been slow, the trial of Mubarak is a potent reminder that revolutions do have consequences.

4. Bin Ladenism is fading. With the anniversary of 9-11 now just days away, and with the death of Osama bin Laden still fresh in everyone's mind, the trial is another benchmark in the fading appeal of Islamic jihadism. What did al Qaeda want, after all, than the toppling of Middle East dictators. They couldn't pull it off, but the protestors did. In every Muslim country where polling is available, al Qaeda has been losing support precipitously in recent years. Even before his death, confidence in Osama bin Laden fell 42 percentage points in Jordan between 2003 and 2010, 34 points in Indonesia, and 28 points in Pakistan. In Turkey his approval rating went from 15 to 3; in Lebanon from 19 to zero. Hitler would poll higher. And now bin Laden is at the bottom of the sea.

5. Religion still shapes events in the Muslim world. The headlines this morning in Egypt read, "The pharaoh in the cage of the accused." Ramadan started this week, meaning even most moderate Muslims will gather with their families, fast during the day, and feast at night. The sacred is in the air. The symbolic significance of the former ruling family, widely pilloried as having "pharaonic powers," stripped of their hand-made suits and pricey jewelry, dressed in similar humble white clothing worshipers will wear on pilgrimages to Mecca later this month, will be lost on no one in the Muslim world. As Moses says to Pharaoh in the Koran, "You are not a god." Today, more than ever, that lesson echoes in the Arab world.

Bruce Feiler's latest book, Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and the Remaking of the Modern World, has just been published. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brucefeiler.

'Generation Freedom': Singing the Song of Liberation Across the Middle East (EXCERPT)

2011-06-27T16:08:21-04:00

For 15 years I traveled across the Middle East, retracing the Bible through the desert, for a series of books and television shows, including "Walking the Bible" and "Abraham." Then I stopped. As my wife said, "You've had your time as a war correspondent."

But the Middle East has a way of not letting you go. As 2011 dawned, I watched with awe as wave after wave of hope-starved young people -- from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria -- took to the streets to reclaim their lives. They marched in the face of dictators. They withstood the rain of bullets. They prayed in the face of tanks.

Time and again, commentators told us these uprisings represented something new. #Jan25 was this generation's "Give me liberty or give me death!" This was, in the iconic words of Wael Ghonim, "Revolution 2.0." But was it, really? Sure all these new-fangled elements were present, but as someone steeped in the ancient world, I also heard a different cry coming from the protestors. I heard the prayers of a suffering people calling out to a higher authority to help overthrow an oppressor. I heard the echo of the oldest stories ever told. In Tahrir Square, the protestors even carried banners comparing Hosni Mubarak to the pharaoh.

Who are these young people? I wondered. What beliefs do they have? And what do they mean for us? I decided to head back to the region to find out. To help answer these questions, I marched with the protestors in Tahrir Square; I confronted the head of the Muslim Brotherhood; I witnessed Muslims and Christians coming together to rebuild churches burned by extremists.

In this exclusive excerpt of my new book, "Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and the Remaking of the Modern World," a 21-year-old law school student and bass guitarist named Noor Aymin Nour, the son of high-profile dissidents, and one of the hunks of Tahrir Square, recounts what happened to him after he was beaten, arrested and thrown into a police vehicle on the opening night of the revolution, Jan. 25, 2011.

----------------------

Inside the paddy wagon, Aymin Nour and the 43 others captive were increasingly desperate. At one point, the vehicle actually lunged to a stop, the door opened, and an armed police officer appeared. He called out for Noor Aymin Nour to get out. As the son of a prominent dissident, he was considered a dangerous person to detain. But he refused to abandon his fellow passengers. "Either I leave with everyone else, or I stay with everyone else," Aymin Nour said. "It would be cowardice to do anything else. That's just the way I raised."

The police gave up, and the wagon continued its grim passage. "At that point, I actually began singing," Aymin Nour said. "People just gave me the look of, 'What are you doing?' I told them. "It's one of two things. Either they are going to let us out in the middle of the desert to go home, so we're celebrating in advance. Or they're taking us to the Central Security Forces headquarters, and we're never going to celebrate, smile, or laugh again, so we might as well smile and laugh now."

Aymin Nour, though, had a plan. He used a secret cell phone he stashed in his jacket to telephone his mother. He described the vehicle they were in, and where they had been seized. With a decade of political activism behind her, Gamila Ismail knew just what to do. She telephoned her ex-husband (former presidential candidate Aymin Nour), notified her other son, and the three hopped in three separate cars and began chasing down the security vehicle that contained her son.

At one point, Ismail thought she had identified the proper vehicle and was following it through the streets. Aymin Nour asked everyone in the wagon to quiet down and asked his mother to honk her horn so they could tell whether it was the right vehicle. It was.

But Gamila Ismail knew something her son and his fellow captives did not. They were seconds away from Central Security headquarters by now. As the wagon approached the gate, Ismail sped her car in front of the paddy wagon, swerved sideways, and blocked the entrance. As soon as she leapt from the vehicle, Aymin Nour's brother and father swarmed toward the back door of the paddy-wagon and began attacking it with crow bars. The truck began to rock alarmingly from side to side, while someone began banging the metal exterior, sending out huge metallic clangs.

When at last the door opened, a police officer had managed to push aside Aymin Nour's father and brother and pulled his gun, but the captives surged forward, sending him flying. One by one the protestors fled their sweaty cell. "I insisted on being the last person out," said Aymin Nour, "because I knew there were a lot of sick and injured people. Obviously my coming out last of 44 people was very nerve-wracking for my parents. They were thinking. 'We just spent hours chasing the wrong truck and our son wasn't inside!'"

Once he did step into freedom, there was no celebration. His three family members quickly grabbed him and threw him inside one of the family cars, along with the man who had taken the rubber bullet in his eye. They sped back to Cairo, took the victim in the hospital, and locked Aymin Nour into hiding at the home of a family friend. For the next two days he remained a fugitive. But when word began to spread that Friday, January 28 had been identified as another rally, this one a "Day of Rage," he knew he had to join.

"Did you think the protests would succeed at that point?" I asked him.

"It felt like an unprecedented moment," he said. "We didn't know whether or not it would turn into a revolution. But we knew that after the 25th of January, nothing in Egypt would ever be the same."

Adapted from "Generation Freedom: The Middle East Uprisings and the Remaking of the Modern World," by Bruce Feiler. For more information, please visit BruceFeiler.com or view the trailer.

A Father's Prayer for His Daughters

2011-06-17T04:24:01-04:00

Three years ago this month I was diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening form of bone cancer in my left leg. I was the 'walking guy' who might never walk again. I endured a "lost year" involving nine months of chemotherapy and a 15-hour surgery in which doctors removed my left femur and replaced it with titanium, relocated my left fibula to my thigh, and removed a third of my quadricep.

At the time I was the father of three-year-old identical twin daughters, and I was eager to gather as much wisdom and support for my girls as I could. I reached out to six men from all parts of my life and asked them to form a Council of Dads for my girls. I then asked each man for one life lesson he would share with my girls. Their answers ranged from how to travel ("Be a traveler not a tourist") to how to dream ("Don't see the wall.") (To see my TED talk on these lessons, click here.)

But what lesson would I add to this list? What one piece of advice would I give my girls? The answer came back to my life's passion.

Since walking was the first thing I lost when I got sick, I spent much of the year and a half I was on crutches contemplating this most elemental of human acts. Walking upright is considered the threshold of being human, the skill that most distinguishes us from our ancestors. It's also immune to improvement. Ever since humans began walking four million years ago, the act has been essentially unchanged.

But walking can also be the source of meaning. As long as humans have worshiped gods, they have walked to get closer to them. In the Bible, the greatest spiritual breakthroughs occur when the heroes are on journeys: Abraham going forth to the Promised Land; the Israelites crossing the Red Sea; Israel exiled to Babylon. From the Hajj to the Stations of the Cross, the greatest pilgrimages involve walking. And many pilgrims purposefully make their gait more arduous in order to slow their pace even more.

Now I understand why.

The simplest consequence of walking on crutches is that you walk slower. Every step must be a necessary one. When you hurry, you get where you're going, but you get there alone. When you go slow, you get where you're going, but you get there with a community you've built along the way. At the risk of admission: I was never nicer than when I was on crutches.

In the 1840's, when walking was just becoming a source of recreation across Europe, a new type of pedestrian appeared in Paris. He was called a flâneur, one who ambled the arcades. One emblem of that idleness was the fashion among flâneurs to take turtles for walks and let the reptile set the pace.

As a paean to slow-moving, I love this notion, and it became my own wish for my daughters. Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause.

This idea of slowing down became the Number 1 lesson I learned from my experience. The Liberty Bell has a quote from the Bible on its side. In the passage, God asks the Israelites every seven years to give their fields a year of rest. Every 49 years, the land gets an extra year of rest, during which all families are to be reunited and all people surrounded with the ones they love. That fiftieth year is called the Jubilee year.

And though I'm still shy of fifty, that tradition perfectly captures my experience. My Lost Year was my Jubilee Year. In lying fallow, I planted the seeds for a healthier future. In forming a Council of Dads, I reunited with the people I love.

So this weekend, consider doing what we'll be doing to celebrate Father's Day, find a friend, a family member, or whomever it might be; find a turtle; and take a long, slow walk.

------------------------

Bruce Feiler's New York Times bestseller, The Council of Dads: A Story of Family, Friendship, and Learning How to Live, has just been released in paperback. For more information, please visit www.brucefeiler.com or twitter.com/brucefeiler.

When Pharaoh Falls: Six Lessons from the Exodus for Egypt Today

2011-02-11T12:00:35-05:00

As the crisis in Egypt reached its climax this week, commentators struggled to find historical parallels, from the fall of the Berlin Wall, to Tiananmen Square, to the revolution in Iran. But one parallel that's been mostly overlooked is the remarkable similarities between current events and the story in the Book of Exodus about the confrontation between Israel and ancient Egypt.

Before we get too carried away: Drawing connections between the Bible and contemporary events can be a fool's errand, a trap or, worse, a dangerous ideological weapon. As I discovered while working on America's Prophet, my book on the influence of Moses in American history, both abolitionists and slave-holders in antebellum America tried to justify their slavery by quoting the Bible. And the slave-holders had the better case.

The Bible is not a history book, or a policy book.

But it is a remarkably insightful portrait of some enduring patterns of human behavior, including that of dictators, mobs of people abused for generations, and what happens when the two sides clash.

1. The people rarely succeed on the first try.

The Book of Exodus opens with the Israelites, having been enslaved for 430 years, straining under the yoke of the pharaoh. After being recruited by God through the burning bush, Moses -- the adoptive grandson of the pharaoh -- returns to free his people. He marches up to the pharaoh and demands, "Let my people go that they may celebrate a festival for me in the wilderness." Note that he does not demand total liberation, but a more modest request for religious freedom. He wants three days off to celebrate a festival. But the pharaoh scoffs at the request, thereby guaranteeing that when the people come back they will escalate their demands. The parallels to the current situation are unavoidable: With each passing week, the people grew more confident and slowly increased their demands.

2. The leader has henchmen.

Not only does the pharaoh reject the Israelites' demands, he takes retribution. He orders his taskmasters to withdraw the straw for making bricks, but does nothing to eliminate their quotas, "Let heavier work be laid upon the men," the pharaoh says. The result is an excuse for the pharaoh's henchman to lash out at the people. Predictably, the crisis in Egypt today also moved from early, mostly peaceful demonstrations, to an outbreak of violent repression as the regime sent security forces and machete-wielding mobs. At that point, confrontation was inevitable.

3. The people have powers, too.

Faced with resistance from their arrogant despot, Moses and the Israelites escalate their pressure by deploying a set of mass disruptions that bring the country -- and its economy -- to a halt. There are many ways of viewing the Ten Plagues -- as theological lesson, as natural disaster, as literary flourish -- but there is one undoubtable consequence: they wreak havoc on Egypt. They attack the foundation of its economy and bring the country to a standstill. The first plague, for instance, turns the Nile river to blood, attacking the core of the country's livelihood. The mass demonstrations in Tahrir square, led by soft-spoken leaders like Wael Ghonim, performed a similar action: a gradual escalation of economic pressure in a form that the regime would recognize.

4. The leader will harden his heart.

But still pharaoh resists. The Bible uses very precise language here. After the first plague: "Pharaoh's heart stiffened;" "He turned and went into the palace." After the second plague: "Pharaoh became stubborn this time also, and would not let the people go." Twenty times the Bible describes the pharaoh's heart as hardening. The message is clear: The tyrant of Egypt is callous, obdurate and fully responsible for the suffering of the people. Can anyone who watched President Mubarak's speech on Thursday -- especially after a day of news reports raising expectations of his departure -- not say that his heart appeared to have hardened?

5. The end is personal.

It's the 10th plague, in the end, that finally breaks the back of the pharaoh. "Toward midnight, I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of the Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones." There was a loud cry from Egypt, the Bible says, and finally the pharaoh relents. "Go," he tells Moses. Mubarak, in his speech, also mentioned his son, promising that they would both die on Egyptian soil. That reference suggests that accepting the end of his family's dynasty may have been hardest thing at all for him to do. Once he realized he was all alone, the final outcome was unavoidable.

6. The road ahead is long.

With all these parallels, there is one more echo of the Bible that many prove to be the most lasting. In my book Walking the Bible, I described how the Exodus has profound similarities with the Creation story. In effect, the event is Israel's re-creation: the rupture from its confined womb in Egypt, the passage through the narrow canal of the Red Sea, the arrival as a new people in Sinai. All endings are beginnings, too. And in the case of the Exodus, at least, the rebooting of the country leads to a protracted wandering in the desert full of anxiety, regret, doubt, and rebellion. That lesson from the Bible may prove to be the most enduring: While victory is sweet, the road to the Promised Land of freedom has many detours ahead.

How Moses Created Thanksgiving: The Biblical Roots of America's Holiday

2010-11-23T22:08:24-05:00

Hollywood is rediscovering the Bible.

Two rival films about Moses, both by established producers, are vying to become the next chapter of the century-long love affair between the merchants of sin in Tinsletown and the prophet of hope in Israel. But no matter how far the filmmakers stretch their story, there are unlikely to reach the least known but perhaps most influential impact of Moses today: He is the Patron Saint of Thanksgiving.

The real story of Thanksgiving has surprising biblical roots. A few years ago, I set out on a 10,000-mile journey through the hidden symbols of American life that became the basis for my book, America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America. My journey began on a visit to Plymouth, Mass., where I boarded a replica of The Mayflower. A re-enactor was reading from the Bible. "Exodus 14," he explained. "The Israelites are trapped in front of the Red Sea, and the Egyptians are about to catch them. 'Hold your peace!' Moses says. The Lord shall fight for you.' Our leader read us that passage during our crossing."

I hadn't ever associated the biblical prophet with this most American holidays, but his fingerprints are all over our turkeys. How did this happen? How did a 3,000-year-old story become the inspiration for a contemporary American national holiday?

The answer begins with the Protestant Reformation. All through the Middle Ages, Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible directly, but the Reformation, coupled with the printing press, brought vernacular Bibles into the hands of everyday believers. Many of those believers were Protestants who felt oppressed by the Church. They related to the story of the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham who were enslaved in Egypt around 1200 B.C., were set free by Moses, then set out for the Promised Land.

The Pilgrims, a band of Protestant outcasts, saw themselves as fulfilling this biblical story. In coming to the New World, they, too, had to cross a tumultuous sea, arrive in an untested wilderness and create a new "Promised Land." As a result, when they set sail on The Mayflower in 1620, they described themselves as the chosen people fleeing their pharaoh, King James. On the Atlantic, their leader, William Bradford, proclaimed their journey to be as vital as "Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt." And when they got to Cape Cod, they thanked God for letting them pass through their fiery Red Sea.

The pilgrims were so enamored of Moses, the Bibles they brought with them were emblazoned with pictures of Moses on the title page, and they named their children biblical virtues like Fear, Patience and Wrestling, as in "Wrestling with God," the English translation of Israel.

As Peter Gomes, the preacher of Harvard told me, "They weren't trying to recreate the biblical narrative. They were trying to fulfill it." Because of them, the story of Moses became the story of America.

And because of the biblical roots of this most secular of American holidays, if your gathering threatens to descend into a familiar fracas among different faiths, factions and political persuasions, Moses, precisely because he has been used by believers and non-believers alike, Republicans and Democrats, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, may be the one figure who can unite the family and allow them all to enjoy their pumpkin pie.

This entry is part of a series, "This Month in Moses," chronicling the 400-year relationship between the United States and "America's Prophet." For more information, and to read the entire series, visit Bruce Feiler's website, or follow him on Twitter.

God in the U.S.A.: Americans Know More About Religion Than Most Other Subjects

2010-09-29T22:36:53-04:00

The headlines this week were bold: "Americans Don't Know Much About Religion"; "Atheists Know More About Religion Than Believers"; "Basic Religious Test Stumps Most Americans."

Eh? Did these writers read the survey these articles were based on? The Pew Forum survey on religious knowledge in America contained a number of revelations and surprises, but few were covered in the initial articles. After reading the actual results, here are four important truths about Americans and God.

1) Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.

For starters, the 3,412 people polled for this study are not exactly students of history. The first substantive question respondents were asked was, "Can you tell me the name of the vice president of the United States?" Only 59% answered correctly. The same meager number knew what antibiotics do, and an even smaller number could correctly name the New Deal as the signature program of FDR. So as a baseline: These people were not very knowledgeable about the world in general.

By contrast, their answers about religion seemed downright Nobel-worthy. Three-quarters knew the Jewish Sabbath falls on Saturday; 68 percent knew the Constitution forbids establishing religion; 63 percent knew Genesis is the first book of the Bible; and the same number who knew who Joe Biden was knew the Quran is the holy book of Islam. Americans are religious savants.

2) The most popular religious figure in America is Moses.

In my book America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America, I explore how Moses became the defining figure of American history. The pilgrims quoted his story; Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson proposed that he be on the U.S. seal; the Statue of Liberty and Superman were modeled after him; every American president from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan to Obama was shaped by his story.

This Pew survey proves that Americans' love affair with the superhero of the Bible continues. Asked about various figures from the Bible -- Jesus, Job, Moses, and Abraham -- more Americans knew about Moses than the others. And quizzed about a number of biblical stories, including the Gospels, Americans knew more about the Ten Commandments than the rest of those prominent stories. Moses is the most beloved religious figure in America today.

3) Believers still dominate in America; atheists are not gaining ground.

Despite a decade in which evangelical non-believers have driven the national conversation about faith, the number of atheists is still minuscule in America. Only 6 percent of respondents said they don't believe in God, with another 1 percent saying they didn't know. By contrast, 69 percent said they were absolutely certain God exists, and another 17 percent said they were fairly certain.

But wiping out another stereotype, these believers are not particularly dogmatic. Only a third said the Bible should be taken literally, and asked how often they attend religious services, by far the largest tally said a few times a year, if at all. Americans are by and large casual, non-ideological, benign believers.

4) Americans know as much about other religions as they know about their own.

It was common to read this survey as saying Americans are ignorant about other faiths, and there is evidence to support this claim. Only 38 percent knew that Vishnu and Shiva are central figures in Hinduism. Only 36 percent knew that nirvana is a state of being free from suffering and is an aim of Buddhism. Only 27 percent knew that Indonesia contains mostly Muslims. But since when is the religious makeup of Jakarta the standard for religious literacy?

Consider these statistics: Two-thirds knew that India is predominantly Hindu. Seven in ten knew that Pakistan is predominantly Muslim. Half knew that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Amazingly, more knew Ramadan is the holy month of Islam than knew who wrote Moby Dick. All in all, Americans score fairly well on their religious knowledge of the rest of the world.

For decades, surveys have shown that Americans' knowledge of basic math, science, and history is appallingly low. The real headline coming out of this week's survey on God in America is that our knowledge of religion is not as bad as other subjects, and is arguably stronger. Considering that we are engaged in two wars in Muslim countries in the Middle East, as well as an economic transformation that brings us into closer business relationships with Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians across Asia, it's safe to say that our awareness of different religious traditions -- and our ability to coexist with them -- may become a key national security advantage in years to come.

Bruce Feiler is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born. His book America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America has just been released in paperback.

This Month in Moses: How the Superhero of the Bible Became an American Pop Icon

2010-09-21T16:29:32-04:00

He may not have been faster than a speeding bullet. He wasn't more powerful than a locomotive. But he did split the Red Sea!

And in America, he became an inspiration for the country's leading superhero and the star of the Hollywood's fifth-highest-grossing movie.

This month proved pivotal to the influence of Moses on American pop culture. (For an overview of how the story of Moses shaped American politics, from George Washington to Barack Obama, read the first entry in this series here.) Moses helped shape many of the defining symbols of America. The Liberty Bell has a quotation from Moses on its side, even the Statue of Liberty was cast in his image. Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi modeled the statue on a Roman goddess, but he imported two icons from Moses: first, the rays of sun around her head, and second, the tablet in her arms, both of which come from the moment Moses descends Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.

Fifty years later, two bookish Jews in Cleveland, Ohio channeled their religious anxieties into a cartoon character modeled partly on the superhero of the Torah. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster drew on numerous sources for Superman, including Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But its backstory is taken almost point-by-point from Moses.

Just as Moses was floated down the Nile in a basket to escape a people facing annihilation, Superman is floated into a space in a spaceship to escape a planet facing extinction. Just as Moses is rescued by the pharaoh's daughter and raised in an alien environment where he conceals his true identity, Superman is rescued by the Kents and raised in an alien environment where he conceals his true identity. Just as Moses is called to liberate a people from tyranny, Superman is called to liberate humanity from evil.

Even Superman's name reflects his creators' biblical knowledge. Moses is the leader of Israel, or Yisra-el in Hebrew, "one who strives with God." Superman's original name was Kal-El, or Swift God. His father's name was Jor-El. Superman was clearly drawn as a modern-day god.

And like Moses, Superman was a great defender of Jews. In Superman #1, published in 1939, Clark and Lois Lane travel to a thinly disguised Nazi Germany, where Superman saves Lois from a firing squad. In Superman #2, Clark visits faux Germany again and meets Adolphus Runyan, a scientist clearly modeled on Adolph Hitler. (By the time the television show debuted this month in 1951, these themes were downplayed.)

Americans may or may not have noticed Superman's Jewish identity, but Hitler sure did. In 1940, Hitler's chief propagandist, Josef Goebbels, denounced Superman as a Jew and called Jerry Siegel "an intellectually and physically circumcised chap."

After the war, it was Cecil B. DeMille who turned Moses into a full-throated symbol of the American century. Released 54 years ago next week, The Ten Commandments became the fifth-highest-grossing movie of all time. And it was designed to reflect DeMille's anti-Communist views. When the movie opened, DeMille appeared on the screen. "The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator," he said. "The same battle continues throughout the world today."

His message was clear: Moses represented the United States; the pharaoh the Soviet Union. To drive home his point, DeMille cast mostly Americans as the Israelites and mostly Europeans as the Egyptians.

Politics even entered the ten plagues. DeMille showed three plagues. For turning the Nile into blood, he used a garden hose with dyed water. For the hail, he used popcorn. The tenth plague was often portrayed as an angel with a bloody knife, but DeMille thought the image wasn't scary enough. He used a green fog that swooped down out of the sky in the shape of a claw to simulate nuclear fog.

But DeMille's most political act was having Parmount pay for 4,000 replicas of the Ten Commandments be placed on courthouse lawns across the U.S. One of these monuments, in Austin, Texas, later became the basis for the Supreme Court decision in 2005 that allowed the display of Ten Commandments if they were used for secular purposes. A publicity stunt for Paramount became the basis of landmark U.S. law.

In the final scene, Moses blesses his successor, Joshua, then proceeds toward the summit of Mount Nebo. He turns and quotes the words on the Liberty Bell, even though they come from Leviticus, not the end of Deuteronomy.

Moses then continues to the top of mountain, where he turns and raises his right arm in a perfect tableau of the Statue of Liberty. In the final shot of his valedictory film, DeMille crowns his paean to the greatest prophet who ever lived by parading him through the medley of American icons to which he had been compared over the years -- the Liberty Bell, Lady Liberty -- until he becomes the embodiment of America enlightening the world.

This entry is part of a series, "This Month in Moses," chronicling the 400-year relationship between the United States and "America's Prophet." For more information, and to read the entire series, visit www.brucefeiler.com, or sign up at twitter.com/brucefeiler.

Obama a Muslim! Lincoln a Catholic! FDR a Jew! Why Americans Don't Like Their President's God

2010-08-21T02:48:09-04:00

In 1860, in the midst of tensions surrounding the Civil War, it was widely believed in the United States that Abraham Lincoln was Catholic. Coming on the heels of decades of anti-Catholic sentiment, the rumors seem to have had two roots: The first was the ambiguous nature of Lincoln's upbringing in Illinois, where Jesuits were very active, leading to the notion that Lincoln had been baptized a Catholic; the other was that Lincoln represented a prominent critic of the Church. The rumors were widely repeated by Lincoln's political opponents.

In 1940, in the midst of tensions surrounding World War II as well as economic hardship from the Great Depression, it was widely believed in the United States that Franklin Roosevelt was Jewish. Coming on the heels of decades of anti-Jewish sentiment, the rumors seem to have had several roots: The first was the ambiguous origins of Roosevelt's earliest American ancestors, who came from Holland in the 17th century; the second was the abundance of Jewish appointees to Roosevelt's administrations in New York and Washington. The rumors were widely repeated by Roosevelt's political opponents.

In 2010, in the midst of tensions surrounding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as economic hardship from the Great Recession, it is widely believed in the United States that Barack Obama is Muslim. Coming on the heels of decades of anti-Muslim sentiment, the rumors seem to have had several roots: The first is the ambiguous nature of Obama's upbringing, in which his father was a Muslim and he spent formative time as a child in a Muslim country; the second is Obama's vocal outreach to the Muslim world and his support of the rights of Muslim Americans. The rumors have been widely repeated by Obama's political opponents.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the news this week that 1 in 5 Americans believes that Barack Obama is Muslim is that so many people greeted the news as a surprise. Americans taking out their discrimination toward minority religions on the president of the United States is as American as apple pie; the custom has been going on as long as there has been a presidency. George Washington was the subject of widespread grumbling that he was a more loyal Mason than he was a Christian.

The entire debate about the "Ground Zero mosque" and the even-wider campaign against Islam in general that's been waged across the United States this summer misses a larger point: These kinds of campaigns have been waged in the United States since our founding. It's the nature of how we conflate political frustration, economic anxiety, and concern about the changing fabric of our identity. In a country where our national character has been tied up with God since our founding, it's hardly surprising that we tar our political opponents with worshiping a different god than we do. After all, a politician who subscribes to our religious values would never have gotten us into this mess, now would he?

But as reliably as Americans have adopted these views, they've also moved past them. In every case of religious discrimination in the United States, whether it was Methodists in the eighteenth century, Catholics in the nineteenth century, or Jews in the twentieth century, the once reviled and ostracized "outsider" religion in America eventually makes it into the inner circle.

And odds are the pattern will repeat itself with Muslims in the twenty-first century.

Bruce Feiler is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths and America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America, which will be released in paperback next month.

This Month in Moses: How the Bible's Greatest Hero Became America's Greatest Icon

2010-08-14T07:09:10-04:00

The 400-year love affair between America and Moses began this week in 1620. On August 15, the Mayflower set sail set from Southampton with 102 passengers on board. The pilgrims' leader described them as the chosen people, casting off the yoke of their pharaoh, King James. Their governor proclaimed their mission to be as vital as that of "Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt." And the first thing they did when they arrived on Cape Cod was thank God for allowing them to cross their "Red Sea."

Why so many references to Moses?

For centuries, European explorers had set out for new lands without using expressions like pharaoh and promised land, Exodus and Moses. By choosing these evocative lyrics, the founders of America introduced the themes of oppression and redemption, freedom and law, that would carry through the next four centuries. Because of them, the story of Moses became the story of America.

The sheer depth of that influence is staggering.

The Liberty Bell has a quote from Moses on its side. George Washington was hailed as the American Moses. Harriet Tubman called herself the "Moses of her people." Abraham Lincoln quoted Moses at Gettysburg. Cecil B. DeMille cast Moses as a hero for the Cold War. Martin Luther King compared himself to Moses on the night before he was killed. And nearly every American president, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, has likened himself to Moses.

For 400 years, one figure stands out as the surprising symbol of America. One person has inspired more Americans than any other. His name is Moses.

For two years, I traveled across America looking at the influence of Moses in shaping our nation's history. I sailed on Plymouth Harbor, I climbed the Bell Tower of Independence Hall, I retracted the Underground Railroad, I tried on Charlton Heston's robe from "The Ten Commandments," and I visited the Oval Office. And I was surprised how relevant the Moses story was to contemporary American debates -- from our ongoing debate about values, to our role as champions of freedom, to our place as a country that welcome immigrants.

The impact of the Moses story on shaping America spanned the centuries, and occurred throughout the year. Perhaps the most potent example also happened this month.

Immediately after approving the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formed a committee to design a seal for the new United States. As proof of its importance, the committee had three members, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

Six weeks later, on August 20, the committee submitted its recommendation. The seal should depict Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. Three of the five drafters of the Declaration of Independence and three of the defining faces of the Revolution proposed that Moses be the face of the United States of America.

Moses is our true founding father.

This entry is part of a series, "This Month in Moses," chronicling the 400-year relationship between the United States and "America's prophet." For more information, and to read the entire series, visit www.brucefeiler.com, or sign up at twitter.com/brucefeiler.

A Father's 10 Lessons for His Daughters (VIDEO)

2010-06-20T08:00:00-04:00

One of the secrets of parenting is that it's often a very lonely sport. Especially for dads. Our children expect us to be the Answer Man, Mr. Fix It, the Know-it-All. And the truth is we often expect this of ourselves. Maybe our dads played this role for us. Maybe we interpreted their silence, or awkwardness, or distance to be authority. Maybe they had skills -- changing the oil, building the tree-house, serving their country -- that we never had, or never utilized.

But for whatever reason, dads today like to think we have the answers, when often we don't.

Two years ago this week I stumbled into a way to end this isolation. I reached out to six men from all parts of my life and asked them to be present in the lives of my three-year-old twin daughters. And I called this group, "The Council of Dads."

I formed this group for emotional reasons. I was facing a life-threatening illness. But even before my illness passed, I realized the Council of Dads was giving me something that I didn't know I needed.

It was giving me an inner circle. It was welcoming my friends into the most precious thing in my life -- the lives of my children. It was making me feel part of a group.

Fathering was no longer a solo sport. It was a team sport.

Along the way, I asked each dad for one piece of wisdom he would share with my girls.

Their answers surprised, and moved me. They made me a better father.

And they inspired me to write the book, The Council of Dads, which gathers the life lessons from my these dads, along with some from my dad, and various father figures in my life.

Today, when one my daughters asks me a question I don't know the answer to, or gives me that look that says, "Can you make it better?" I no longer feel alone. Or scared.

I turn to my Council.

Here, with a little help from these men, are 10 Lessons for My Daughters from The Council of Dads.

1. Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist - A tourist takes the easy road. A traveler seeks out the challenging path. A tourist stays on the bus. A traveler jumps in the mud.

2. Always Pack Your Flip-Flops - In college, a friend and I backpacked across Asia and got kicked out of the great hotels because he refused to wear anything but tank tops and flip-flops. Twenty years later, though he wears a suit during the day, he still wears flip-flops whenever he can. We would still get kicked out of those hotels. Not surprisingly, he's my most loyal friend. Whatever you do, be true to yourself. Wherever you go, always pack your flip-flops.

3. Don't Give in To the Wall- Dream big. And when you encounter a wall, find a way to get over it, around it, or under it. Whatever you do, don't succumb to it. Don't give into the wall.

4. Tend Your Tadpoles - When I was a boy I caught tadpoles with a friend. Like those tadpoles, we grew legs and hopped off into the world. I had little in common with that friend. Later, when I needed help, my friend was suddenly back. Tend your tadpoles. You never know when you might need a pal.

5. Live the Questions - Have patience with the unknown. No matter where you find yourself, if you ask questions, you'll find your way. Don't only seek the answers. Try to love the questions. And the point is to love everything you do. Live the questions.

6. Harvest Miracles - Life is full of everyday miracles. Sometimes it just takes a bad situation to help appreciate them. Even when it's cloudy, keep looking for the rainbow.

7. Use Your Words - When you were toddlers, we begged you, "Use your words." Yet sometimes we forgot to take our own advice. Even when you're older, don't hide behind silence. When you face a problem, talk it through.

8. Always Learn to Juggle on the Side of a Hill - When I was 12, I learned to juggle on the side of a gravel hill with oranges. Every time I dropped an orange it would hit the ground, pulpify, and roll to the bottom of the incline. It was fool's errand. But it worked! If you're going to try something, try it. Don't half commit.

9. Take a Walk with a Turtle - In Paris, centuries ago, a new type of pedestrian appeared. He was called a flaneur, one who strolled the arcades. Flaneurs liked to take turtles for walks and let the reptile set the pace. It's a perfect ode to slow-moving. Don't be in a hurry. Behold the world in pause.

10. Hug the Monster - Pilots learn that when they face a life-defining challenging, they should not run from their fear. They should embrace it. Hug the monster. Wrestle your fear into submission. Redirect it into a source of resilience and purpose.

Take trips, girls. Take chances. Take off.

The piece is adapted from The Council of Dads, by New York Times-bestselling author Bruce Feiler. Watch Bruce give a TED Talk about "The Council of Dads."

God and Dad: A Father's Four Lessons of Faith

2010-06-18T16:17:00-04:00

Are men abandoning God?

Religion is increasingly a woman's domain in America. Two-thirds of church and synagogue attendees are women, studies show, with young men fleeing the pews even faster. On any given weekend, 13 million more women than men will attend religious institutions.

Home is even worse. Moms are usually the ones talking about God around the dinner table. When the topic turns to faith, Dad is usually out to lunch.

What a shame. Fathers can find great inspiration in faith. For the last dozen years, I've traced the influence of the Bible through the Middle East and America, looking at how religious figures from the past are relevant to today's families. In Walking the Bible, I climbed Mount Ararat, crossed the Red Sea, and spent weeks traveling the route of the Exodus through the desert. In Where God Was Born, I continued that journey through the second half the Bible in Israel, Iraq, and Iran. In America's Prophet, I explored how the story of Moses has influenced Americans from the Liberty Bell, through the Statue of Liberty, through Cecil B. DeMille.

Two years ago this week I was struck by a life-threatening illness, and suddenly my travels took a more personal turn. What lessons of faith would I pass on to my three-year-old twin daughters? My new book, The Council of Dads, includes a Father's Four Lessons of Faith for my daughters:

1) Wrestle with God. In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with a messenger of God. The two come to a standstill, and the messenger leaves a mark on Jacob. The scar does not end up on Jacob's hand, nor on his head, his heart, or his eyes. Humans experience God, the text suggests, not by touching him, imagining him, feeling him, or seeing him. Jacob is scarred on his leg, for the essential way humans experience God is by walking with him. Forever after, Jacob is called "Israel," or one who wrestles with God. Don't be afraid of doubt. The true way to experience the divine is by struggling with it.

2) Befriend the stranger. There's a reason the Exodus story has inspired so many Americans. It's a narrative of hope: "This year we are slaves, but next year we can be free." History is not set in stone. It is not an immovable pyramid. The pyramid can be flipped. When you despair, when you hurt, when you fear, and especially when you encounter those feelings in others, remember the slaves who first groaned under bondage. You should read the Israelites' story and remember: there is a moral dimension to the universe. Right can prevail over might; justice can triumph over evil. Flip a few pyramids yourselves along the way. Overturn injustice. Befriend the stranger, for you, yourselves, were strangers once in a land with no hope.

3) Plunge into the waters. Moses became America's true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty. The visionaries who have been inspired by him -- Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King -- were not born to greatness. They became great by tapping into the anger and hope within themselves. Imagine your own promised land, girls; plunge into the waters, persevere through the dryness, and don't be surprised -- or saddened -- if you're stopped just short of your dream. Because the ultimate lesson of Moses' life is that the dream does not die with the dreamer, and the true destination in a narrative of hope is not this year at all, but next.

4) Be reunited with the ones you love. The Council of Dads tells the story of my "lost year" fighting cancer and the men I asked to be father figures to my daughters. Today I am cancer-free, and I learned a powerful lesson during that experience. The Liberty Bell has a quote from Moses on its side: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the world, unto all the inhabitants thereof." This line refers to a tradition whereby every seven years, farmers are obliged to give their fields a year of rest. Every 49 years the land gets an extra year of rest, during which all families are reunited, and all people reunited with the ones they love. That fiftieth year is called the jubilee year. That tradition perfectly captures my experience. My "lost year" was my jubilee year. I was needy. I was a stranger. I was reunited with the ones I love. Don't forget to slow down, girls. Reunite with the ones you love.

Take trips. Take chances. Take off.

To watch me speak about The Council of Dads, click here, or watch below:

The Council of Dads: What Lessons Would You Leave Your Children? (VIDEO)

2010-04-27T10:26:00-04:00

In the worst week of my life, I came up with the most hopeful idea I've ever had.

In July 2008, I learned that I had a seven-inch cancerous tumor in my left femur. I instantly worried about my three-year-old twin daughters and what life might be like for them. "Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought?"

Three days later, I awoke with an idea of how I might give them my voice. I would reach out to six men from all parts of my life and ask them to form a "Council of Dads."

My initial instinct was not to tell my wife, Linda. We should focus on the positive. But I quickly lost my resolve. Linda cried when I told her, but then she started rejecting my nominees. "I love him," she would say, "but would never ask him for advice." Starting a Council was a very efficient way of finding out what my wife really thought of my friends!

We needed a set of guidelines.

First, no family members. We figured our family would already have relationships with the girls.

Second, men only. Probably half my closest friends are women, but we sought to fill the dad space in their lives.

Third, intimacy over longevity. We thought some of my more recent friendships might better capture the dad I want to be.

Finally, a dad for every side. We looked for men who might capture different aspects of my personality.

Eventually I decided on six men - from my oldest buddy to my newest friend - and I asked each one to convey a different lesson to my girls - how to live, how to travel, how to think, how to dream. It was like forming a team of godparents.

I then asked each for a single piece of advice to convey to my daughters. Their answers ranged from how to take a trip - "Be a traveler, not a tourist" - to how to make your dreams come true - "Don't see the wall." One advised not to seek answers but to "live the questions." One counseled that even in hard times they should still "Harvest the miracles" around them.

And therein has proven the magic of The Council of Dads. We did it for our girls. But it has transformed us. It built a bridge between our friends and our kids. It created an entirely new community in our lives. It gave us a colorful bouquet of new life rules to live by, like what is the proper way to jump in a mud puddle or why take a walk with a turtle.

Last week, The Council of Dads convened for the first time ever as a group. (Seeing them together, I thought for a second I should have called them The Council of Bald Spots.) It was difficult to get them in one place. They argued about politics, parenting, and height. In short, they were men. (My wife remarked that she had wondered what they would talk about. The answer: sports cars!)

But our girls didn't care. They were delighted as they moved from Dad to Dad, reveling in the private bond they share with each one. Our girls don't know the shadow that hangs over the idea. All they know is that these men are not just Daddy's friends.

They are their friends.

That night, each man spoke of how the experience had changed him. One felt the Council helped replace the voice of his own father. Another took the advice he gave our girls and changed how he parents. The last person was the contrarian of the group.

"When I first heard the idea of the Council, I rejected it," he said. "You would triumph over your illness. We wouldn't need to exist. Today I realized I was wrong. Whether we're healthy or sick, men or women, we all need to be reminded of what's most valuable in our lives. And seeing the looks on the girls' faces today, I now know we all need our own Council."

Watch the life lessons of the of The Council of Dads. And for tips on creating your own Council or Moms or Council of Dads visit councilofdads.com.