Separation anxiety

But author Jay Wexler has managed the unlikely with "Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars." Wexler, a onetime US Supreme Court clerk who teaches now at Boston University, had an intriguing idea. What if he took a sabbatical year and traveled around the States, visiting places that have played key roles in important Supreme Court decisions on religion, gauging the issues and their impact first hand?

On his resulting odyssey, Wexler spent time with a Santería sect in Florida, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York, an Amish community in Wisconsin, and a Muslim school in Cleveland, all of them involved in significant court rulings on the church-state divide.

Viewing their religious practices and issues up close, Wexler humorously but candidly discusses how their cases fit into US law, and often draws his own conclusions on where the boundaries should be. In so doing, he effectively combines the legal and the everyday, bringing high concepts down to ground level, which is, after all, where people spend their lives.

These are serious matters, but Wexler does like to have fun. He visits a Buddhist temple in Cleveland, where his legs freeze up in the lotus position, and his prayers become personal and pointed. Legs throbbing, he "silently implored the smiling Buddhas to deliver me serenity and relief." In Washington, he goes to the US Senate, desperately trying to reach the viewing chamber before the session begins. That's because the whole point for Wexler is to hear the chaplain's opening blessing. Hardly anyone ever shows up for that perfunctory moment, and soon he's alone, and lost. A tiny directional sign points toward a painting, "like one of the traffic signs we have in Boston that seem deliberately intended to confuse visitors."

Wexler will discuss his travels, religion, and the law - all likely to be overlaid with jokes - tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner.