The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant
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Book Reviews of The Red Tent
Book Review: Feeling not faith
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a sensual tour de force. Diamant lovingly describes the richness of sensations Dinah experiences in her life: the feel and smell of the midwives' herbs and medications; the taste of her lover's mouth; the strength of a river's current when her family forded. The sexual scenes were among the most effective I have read. The entire book reminded me, ironically, of the first chapter of Peter Ackroyd's recent biography of Thomas More. As a work of fiction, it shows great imagination. The plot's deviation from the story in the Bible is almost (although not quite) entirely credible. Conjuring the relations between women of 4,000 years ago, and even creating an entire women-centered religion, are praiseworthy accomplishments.
That said, other aspects disappoint and annoy.
The tone of the writing appears intended to breathe heightened significance into the actions of the women in the community. I have the unconfirmed feeling that this is a literary decision bordering on the political, a way of making this book feel as important as the Bible. Unfortunately, the righteous descriptions of people's sensations and reactions felt more like an educated alcoholic's expatiation on some happy aspect of their lives: it feels almost maudlin, rather than important.
One can enjoy this as a great work of imagination, a description of a past that never was, just as the Harry Potter books are a great romp through a magical world that doesn't exist. However, Diamant wrote this to tell us something about our world today. Women chafe under the determination of the men, except when they act in realms unknown to males (childbirth, menstruation, worship of the Great Mother). Women's stories are recovered from the dustbin of history, and given greater attention than those androcentric stories our patriarchal culture has allowed to be passed down for the last 40 centuries. Worship of "El," the monotheistic practice that started us on today's paths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is just another option in the panoply of pagan practices. The message for today is that organized religion doesn't address women's spiritual needs, but paganism does.
The problem with Diamant's underlying message is that she misses the revolutionary nature of Abram's and Jacob's practice. If you believe that the Jews reached a fundamentally new understanding of God, you cannot enjoy this book.
I'll focus on Leah's reaction to Reuben's circumcision, on page 42. Dinah describes how unsure Jacob was about whether and how he would perform the operation. The next paragraph opens with "still, it had to be done." Leah agonizes and feels sick over the coming "mutilation" of her son. Further in the paragraph, we learn that the foreskin means nothing to Leah - so she doesn't care whether he gets circumcised after all? The paragraph ends with the women in the Red Tent laughing at the delicate equipment men carry between their legs.
To summarize, this fellow Jacob shows up as a stranger to a tribe in some isolated hills in Palestine. He marries several of the women, then declares that his understanding of his obligation to the one God requires him to cut off the foreskin of his sons' penises. The women react to this by saying "whatever - just as long as we can still make fun of what you're born with between your legs."
The Red Tent posits that it is somehow an injustice that we have preserved the men's stories from those days, and not the women's. While Dinah's story is remarkable, and she lives a wealth of interesting experiences, Diamant never suggests anything in her story worth saving over four millenia; certainly the women's response to circumcision is forgettable, particularly when one considers the significance of circumcision.
Circumcision was a sign of the covenant between God and His people after Abram showed faith. It is a vitally important part of the Jewish religion at the time. It is connected to the amazing and disturbing story of Abram being willing to murder his son Isaac because a voice in his head, which Abram recognized as God, told him to do so. The story and the rite have been preserved for centuries because they plumb the depths of our souls and help to bring us into a new relationship with the divine. They say something deeply meaningful to us even today, and in every age. I recommend reading Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, for further understanding of the horror and majesty of this story.
This new religion broke with prior pagan religions in that it was based on faith, rather than material gain. It required faith to practice, and the reward was faith. Dinah and the other women get material and sensual benefits from their polytheistic worship of wooden statues and other gods: her curses to her brothers are seen as effective, she feels an oceanic unity with womanhood on her first menstrual period, she prays to the gods so that women facing a death in childbirth live. But she doesn't have faith, which is everything (according to Kierkegaard, and according to monotheistic religion). Faith is the trusting relationship with God, the peace that knows no understanding (for who can understand Abram's peaceful resolution to murder his son?). As the individual relationship with God, faith is democratic - accessible to all, regardless of sex or social position - and freeing. "Oppression" means nothing to a person who has faith; the person with faith overcomes it. Despite today's female elite fashion to scorn monotheistic, "patriarchal" religion, that kind of religion offers the most effective way today to overcome perceived discrimination.
This brings me to the opening of the paragraph I mention above - "still, it [circumcision] had to be done." Why, if Leah felt sick about the pending mutilation? Jacob was one man in a solitary community. His father-in-law, Laban, was not part of the covenant, and probably couldn't care less. Surely Leah could have enlisted her sisters to oppose this, if she felt afraid on her own. In previous pages, we learned that the women in Palestine could determine which of their sons received the father's birthright and which received his blessing. The implied answer, "that some man decided it and the women had no say," does not make sense. The domestic power arrangement at the time had to involve a great deal of consent from the women, a conclusion which affects how one sees today's women's movements.
The Red Tent exalts feeling, sensation and emotion as our validation in life. It ignores the centrality of faith in the religions it scorns. Since I see religion as primarily a way to practice faith, rather than a way to feel better, I could not give this work more than two stars.
Book Review: Men - read this book!
Summary: 5 Stars
Although the story of Jacob and his sons is familiar from the Bible, Anita Diamant has presented this story in a very distinctive way. Most notable is the manner in which the God of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham is presented: as being just one god amongst many, and a fit enough consort for the Queen of Heaven, rather than just a single old man with a white beard. Most of the other gods involved would appear to be either Sumerian or Egyptian, and were gods that were genuinely worshipped at the time (Anita Diamant has done her research well). There would appear to be a division between the way that women and men worship gods here: although Jacob does cry out the names of other gods when suffering from a sick stomach, he does increasingly come to rely on the God of Isaac his father, and Abraham his grandfather. The women worship a whole variety of gods, such as the god of beer, and the goddess of victory and fertility. Laban also has a whole teraphim of little gods, until Rachel famously steals them from him, so that her detested father may be cursed by their absence. Leah, for her part, declares that they do not need gods, only each other, but even she upholds the traditions of the red tent, to which the women retreat whilst menstruating. Having departed from Laban, Jacob and his family set out and make their way in the world. Leah and her sisters find that the traditions of the red tent are not upheld by the women of the different tribes that their sons have married into, and the integrity of the red tent itself becomes threatened. What does not seem to be important here is what gods are worshipped, or how many, but that the roles of men and women are changing. There have previously been matriarchs as powerful as the patriarchs - Sarah, wife of Abraham, and Rebecca, wife of Isaac. Yet Leah and Rachel are not given as much prominence in Jacob's tribe. Not that the lot of women, such as Laban's slave wife Ruti, is all that fantastic. But with the loss of their traditions, the potency of these women seems to diminish. Although the four wives of Jacob add to his richness with their skills, there is a danger that those women who are not enslaved, will be even more reduced in their roles as they become mere bargaining chips in transactions amongst men. Rebecca sadly concludes that Dinah will not be her heir at Mamre. Jacob, shamed to have discovered that Rachel did actually steal Laban's teraphim, destroys these icons of household gods that have been used to welcome Dinah into adulthood. And from there, things do really start to go wrong. But is this due to a curse of their gods, or because Jacob has grown suspicious of his wives and their ways, and now relies instead on his avaricious sons Simon and Levi for advice?
There are some differences from the Biblical account of the same events. In the Bible, Laban welcomes Jacob with open arms. Jacob also wrestles with the Lord God himself before reuniting with Esau, but Anita Diamant suggests that his broken leg and fever were caused by an encounter with a wild boar instead (although, since Dinah is accompanied with Joseph when she encounters the boar, we are never quite certain that it is real, since Joseph has a tendency of seeing visions, just like his father). In the Bible, it's Jacob who gives Joseph his famous technicolour dreamcoat, but in The Red Tent, Rachel is the more likely tailor of this garment that Joseph's brothers sneer at. There is not much mention of a famine in Egypt, even although Zafenat Paneh-ah is in power there. A few of Jacob's sons would have appeared to die earlier than they do in the Bible, and Judah and Reuben are not as squeaky clean in the Bible as Anita Diamant presents them. And the last mention of Dinah in the Bible is "Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?", which does not forebode well... Anita Diamant accounts for these differences by relating that these are the forms of the tales as carried down by the women, whilst Jacob's account of the same events is quite different. Since Jacob has only the one daughter, it would not appear that the women's stories will survive, but maybe the story of Dinah is too terrible to be forgotten...
Some of the most compelling passages are the birth scenes: like Rachel before her, Dinah becomes a successful and much sought-after midwife, and Diamant has researched the herbs and the methods they would have used at that time very well. This is most of all, a highly compassionate novel - when Dinah leaves us, her audience, we are truly sorry to see her go, and that it a sign that Diamant has created a vibrant and powerful character. The minor characters also make a great impact - although her scenes are few, if ever there is a film of The Red Tent, I would suggest that the role of Werenro be played by Julia Roberts. If you know the Biblical story well, then you will know that there are quite a few horrors in store for our Dinah, and Anita Diamant has handled these well. But as equally important as the horrors are the delights of this book, and they are as numerous as the tribe of Israel of which they tell. Although this novel has been mainly marketed at women, male readers will be equally enthralled by Anita Diamant's splendid narrative. I have done an online reading guide - interested readers can contact me for this.
Book Review: The authentic midrash and legends on Dinah are better...
Summary: 1 Stars
[Note: This review is a rewrite because it took a few versions for me to articulate my disappointments. [3/8 found the previous versions helpful when the following revision was posted.]
The many favorable reviews reflect an admiration for Ms. Diamant's skillful prose. I, too, was willing to grant high marks, but for one fundamental, fatal mistake: any story about Biblical characters, especially a biblical protagonist, becomes a biblical commentary, requiring that loftly level of biblical scholarship. Ms. Diamant's commentary on Dinah (the stuff of Midrash) presents one of the ugliest misrepresentations of the Torah (the Hebrew bible) one could imagine. I expected to enjoy a well recommended "modern Midrash" on Dinah (Dee-nah). What I read was, in the end, a mean-spirited, idolatrous, feminist (in the ugly sense of the term) rant against the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish faith, using a caricature of Jacob's only daughter as a foil.
Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, has but a bit part in the Messorah (the commonly translated) text of the classic "Written Torah". But bit parts in the Torah are epical when one includes the back-story in the "Oral Torah." I found Ms. Diamant's appalling ignorance of the Oral Torah especially sad, and what makes The Red Tent, to me, a missed opportunity.
The ancient oral history of Dinah is lush with plot and protagonist possibilities, a narrative known to anyone familiar with the Talmud and Midrashim. The daughter of the less loved Leah; the daughter who was supposed to be born of the more loved Rachael; a tender eight-year old girl of apparently astonishing beauty that went out to befriend some girls to play with (perhaps tired of her brothers?). Only she is raped by a child molester-prince who had the audacity to try to buy her for a wife after the crime; an uncivilized, wicked predator neither his father-King nor the men of Shechem would impose justice upon. Such a child-rape was unheard of on the earth; hence Jacob's shock and silence. About how two of her brothers demanded justice for their violated little sister, delivering the punishment for theft according to the Laws of Noah, executing the complicit men city-wide. (Feminists should stand up an applaud this non-nonsense treatment of such abusive men!) Yet the more fascinating story, one the author threw away for who knows why, is about Dinah's daughter Asenath (not a son) who married Joseph. Of how her grandfather, Jacob, gave her a protective necklace with the Name of God on it. Of how Joseph met Asenath; a proto-Cinderella tale of divine favor and joy (Joseph could read the Name on the necklace and knew she was from the house of Jacob!). God provided Asenath a soul-mate equal to the holiness of her own soul (noting the essence of the Jew's holy soul comes from their mother (Dinah, and Leah)). The casual Bible reader knows Joseph's trials were meant for good, yet few know that God, through Asenath likewise saved Joseph, and Dinah's sad trials were turned to good in the end. This was the authentic, compelling commentary I expected. How we learn to recognize the merciful hand of God helping us in spite of the sometimes unfair, wicked events people with free will seem to rain down upon us.
Instead, Ms. Diamant heaped up insult after insult upon Isaac, Jacob, Rebecca, Joseph, and his "barbarian" brothers. Specifically, the utter distain Ms Diamant displayed toward Rebecca was disgusting. It is preposterous that Rebecca -- the girl that ran to water a stranger's camels, who lived in the tents of Abraham who had doors on all four corners to welcome strangers and teach them about the kindness of One God, who poured her heart out to Shem seeking understanding about the fighting twins in her womb, who foresaw the wicked generations of Esau and facilitated her blind husband Isaac's blessing of Jacob (the son who merited the mantle of God's anointing) - that Rebecca could shun and rudely turn away and be unkind to a Ms. Diamant's servant girl? No way. All wrong.
The author had these richly layered, wise, heroic-women narratives to work with, but gave us only ordinary women, obsessed with sexual relations, menses, gossip - women seeing very little virtue in the men around them, and little intimate knowledge of the God of ancient Judaism.
The better story of Dinah is yet to be written. It's a powerful story, brimming with inspiring courageous women. The Red Tent, as a commentary on the Torah merits only the trash can.
(For any one looking to taste the real stuff - of Midrash that will put you on your face before God, and encourage you make a difference in your community, read "The Light and the Fire of the Ba'al Shem Tov" by Yatzhak Buxbaum.)
Book Review: What an amazing imagination!
Summary: 4 Stars
Having just finished The Da Vinci Code, I have to say that reading a book by someone who can actually write was very refreshing. I saw this book in the bookstore several years ago and thought it looked interesting then, but I only just now read it.
I actually started reading this at a co-worker's recommendation, as part of my research for my first novel. Even though she had given it a glowing recommendation on the story alone, I was still pleasantly surprised to find that it was so good. (Then again, "Dick and Jane" would probably have sounded like James Joyce after The Da Vinci Code. :D ) It is SO well written. Diamant's style of writing is a bit more "flowery" than mine, for want of a better word, but it suited the subject. She ought to try her hand at poetry. Beautiful.
Having read a good many reviews on this book I'm incredulous over the ones where people have said they were offended. I'm a Christian, a rather devout one, I might add, and I see no reason to be offended. One review stated that the reader had picked up the book thinking it was a Christian story, and was outraged to find it wasn't. HEL-LO, the people of the Old Testament times were NOT Christians!!! Many of them had not even heard of God. And for those that had, they didn't have the entire history of God in written form to read as we do, since this story was pulled from the very FIRST book of the Bible. Is it any wonder that they feared what was, at the time, the unknown? The people of that time were primitive and superstitious, and obviously not terribly bright, if they were worshipping things that they made with their own hands. This is a true reflection of the mentalities of that time.
I DO admit to almost having a bone to pick over the treatment of Rebeccah, but I didn't feel that way when I got to the end of the book. Why? Because after having the whole picture, I realized that what Diamant states PLAINLY at the beginning of the book--that she created the story mostly out of her own head--is true. All she used were the names and places. It's called "poetic license". She never meant for this to be an accurate depiction of what we read in the Bible. Hence the disclaimer. I see no harm done in taking a small excerpt from the Old Testament and MAKING UP a story about it. Yes, the thought of Joseph being a bisexual is a revolting one, but we don't have to like it. The reader can keep in kind that this a fictional Joseph, and he doesn't REALLY have to bear any resemblence to the Joseph we have always heard about.
I for one feel that reading this book has helped me as a writer. Before reading The Red Tent I hadn't given too much thought just yet as to how to make Bible characters into living, breathing people with personalities. I was thinking that I would get a lot of background information out of it, such as what they ate and wore.
The only reason I'm not giving this five stars is because I was more than a little taken aback by some of the more graphic details. I could have done without the passages referring to the practices of bestiality. While I have no doubt that this did go on, I really would have preferred not reading about it. Also, the scene where Dinah has her first period, and something is inserted into her--a frog idol? I wasn't clear on that--to break her hymen. Whether that was an actual practice or not, I don't know and don't care to know. To me that sort of thing is more than a bit too intimate between a mother and daughter, and I found that part of the story repulsive.
Someone pointed out that the practice of the red tent didn't happen until long after this point in time, and therefore wasn't historically accurate. When writing a story, it's OKAY to rearrange details like that. Does it make a difference that the red tent didn't come into being for another thousand years (or however long)? No. I, personally, LOVE the idea of the red tent. I love what Anita Diamant did with it. To create a story out of a minor Biblical detail, and marry it to such a strong concept is incredible. Diamant REALLY knows how to write characters. She is excellent in her accuracy concerning people's feelings. The scenes where Rachel chickens out of marrying Jacob and talks Leah into taking her place, then later regrets it and puts all the blame on Jacob--and the descriptions of the subsequent jealous rivalry between her and Leah--WOW. She NAILED it. Incredibly realistic.
If you are easily offended for religious reasons, I don't recommend this book. If you are open-minded and enjoy a good, well-written historical story, this one's for you.
Book Review: Unenlightening
Summary: 2 Stars
The problem with this book is that it takes too long to read. Oh, I don't mean it's a long book or anything: it's only 320 double-spaced pages. Normally, you could knock off a book like this in about three days. What takes so long is that you always find yourself avoiding it; looking for something else to do. Like mowing the lawn or watching TV or something. Or clipping your nose hairs. Go ahead and laugh if you will, but when you get to be my age, this nose hair thing is a real problem. My wife actually had to buy me an electric trimmer. You turn the thing on and it makes a little buzzing noise and you shove it in your nose and twirl it around. The point is, I found myself doing things like grinding away at my nose hairs rather than read this book.
It's the story of Dinah, very minor Old Testament figure in the story about Jacob. The biblical story has her "defiled" by a member of some local ruling family, which caused her family, Jacob's family, to exact brutal revenge. In the novel, this turns into more of a modern-day love affair, with Dinah willing to marry the guy, but, true to the times, Jacob's family kills them anyway. The novel is Dinah's complete story, including the stories of her mothers and aunts.
I like the premise of the novel: the Bible would seem to be a pretty good place to mine for historical fiction. And the fact that the author changed the central plot around a little doesn't bother me a bit. It's fiction, by goodness; we expect if not desire this kind of thing.
But the writing is so pedestrian and so shallow that it is very difficult to remain interested. The first third of the book is about Dinah's mother and aunts--her "mothers," as she calls them, because they all were married to Jacob, and because they all had a hand in raising her. It is written in the first person by her, so she obviously wasn't around for this part of the story, and she relates these events in a the very dry, narrative-summary style. She tells of an event, then shows us what her mothers had to say about it, instead of showing us the event itself. It kind of makes your eyes swim.
The pace picks up a little bit when her own story begins, at least to the extent that she shows us events as they occur, but the problem here is that there is nothing new. Oh, she shows her family living in tents, and raising goats and animals. The town she first visits is dusty and large, to her provincial eyes, and there are jugglers and other strange personages roaming around. She describes the Egyptian town she finally ends up in pretty well: there are artisans and masons, and she also gives us a good idea of the food and drink available there. And this is good, but it doesn't take that extra step. One gets the sense that she didn't do more than the most rudimentary research into these times; most of what she relates are such things as one could have imagined right off the top of his head. There is just not enough detail.
There is no insight into religious matters either, which is something one might reasonably expect when reading a fictional account of biblical events. For example, Abraham's story is briefly commented upon by one of Dinah's mothers thusly: "What kind of mercy [God's] is that, to scare the spit dry in Isaac's mouth? Your father's God may be great, but he is cruel." This is the extent of it. Now you can think whatever you want to about the Abraham story, but you can't deny that there are many interpretations of the meaning of this event. The rather biased, twentieth-century, Marxist view presented here adds nothing. The circumcision thing left me scratching my head also. When Jacob had his first son, all the mothers were horrified that he was going to perform this rite. So was I, for that matter. Which led me to wonder, how in the heck did this become a custom in the first place, 4,000 years before Christ? But nope, no light is shed on this. We learn nothing.
In the end though, the overriding disappointment here is the writing style, which is grossly sentimental, humorless syrup. The main characters, all of whom are women, seem to do nothing other than run to each other kissing and hugging and tasting each other's tears and celebrating the love they have for each other with song and dance, especially while they give birth to babies, zillions of them, in events which are described in excruciating detail about every third page of this witless mind-deadener. It is a great relief to be done with it.