Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11224 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com
The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider's look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob's daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent. In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah--all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery.

"Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges," Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. "They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember." Remembering women's earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it's been said that The Red Tent is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God's daughters, instead of her sons. --Gail Hudson

From Library Journal
Skillfully interweaving biblical tales with events and characters of her own invention, Diamant's (Living a Jewish Life, HarperCollins, 1991) sweeping first novel re-creates the life of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, from her birth and happy childhood in Mesopotamia through her years in Canaan and death in Egypt. When Dinah reaches puberty and enters the Red Tent (the place women visit to give birth or have their monthly periods), her mother and Jacob's three other wives initiate her into the religious and sexual practices of the tribe. Diamant sympathetically describes Dinah's doomed relationship with Shalem, son of a ruler of Shechem, and his brutal death at the hands of her brothers. Following the events in Canaan, a pregnant Dinah travels to Egypt, where she becomes a noted midwife. Diamant has written a thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating portrait of a fascinating woman and the life she might have lived. Recommended for all public libraries.
-?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Beliefnet
"The Red Tent"--the first novel by Anita Diamant, author of "The New Jewish Wedding"--is another rare success. Diamant's novel is a lengthy midrash--a traditional Jewish fictional device inspired by a biblical tale. In this case, the tale is kindled by the revenge of Dinah's brothers after their sister is raped. It's not a happy tale, but in Diamant's hands, one that assumes levels of love, longing, destiny, and obligation absent from the Bible's skimpy account of the tragedy. (Beliefnet, Aug. 2000)

Customer Reviews

For a fictional story (which is what it is) I loved it
I read this book with some friends, some of whom had a deep emotional connection with the story of Dinah in the bible and some who did not. Those who did were admittedly put off by the liberties the author took in changing the story from the bible. Personally, I believe it is intended to be a fictional story and so I took it as such. I thought it was a very easy and quick read, I was able to identify with the characters and felt like I was right there with them. I have to say I loved the ending, which is not true for many books I've read. I gave a copy to my step-mom as a gift and recommend it to anyone I think will appreciate it for what it is. It's beautifully written.

Traditions, rituals and memories ignored by the Bible, find a voice in Dinah.
Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" is a work where rituals and traditions speak of those silent biblical moments that have seemed to disappear through the lines of the important messages the Bible has voiced for. The book is live and full of detailed descriptions of relationships and characters. It progresses in a very natural way, just like its teller, Dinah, it grows with her, lives with her, ends with her.
The worlds in the book are complete, children, men, women, the society is a big family, their emotions, their daily lives, their festivities, everything has been arranged in a very detailed, smart, intuitive and captivating approach. Idolatry has as much force as true faith, love is as powerful as hate and death is but the obedient of both, life is empty when judgment befalls and full when forgiveness makes way to reconciliation.
Dinah is the honest guide, the voice behind the untold story of ordinary men and women chosen by a mighty God.

Quite Good
The Red Tent / 0-312-19551-6

I'm not usually a big fan of Biblical novels, because a slavish devotion to the source material usually results in a poor story, paper thin characters, and unlikely plot propulsion. However, Diamat manages to avoid all this by filling her the gaps in the Biblical story of Leah, Rachel, and Dinah with a rich history and mythology that rings plausibly true.

Diamat's biggest success is by discarding as male propaganda much of the portrayals of the women central to the narrative. She reasons that Leah and Rachel do not hate each other so much as they have a (relatively, given the polygamist circumstances) normal sibling rivalry relationship. Leah, especially, comes across as very sympathetic - a much stronger character than in the Bible, where she hopefully moons after Jacob and then quietly submits to the 'trade' proposed by her father. Here she is determined, strong, a good cook, and an able mother. Jacob is more too blame for the acceptance of the switch - Diamat emphasizes the unlikelihood that Jacob wouldn't realize his Rachel had been substituted for Leah. Jacob, in this acceptance, effectively purchases two good wives (and then four, with their servants), for the 'price' of steady employment.

Diamat also discards, again as propaganda, the idea that the women meekly discarded their life-long idols for this new god brought to them by their outlander husband. This much seems to be rooted in fact - it is clear that the 'queen of heaven' was worshipped by Hebrew women for centuries, and even mention of it (and condemnation of it, of course) is made in the Bible. The women make a good show of pretense to their new husband, but see no reason to discard their family's theology and social values just because the men say so. Hence, the value of the feminine divine, the discarding of the 'sacred hymen' theology (which has value only to men, as proof that a girl cannot be pregnant with another man's child, but has no value to women, as it increases the pain of the wedding night).

And, lastly, Diamat discards the idea that Dinah's lover was her rapist and, instead, maintains that the story was a ploy to allow her brothers to slaughter the men in the city. This is nicely handled, as well as the fact that Dinah is never mentioned in the Bible again - she has left her family and emigrated. This is where the novel sort of breaks down, though, as the abuse and abandonment Dinah suffers at the hands of her adopted mother-in-law seems to be handled unnaturally. It is unfair that Dinah is hated so much by the woman - in this culture of men and brutality, it seems likely that this woman would realize that this was no more Dinah's fault than her own (she had encouraged her son to 'take' Dinah without marriage). It's marginally realistic, of course - people are rarely 100% logical - but it feels more like a plot device than a natural response. In the end, the novel is intriguing and far better than most Biblical novels, but the ending does ring a bit hollow.