Bibliofreakblog

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

You can’t call this Revisionist Christian Fiction, mainly because Anita Diamant is Jewish.  You can call this revisionist fiction, of just fiction fiction, depending on your own perspective.  Diamant’s chosen topic, Dinah, the daughter of Leah in the Old Testament/Torah, is obscure, even to most scholars.  So, while Diamant did extensive research into the fields of ancient mediterranean and early Jewish history and archaeology, she did make the story up.

As far as the actual story in the OT goes, Dinah was raped, which was used as an excuse for her twelve brothers to go to war.  

And that’s pretty much all we ever hear of her.  

Her brother Joseph, her Father, Jacob, even her mother and aunt Leah and Rachel, are all major players in the Judaic-Christo-Islamic stories, but Dinah kinda gets shafted.

So, Diamant gives her a voice.  

And according to the story she tells in this book, she wasn’t raped.  She was in love with a gentile.

More than just her story, the story of her mothers’ and women’s culture in her world set up the context of her life. 

The telling name of the book, the Red Tent, indicates the sacred, separate world these strong women occupy.  They menstruate during the full moon, at which time all of the women of the nomadic tribe live together in a red tent.

The red tent deal was real.  In fact, many Middle Eastern cultures used such a device.  Good for the women, as they had time away from the men, where they were free to develop their own culture and strengths, and good for the men, because they were freaked out.  Ever hear of that chauvinistic saying, “never trust something that bleeds but doesn’t die” or whatever?  Behind that one can still hear the terrifying, mystical element of not knowing why a woman can keep bleeding and not die.  

Sadly though, the world into which Dinah is inducted by her mother(s) is changing.  The women her brothers marry from outside the tribe don’t hold the same feminist aspect of their religion.

And yet she is still not allowed to marry outside of her culture.

Will she ever find love  again as these worlds collide?

If you like this book/author, you might like:

The Handmaid’s Tale (F) by Margaret Atwood
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (F) by Lisa See 
Sarah (F) by Marek Halter
Zipporah, Wife of Moses (F) by Marek Halter
Lilah (F) by Marek Halter
Pope Joan (F) by Donna Woolfolk Cross
Midwives (F) by Chris Bohjalian 
People of the Book (F) by Geraldine Brooks
Rebekah (F) by Orson Scott Card
The Life of David (F) by Robert Pinsky
The Bible: A Biography (NF) by Karen Armstrong

Other works by Anita Diamant:

The Last Days of Dogtown (F)
The New Jewish Wedding (NF)
Good Harbor (F)
Living a Jewish Life (F)
The New Jewish Baby Book (NF)
Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead, and Mourn as a Jew (NF)
Pitching My Tent: On Marriage, Motherhood, Friendship, and Other Leaps of Faith (CNF)
Jewish Parenting (F)
Choosing a Jewish Life (NF)
Day After Night (F)