The Red Tent

Rating:
Summary: A gorgeous, intricate, and passionate read.
Review: Anita Diamant's The Red Tent is a rich, believable companion to the already familar tale of Jacob & CO. found in Genesis. After being somewhat familiar with the rags to riches tale of Joseph via the "Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", I was really excited to expand my understanding of biblical "truth" especially with a story focused completly on the women in this society. After all, women have always carried the codes of light, the often neglected feminine mysteries of the life force. The Red Tent does not disappoint anyone seeking an invitation to sit with his/her inner anima. This book feels channeled. The voice of Dinah reads as if she knows that she has been given an opportunity to share with the reader a missing fragment of truth. What truth? That these stories of the feminine need to be reclaimed and brought out for us to hold an even more balanced understanding of the truth that the essence and energy of woman is sacred. Dinah and her mothers share the experience of the feminine in the red tent. It is a place that honors the sacred mysteries of women: birth and death, the cycles of the moon, and Goddess worship. The Red Tent is an intimate world of love and loss, hope and tragedy. You'll will start to befriend all the characters found within and the distant past soon will seem not as unfamiliar as you may have orginally thought. I read this book on the beach. I read it for hours at a time. It will engross you to no end. Diamant is a wonderful writer. The language she uses to describe the daily life of shephards, farmers, slaves, and midwives is natural and unique. I laughed and smiled at the details given, cried at some points too. The Red Tent is a wonderful book. It reads true to me. I'm glad I've expanded my understand of biblical times while being throughly entertained at the same time. The Bible is a boring read, this isn't in the least.

Rating:
Summary: Cute but not well-informed on history of ancient Canaan
Review: It was enjoyable to read but can be misleading to someone having little background on the ancient near east and biblical history. The author attempted the impossible: to put a story that was written about mythical characters into historical context! It is amusing to me as a student of womens' issues in ancient Israel that this book is being publicized as a feminist retelling of the Jacob tale. It is very true that much of the matarial in the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) was written and edited from a male perspective and I suspect that the lack of attention to the Dinah character before and after the events at Shechem may be the result of the doings of one or more male redactors. However, the story of Dinah is part of the J source of the Torah, the very work that scholars have suspected to be the work of a woman -Richard Elliot Friedman thinks *maybe* while Harold Bloom thinks the writer was definately a she, without question. I also think it was a woman and I strongly suspect that she wrote more on Dinah, material that was later cut by a redactor. In fact the incident at Shechem may have been the only reason for the exile to Egypt in J's original story (ironic punishment for the massacre committed by Shimon and Levi). But whatever material had been there before, the story of Dinah and Shechem and the bloody acts of Dinah's brothers along with the rest of the J text is full of anachronistic details which can really tell us something about the world in which this woman lived and wrote, probably the eighth century BCE, possibly a little earlier. Yet Diamant seems to have gone out of her way to replace J's cute anachronisms with details inserted to show the reader that Dinah is living in the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1,000 years before the time of the writer who should not be condemned for knowing nothing about that time period. On the positive side, the book was well-written and an easy and relaxing read and included a family tree which helped for keeping track of the characters. But if you are looking for a liberal or feminist version of the biblical narrative, this is not it. The Red Tent is not well informed on literary and source criticism of the Tanach and I would recommend reading it only with extreme caution. And before reading it, I would recommend getting some background on woman of the bible and the Dinah story and related narratives (like the narrative about the "rape" of Tamar by Amnon and the aftermath) through reading "The Harlot by the Side of the Road" by Jonathan Kirsch, "The Book of J" by Harold Bloom, and "The Hidden Book in the Bible" by Richard Elliot Friedman.

Rating:
Summary: finally!!
Review: the most accurate view of this time in history we will ever get!! Finally an author who dared to tell the story from a woman's point of view. Don't let the word biblical scare you away. This book has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with LIFE. This was one of the most enchanting and beautiful stories I have ever read...finished it in 24 hours...I think everyone should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Good Idea, Poor Execution
Review: I commend anyone able to actually finish this book. It is one of the very few books I've never finished; I usually persevere through arduous reads, but I had no desire or need to trudge through the Red Tent. This book didn't expand my knowledge or awareness of anything, and I am not the better having read the two thirds I did endure.
Diamant does put forth an incredible effort to bring her characters to life, but there are so many characters she spends so little time describing before jumping to the next character that the reader is left reeling from the chaos.
I enjoyed Diamant's descriptions of the gods and her portrayal of how the women of the house of Jacob were not women of the God of Israel. She excellently portrayed the mystery of Jacob's God, showing us a time before the Ten Commandments, when the Fathers of our faith knew so little of God that they followed His will blindly. All Jacob and his family knew of God before the revelations to Jacob were the stories of Abraham travelling to a foreign land, Sarai giving birth in her old age, and God commanding Abraham to slay his beloved son, Isaac, before providing a lamb in Isaac's stead.
I appreciate Diamant's attempt to step into another culture and show how women of this time period dealt with polygamy and their status as chattel. However, as much as Diamant wrote well, she put the biblical accounts she pulled the story from to shame. Diamant changed much of the stories taken from the Bible, for no apparent reason. Her changes were not for the better, they, in fact, weakened the story.
The book had some areas of intrigue, such as her retelling of Dinah's rape and aftermath, but for the most part the book seemed to drag. It seemed like Diamant describes every birth to the house of Jacob, and then a few others as well. I understand Dinah was learning the trade of midwifery, and Diamant was telling of the plight of women in this society, but the birth accounts were a bit of an over-kill.
I wish I had been Diamant's editor so I could have cut out the extraneous ramblings so readers could enjoy the remaining short story.

Rating:
Summary: Altered and sometimes perverted
Review: I chose to read this book, because I usually love fictional stories that elaborate on Bible stories. I like to imagine what it must have been like had I actually lived at that time. However, I was disappointed with this book, because the known Biblical facts were altered--several of them. The only known Biblical fact concerning Dinah, the main character of the book, is that she was raped. This is not the story line. Another reason that I did not like this book was that the father of the nation of Israel, Jacob, is not presented in a light that I would say was respectable. If you are considering this book for a "Christian" read, think again. The facts are altered, even perverted at times, and the One True God is overshadowed in this book by other gods and idols worshipped by the women of the Red Tent.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: My family doctor, a female, insisted that I read this. I am so glad she did--I had looked at the book several times at the bookstore but it sounded rather boring. It was not only NOT boring, I was sorry when the book was finished. I hope to read more from this author. She interwove factual information about the time period with compelling characters that I came to care deeply about. One of the best books that I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: A New unndersatnding
Review: I read this book and thought it was really good becasue it showed you what it was like a long time ago and how hard it was for women, to have to live. If you think you have a hard time with child birth and that little thing you get every mounth read this book and you might just change your mind. The women have to go thought so much hardsiph and do things to please the men you will be glad you live to day. I would recamend this book to any women or man who wants a new way to think about things. I hope this helps you decied to enjot this book.

Rating:
Summary: Well, a lot of people aren't going to like me for this...
Review: I'm a midwife, so this book ought to have been a natural 5-star review from me....but I just didn't like it anywhere near as much as I expected to.

First, what I liked: I loved the beginning, actually about the first 2/3 of the book, which interweaves known biblical tales with 'facts' and characters of the author's invention to flesh out the story of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob. At puberty, she enters the Red Tent, the inviolate space among the tribes of Israel in which the women gather for menstruation, childbirth, and the initiation of the girls into religious and sexual knowledge. All that was good stuff. And I loved, of course, the scenes in which midwives played a major part.

What I didn't love was the last third of the book, in which Dinah is in Egypt, separated from her son, working as a midwife (the only part of this section that I DID like), and living as somewhat of an outcast on the fringes of royal society. I felt this part went on waaaaay toooo looooong, for no purpose that I could discern.

Love came at last for Dinah, late in her life, and its portrayal, along with her marriage and married life to a good and loving man, was beautifully rendered. Her death scene at the end was spectacular - think about it: a death scene told from the point of view of the dying person. Masterful.

But overall, it could have been a much shorter book and been better for the editing.

Rating:
Summary: I did not like this story, PERIOD! (no pun intended)
Review: "The Red Tent" is a story of Dinah (Dee-nah) and her family. Parts of this story are pretty barbaric and bloody, having its roots in The Old Testament's Book of Genesis.

The beginning of the book introduces us to the idea of the red tent where we learn of its function as it relates to women. For example, the red tent is a place for women to gather and share their experiences, both personal and practical. Not only is history passed on within the confines of the red tent, but also the opportunity for learning is availed. Stories are told and songs are sung. The red tent is a place of childbirth and a gathering place for women's "monthly rites".

While I like the female support the red tent provided, the writing of Diamant is sometimes pretty graphic and repetitive.

The middle part of the book expands upon the complicated relationships between Dinah and her several mothers, her siblings, and her changing, tumultuous life.

Part three presents an ending that brings things together for Dinah that is as acceptable as the time-period allows.

For me, the story is too ruthless.

--There is a helpful family tree of the generations that aids in keeping track of the many names and relationships.

Rating:
Summary: good historical feminist fiction
Review: This is a great story that highlights the life of Biblical figures I had previously known little about. I think we can all agree that women besides Mary are not often elaborated on in the actual bible.

The concept of a Red Tent, a place where women go for menses and childbirth, is a wonderful concept. Menstruation was celebrated instead of something to be ashamed of. One of the messages I took out of this book was that being female is something quite special. I also felt it emphasized sisterhood and caring for other women. These are all values we could stand to have a little more of. I can see why this book was so popular.