The Red Tent

Rating:
Summary: okay
Review: I quite like to read storys about women and that is what I got here. It was not the best book I ever read, but it could have been worse.

Rating:
Summary: A great book!
Review: I loved this book! The fact that it was based on the bible was a very good idea! You will fall in love with the character and laugh and cry with her!

Rating:
Summary: Compelling story about woman, their strength and history
Review: I truly enjoyed this book. Dinah's story in the bible is told not in her words. It only hints at what happened, and Diamant takes Dinah's life and writes it as it may have been. Dinah's life is truly a "soap opera", and I was compelled by her strengh to survive the things she experienced.

The women in the red tent shared, cried, laughed, loved and learned from each other. It was their world away from the men that led them. Their secrets, knowledge and lives carried on generation to generation from daughter to daughter, and reading about this sisterhood enraptured me. A story worthy of 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Wow! What a powerfully emotional and thought provoking book
Review: I haven't read Fictional books in years. I study Mysticism and this book was highly recommended to me. I literally read the book cover-to-cover, and am still caught up in many of the issues it raised nearly eighteen months later!

Whether or not you are interested in Mysticism or even religious works, this book will draw you in and make you think. I was ignorant about many of the items written about that were taken directly from the Torah/Bible. Although it's impossible, I would love to know Judaic history from an objective perspective rather than from its almost exclusively "male" orientation.

I can not say enough positive things about this book!!!

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I picked up this book, expecting one thing and getting another. As a result, I hated this book. If you're looking for a Christian religious fiction book (as advertised) you're going to be disappointed. This book does take a Bible story but then winds up really being a book that focuses on "woman-power" and has more of a goddess cult feel than anything. The women in this book are strong, caring, intelligent, spiritual and practically infalliable. By contrast, the men are mostly manipulative, deceitful, brutal, cowardly and cruel. If I'd wanted this kind of propaganda, I'd have read Gloria Steinham. If you are looking for a good religious fiction book, read The Robe or Quo Vadis. If you're just looking to read a bestseller, and have no other expectations, than go ahead and read The Red Tent.

Rating:
Summary: a breath of fresh air......
Review: Ok I read most of the reviews before I bought this book, both negative and positive. I have always questioned the existence of god and if there truly is one. I have come to my own opinions at a very young age.....To me the bible is full of fiction written by men for men. I could never understand how a book so many years ago excluded women of knowledge or intelligence. Its frightening to know that christianity a "supposed" loving religion has seen Women "exempt" from its story. Are we merely a vessel for men to seed? Do we have no history of sisterhood? Questions, we as women should look deeper into.
This book gives women a voice, a voice of love compassion intellect and strength. It shows the depth of a woman's silent struggle to love in the face of horror. It takes a common knowledge of who women aspire to be and what women are and makes them into real Sisters. It gives birth of what womanhood might of been like back then, when women were viewed openly as livestock.
I still agree that today women carry the weight in a degree, of worthlessness and I feel it all stems from books such as the bible. The bible which preaches outwardly of distrust for the female mind, spirit, and body.
This book made me wish for the days when women were all sisters and viewed each other as kindred. But it also cemented my disgust for organized religion and what it stands for. I have for many years wishes one of my sisters would speak up and question "why" "when" "where". I think Anita Diamant does this with the "Red Tent". I give up much praise for her and the strength to write a book so open for criticism.
Anita Diamant, I am here as your sister and please, for all women, continue your work.
"ROCK ON!"

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding and Highly Imaginative
Review: From first recommendation I was hesitant about this book, but I am glad to say that Ms. Diamant delivered far more than I expected. I highly recommend this book. It was a very easy, interesting read as well as one of the most beautifully and most colorful stories that I have ever read. It will leave you wanting nothing more. Well Done!

Rating:
Summary: Great story, but contains too many "poetic liberties"
Review: Having completed an intensive year long study of the book of Genesis, I was intrigued by Ms. Diamant's desire to tell the story of Dinah from a woman's point of view. I did approach the book with an open mind but was initially disturbed by the fact that she was creating a fictional account for some very powerful Biblical stories. However, I soon overlooked this as Ms. Diamant is a gifted story teller and I couldn't put the book down.

I can accept the fact that this is "Biblical fiction" and that she did create most of the story to fill in the "blanks" of the Bible. However, I found it extremely disturbing that she chose to change some of the facts. This was especially evident during her portrayal of Joseph. For example, Joseph DID NOT sleep with Potiphar's wife as Ms. Diamant wrote. This is an extremely powerful Biblical story and it was included in the Bible to allow us to have the insight into Joseph's character.

If you are not familar with the Bible, PLEASE take the time to read the stories of Jacob and Joseph for yourself. They are wonderful and the lessons from them are timeless.

All in all, I did enjoy the story but would have preferred if Ms. Diamant had just chosen to write about a completely fictional family who lived during Old Testament times. I found the use of the names of Jacob, Joseph, Rachel, Leah, etc. distracting and I couldn't help but to make a comparison to the actual Biblical stories.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for every Woman
Review: I can't imagine any woman not liking, really, LOVING this book. I am in the process of reading it a second time and I am just as enthralled with the story, the writing, and the characters as I was the first time. Maybe even more so.

The book follows the life of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, from before her birth to her death. As a young girl, she was showered with the love and wisdom of her mother and her three Aunts, Bilhah, Rachel and Zilpah. At the onset of her young adulthood she falls in love and tragic events, caused by her own brothers, are soon to follow. Dinah continues her life as best as she can, gives birth to a son and finally finds another great love to grow old with. There is some redemption towards the end of the book for the great tragedy that happened to her, but it was not enough to make up for it. The end of the book will make you cry, not because it is sad, but because it is profound.

This is a book that will either enforce your beliefs as a woman or change them for the better. I have recommended it to every woman I know, and every single one of them gave it rave reviews.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Twist on an Ancient Tale
Review: In choosing a time period so rarely addressed by historical fiction writers and by focusing her book on the gender the early Old Testament chapters scarcely touch on, Diamant has given her novel a unique perspective. Polygamy creates a most unusual family structure for her the heroine, Dinah , who is blessed with 4 mothers! Exactly how frightening and deadly an event childbirth could be in those days is well depicted in the book's midwifery scenes. The continued mingling of polytheism with monotheism into the second and third generational descendents of Abraham and Sarai demonstrates that the change to montheism was not immediate in the Jewish faith and that there was a mingling of cross cultural traditions in this early time period.

Poetic license with its deviations from and contradictions with the Biblical record clearly make this book a fictional account.
The effect on the reader is confusion. Which parts were indeed fact and which were fiction? The answers can obviously be found in the original Biblical text or for a more readable accounting- in the chapter called the "Rape of Dinah" in
Jonathan Kircsh"s anthology of rarely discussed Old Testament stories entitled The Harlot by the Roadside. The really astonishing surprise comes when the most far fetched portions of this novel (which this reader was absolutely convinced were fictional) proved to be true events ! The circumcision of all male inhabitants of a town as the terms of Dinah's bride price and the duplicity of Jacob's sons" in inflicting subsequent annihilation on the weakened and recovering inhabitants who had just paid this awesome price- come right out of the pages of Genesis.

Cahill's book Gift of the Jews attributes radical changes in Western thinking to the unique concept of montheism which originated in the Jewish faith. This book portrays the early Jews as divided between monotheism and polytheism along gender lines. Only the male members worship El ( oheim) . All females are universally polytheists and even Rebecca, Isaac's wife, is cast as a diviner. Despite cultural intermingling and intermarriages, it is difficult to fathom so a universal a division, especially along gender lines into the fourth generation of Jews. Since the novel focus on women who are all polytheists, the people in this novel hardly seem to be the iconoclastic early Jews Cahill describes.

Enjoy this book its glimpses of an ancient world in transition and read it for a good historical rendition of womens' lives - but take this tale with a grain of salt. It is what it purports to be: a work of fiction.