Rating: 
Summary: A celebration of being a woman/mother
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is true as others have said that this book is not factually correct in relation to the Bible, but it is not meant to be. In the beginning of the book the author states that it is a work of fiction. She no where claims the book to be factually or historically correct. Dinah is only mentioned in the Bible a couple times, so it stands to reason any story of 'her life' would be fiction. That said, I thought the book was wonderful! I loved the whole concept of the Red Tent where the women gathered monthly to rest, communicate, bond and support each other. The roles of woman and mother was honored and cherished, and the beginning of a young woman's cycle was celebrated. When did modern day women begin to call this "the curse?" The book made me wonder who I would have in my Red Tent; who would be my 'sisters' in this celebration of life. Certainly not as many as in the book, but that would be no surprise. The numbers would increase with the number of wives! The descriptive writing in the book really made me imagine I could smell the water, or the flowers in the gardens. I highly recommend this book to anyone. You do need to not compare it to the Bible, and read it as a book of fiction to really feel and enjoy the powerful stories of the women in The Red Tent.
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Summary: The God of Jacob's compassion
Review: First of all let me say that I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was extremely insightful, beautifully told, mesmerizing and emotional. I don't often feel all those things in one book.
To all the people who have posted reviews saying that they threw down the book in disgust/threw it in the garbage/gave it to the dog, I have a question: why did you think that you were going to like this book? The chances are that the fundamentalists that take the Bible as literally as possible in 2004 aren't going to like a woman's story of Jacob and his sons.
I am a Christian, but this book made me realise something I had never thought about before. Jacob and his sons slaughter the city dwellers, murdering them in their beds. Where is the God of Jacob's compassion for those people? Why, then, does God forgive Jacob and his sons, reiterating that they are his chosen people?
Something to think about for those reviewers who pray for mercy on Anita Diamant.
A wonderful novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful, compelling novel!
Review: This novel blew me away, and I think that most people would react that way. However, don't read this book if it offends you when someone takes liberties with Biblical history. The Red Tent is the story of Dinah, Jacob's daughter. She narrates in a beautiful voice that is all at once lyrical and poetic. Her story, while heartbreaking, is also a celebration of what it is to be female. She begins telling us about what happened before she was born, how Jacob came to have four wives, how his sons were born. Her focus is on the wives and their tradition of abiding in the red tent during menses. While they are there, the woman bond and after she, the only surviving daughter of Jacob, is born, she spends much time there with her mothers, learning female traditions of midwifery. Her story is familiar, yet not the same as in the good book. Diamante's story is breathtakingly imaginative. Leah and her sisters come alive in this novel. While reading it, you are in the red tent. The characters are believable, the story compelling. We follow Dinah throughout her life and experiences. Her pain and her pleasures come alive. This novel comes alive from the first page and you won't be able to put it down. Highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely wonderful
Review: This book pulled me in and held me spellbound until I finished it. From a single mention of Dinah's name in the bible, Anita Diamant brought a whole world to life. Dinah's story is the story of all the women whose names and voices have been lost or intentionally silenced by over two thousand years of patriarchial religion. Her story, with all its physical and emotional details of womanhood, is simply beautiful. Diamant's writing is smooth and often lyrical, celebrating women and the work of home and family. A beautiful, beautiful book that I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: They call it FICTION for a reason
Review: For all of the readers who were disappointed because it was not biblically correct...give me a break! I found it in the fiction section at the library. From what I understand the very definition of fiction is not factual. The story was beautiful and I fell in love with the characters. It was an amazing tale of love, loss, tragedy and the beauty of letting go and moving on. I actually cried at the end (not something I do). I was captured by it from the first page, couldn't put it down and was disappointed to come to the end! I plan to read it over and over again!
Rating: 
Summary: A waste of my money and time
Review: If you don't know the Bible or don't care that a fictional book about people in the Bible takes drastic detours from the obvious facts presented in the Bible then you might like this book. If anyone cares to read the actual story it's found in Genesis 29.This book is full of idolatry and a complete disrespect for the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. The women are lewd and descriptive concerning their times with Jacob. I have a hard time believing that Dinah's mother and aunts would have shared that kind of information with her. I also did not care to read about Laban and the shephard boys having their way with the sheep. Very disturbing. In the Bible, Jacob worked 14 years for Rachel, not 14 months - the Bible makes a clear distinction between months and years even within chapter 29. He worked for 7 years and was given Leah. The next morning (not a week later like the book presents) he approaches Laban in anger about the switch. Laban tells him to finish out the week with Leah, as was the custom, and then he could have Rachel if he agreed to work another 7 years. He married Rachel right after marrying Leah and worked 7 more years. The Bible also tells us "the Lord saw that Leah was hated" so he opened her womb and allowed her to have many children. No where in the Bible does it indicate that Jacob loved Leah and was happy about the switch but pretended not to be. I read the first section, scanned a few pages of the second section, and now I hope to be able to return the book and get my money back. I was very disappointed and would not recommend this book to anyone. I would have put "0" stars but that wasn't an option. To be honest, I guess the reason it was so disappointing is because I *love* the Bible. I believe it to be God's Word and 100% true. I was excited about reading a fiction story about a character from the Bible but it's almost as if the author read the story in the Bible, took the names and basic framework and then twisted every other part to be the exact opposite from what the Bible states.
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Summary: Religious imagination
Review: It is not surprising that Anita Diamant's book garners 1 star from some reviewers and 5 stars from others. As a novel it is engaging and memorable; the story of an ordinary girl who becomes a woman and the time and family she lives in. What offends some people and fascinates others is the heroine and her family are religious icons in three major religions. Fleshing out details and imagining alternative events is part of the relgious tradition of at least two of the religions (and arguably the third.) If you find speculation and imagination about relgious topics undesirable, then this book is clearly not for you. If, on the other hand, you find the thoughts and meditations of others about religious matters stimulates thinking and reflection of your own, then this is a book to read.
The author's characterization of some biblical figures is far from my own, for others her "take" is quite close to what I imagine. For example. I admit that I have always thought that Essau got short shrift in the bilical tales and I like his depiction here. If you want the old stories told the old way look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Christians -- OR JEWS!
Review: Like many of the other reviewers, I too trashed the book out of complete frustration with Diamant's inaccuracy as well as her complete disregard, even blasphemy, for the God of the Jews. Yes, I said Jews, for do they not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Is not Diamant a Jew? I highly question her beliefs as being anything but self-conjured thoughts fitting of her own feminist agenda, having nothing to do with the actual God of the Bible and his love of the nation Israel. In The Red Tent, Diamant treats the name of God as a CURSE. Is this a sign of a true follower of God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come? My heart hurt when I read her continual disregard, criticism and blasphemy of the Creator, giving more respect to the rituals of female menstruation and idol-worship than to the mighty, yet merciful, characteristics of God our Father. Does she not know how the nation of Israel began? With a covenant, a promise, from the Almighty God to an undeserving, sinful people, that he would protect them and make them a great nation. And God has kept his covenant with Israel, even when they so often turned from him and worshipped other gods. He brought them out of Egypt to the promised land. And He promises to come again to rescue his people and triumph once and for all over the nations of the world. To this God, the God of the Jews, Ms. Diamant offers her work of condescension and blasphemy. In stereotypical feminist fashion, she attributes one-dimensional patriarchal chauvinism to Jacob and his sons. What is much worse, she goes so far as to attribute the same earthly characteristics of Jacob to the Almighty God, Who is not human, nor was He made from human hands (as were the idols she glorifies in her book). If I wrote such powerfully blasphemous words, I would fear the great judgment of the Creator who demands glory and abhors man's prideful nature. But instead, may the God of heaven show her as much mercy as He has shown the nation of Israel, and me. And may Ms. Diamant come to truly know the forgiveness, grace, and love of the King of kings and Lord of lords.
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Summary: Much more than just a Biblical retelling
Review: This novel is not a gripping, intense, fast-paced book. It's the story of one woman's life, and as such it encompasses periods of great change and periods of stasis, upheaval and peace, passion, contentment, and anguish. If you're looking for a book about monumental events with a larger-than-life heroine, this book is not for you. If you're looking to be utterly captivated by how one woman can change history and be changed by it, you'll love "The Red Tent".
The title of the book underscores its greatest theme: that of the sisterhood of women that transcends generations, religions, and cultures. Dinah grows up secure of her place within this sisterhood, only to find herself cast adrift from it in one moment of savagery and violence. Her journey from her childhood home in Canaan to the home she makes for herself in Egypt parallels her search to once again find a place where she belongs as much as she did with her mothers in the tent.
Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Bilhah, the wives of Jacob and the mothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, are also central characters. Anyone who gets riled up by any suggestion that the Bible is not 100%, verbatim, word-for-word truth from the mouth of God should also avoid this book. Not that Diamant drastically alters the story - far from it. But she introduces crucial details that are lacking in the original, as well as resolving several inconsistencies and contradictions. (For example, Jacob working 7 months instead of 7 years each for Leah and Rachel. If he had worked 14 years before marrying Rachel, she would have been almost 30 and completely unmarriagable. Diamant's scenario only makes sense.) If an author doesn't add or alter any details from her source, than what's the point in writing a book at all? In addition, the women of Jacob's family are not Jewish - Judaism didn't exist yet. I've read several reviews that take offense to this aspect of the book and claim that it's pagan propaganda. Far from it. Think about it: Early Christians considered themselves a faction of Judaism for several generations after the death of Jesus. Likewise, the exclusive worship of El was simply a sect of the polytheistic Canaanite religion for years, until the followers of El wiped out the followers of every other god and goddess in the region hundreds (if not thousands) of years later.
Dinah's story is one of an ordinary woman caught up in events beyond her comprehension, who escapes from a life where she is pulled back and forth between the whims and desires of men, only to find that greed, like love, exists everywhere. Dinah's courage, like Leah's pride, Zilpah's spirituality, Rachel's beauty, and Bilhah's compassion, overcomes the boundaries of time and culture and underlines the universal nature of womanhood in a lovely, rich, and epic tale.
Rating:
Summary: Richly Imaged
Review: Clearly this is not a book for Bible literalists. From a brief chapter in Genesis, Ms. Diamant constructs a story about the life of Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob (son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham) that is much more rich and detailed than its biblical telling. She approaches her subject much like a historian intent on finding a new perspective to a much told tale, in this case it's a much more feminine viewpoint that gives this particular novel its vibrancy. The title refers to the tent used by the women of biblical times during their monthly cycles, a place forbidden to men where the lines of status are blurred and the conversation more personal. If Dinah receives short shrift in the Bible (which she does) it is likely due to the fact that the original writings (and subsequent translations) were masculine in their orientation; call it a gender-based variation on the "history is written by the conquerors" theory. If you relate the individual events or milestones here in simplistic terms, the story is in basic point by point agreement with the Bible -- Jacob takes four wives, they give him 12 sons and a daughter, the daughter is the catalyst for a violent incident, son Joseph is sold to the Egyptians and ultimately becomes a man of power. Here, Anita Diamant moves the focus from the men to the women, with Dinah becoming the first person narrator. The descriptions of people and events then are filtered through her perceptions and related to the reader accordingly. For example, Joseph is not the son who is horribly wronged and with the help of God rebuilds his life to a position of great power. Here he is the younger brother of Dinah, whose estrangement from her family occurs well before his. When she encounters him again, much later in life, she's completely unware of the trials that have formed him and perceives him as perhaps more arrogant and aloof. Some might be inclined to dismiss The Red Tent as a "biblical chick book." First and foremost, this is a very well written novel. Under the pen of a Rabbi this might have taken the form of midrash (a homily on a scriptural passage that serves as an embellishment of the scriptural narrative) a more conclusive interpretation of its lessons; but I think that Ms. Diamant's purpose is more to make us think and discuss rather than to instruct. If that's true, she succeeds admirably!
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