Anita Diamant: The Red Tent

The Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, who appears briefly to be 'taken and defiled' in Genesis 34 and is never mentioned again.



The novel is by Anita Diamant, an American writer who has penned a couple of works of fiction but whose main body of work seems to be a veritable library on the subject of 'modern Jewish living,' ranging from everyday rituals to what names to pick for your children. Her other novels seem to deal mainly with more contemporary subjects, including Good Harbor (a story of friendship between two women in Massachusetts after one of them is diagnosed with breast cancer, which reminded me of some of Alice Hoffman's less magical novels, or a less political version of Marge Piercy's modern-day works) and the forthcoming Day After Night, which I approach with trepidation as it is the story of four young Jewish women in the few years leading up to the birth of the State of Israel/the Palestinian Naqba, or Catastrophe, and I suspect I'm going to find it very offensive, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Anyway.
The Red Tent itself is now one of those books which has legendarily sold millions of copies, apparently through the power of word of mouth and reading groups, although I'm now sceptical of most of those claims since marketing companies seem to often have more to do with them than meets the eye. It is an extremely women-oriented novel, telling Dinah's life story – the years of it after the massacre at Shechem by definition entirely fictional. Respecting the probable level of separation between male and female lives at the time, as well as the writer's own apparent interests, the tale deals largely with the lives of the women of Jacob's camp – his wives and concubines Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah – with their father Laban, their many sons and even Jacob largely playing bit parts. Female forebears such as Sarai (Sarah) and Rebekah/Rebecca are viewed as wise, powerful figures, whereas while Abram/Abraham is respected he is very distant and nebulous, and Isaac appears as a blind, feeble old man who has never recovered from his near-sacrifice by Abraham:

“Years later, when his grandsons finally met the boy of the story, by then an old man, they were appalled to hear how Isaac stuttered, still frightened by his father's knife.”

In line with this interest in the stories of the women of the family, the Biblical God or El is also a distant figure, very much associated with the men. The women worship a range of different local and family deities – hence the conflict when, as described in the Biblical account, Laban finds his household gods have disappeared along with Jacob and his wives. Diamant frames this as part of one of the book's ongoing themes, the era of Jacob as the cusp of a transfer from matriarchal to patriarchal religions, with Rachel asserting her right as her father's daughter to take the figures of the Gods, and Laban demanding his right according to a newer male-oriented system to leave them to his oldest son, Kemuel. The extent to which this prehistoric female-centred belief system, as set out by archaeologists such as Marija Gimbutas in a range of books, including the Language of the Goddess and the Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, actually existed across the Middle East and Eastern Europe is disputed, but there is certainly plenty of evidence for a much more varied and gender-balanced pantheon than that offered by the great monotheistic faiths.





The book, which is named after the ritual menstrual tent inhabited by the women for three days at the beginning of every month while they bleed, is highly sensual, both in describing the erotic relationships between Jacob and his wives and Dinah and her husband, Shalem, and also in the non-sexual descriptions of the scents and sounds of living a camp existence, surrounded by goats and dogs, and where Jacob may be handsome but he also smells like any other goatherd in a settlement where water must by pulled by hand. The women are wise, but their wisdom and power is sited in the female domains of baking, weaving and brewing, or in midwifery and healing knowledge, or in the secrets and mysteries of the Red Tent, where they are able to build alliances and cook up schemes in what might be seen as an expression of subaltern power, 'weapons of the weak.'
Also interesting about this book is the strength of the indictment it delivers against Jacob and his sons for the murders in Shechem. The killings are depicted as primarily the acts of the jealous, bitter twins Simeon and Levi, but with the complicity of Jacob and some of the other brothers. Contrary to the Biblical account, Jacob's change of name to IsraEl is not by the command of God, but an attempt by Jacob to escape his own name:

“so that people would not remember him as the butcher of Shechem. He fled from the name Jacob, which became another name for 'liar,' so that 'you serve the God of Jacob' was one of the worst insults one man could hurl at another in that land for many generations.”

The men of Shechem, including the king, Hamor, are largely portrayed as generous and honourable, as are many of those of Egypt, where Dinah spends the rest of her life after the massacre. The descendants of Jacob, meanwhile, are largely portrayed as a dysfunctional group, injured by Dinah's curses and with their women diminished by their loss of the female rites and knowledge which they are increasingly denied by their brothers, fathers and husbands.
It's not a perfect book – the language sometimes teeters on the brink between being mannered in its attempt to evoke its ancient setting, and rich in its evocation of the era. The second half, set in Egypt, seems to lose some of richness and depth once there is no background of Biblical scholarship and feminist vs conventional theology to draw inspiration from. But on many levels this is a deeply moving and fascinating book which provides a marvellous alternative version to this section of the Old Testament.

Genesis 34-36; massacres, cheating and the slow delineation of the People of Israel

Chapter 34 starts very interestingly with the brief story of Dinah. I had wanted to combine writing about this with the novel The Red Tent, but Genesis has bowled along a lot quicker than I expected, so I'll have to blog about the latter in a while.
So, Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, is 'taken and defiled' by Shechem son of Hamor, a prince of a land also Shechem.
As with Rebekah, but with more drastic consequences, it is never really made clear whether Biblical 'taking' in a sexual sense is an act of rape or simply any form of copulation. Is Dinah 'defiled' because she is raped, or simply because the act of sex has not been sanctioned by her fathers and brothers? Dinah, of course, has no voice in this, so we can never really know.
Shechem, however, seems very keen to marry her:

"And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give" (chapter 34 verse 11).

And, in accordance with that promise, Shechem and his father agree to have their entire male population, inclduing themselves, circumcised, and appear to be regarding Jacob and his descendants as future neighbours and residents.
Some of Dinah's brothers, however, have other views on the subject and butcher the entire population of the city:

"v25 And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore [from being circumcised], that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and they slew all the males.
v26 And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went out.
v27 The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister.
v28 They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field."

And, of course, they take all the women and children captive.
Obviously with my usual tendency towards bias on the issue, one of my reactions is to think that this seems like a pretty standard reaction of Israelis towards Shechem, which is modern Nablus, one of the worst battered cities of the West Bank, where military incursions and checkpoints seem to replicate this indiscriminate violence and economic despoilation.
But in chapter 35, we move briskly on, with no apparent judgement or comment from God as to whether this wholesale slaughter was an OK thing to do. Unsurprisingly, though, there is a note that Jacob and his sons start to be feared from this point. No shit, since they seem to be behaving like a great big gang of bandits, wandering round Canaan doing pretty much as they fancy (any more parallels with what Israel gets away with in the modern era, anyone?)
Interestingly, though, it is at this point that Jacob seems to start consolidating his extended family's religious identity within the worship of the God he has allied himself to:

"v2 Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments:
v3 And let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.
v4 And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hands, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem."

And, in a statement which is going to cause all kind of trouble over the next few millenia, God tells Jacob and his sons that the land is theirs:

"v10 And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
"v11 And God said to him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
"v12 And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land."

Rachel also dies giving birth to her final son and is buried near Bethlehem, at a place still called Ramat Rahel. There is now a nice little settlement and some archaeological sites there, with a huge and very scary-looking concrete wall (predating the even huger and scarier wall round the whole of the West Bank) and military watchtowers. On my second stay in Bethlehem with ISM I managed to get a bit lost looking for the long road with the cashpoints on it which skirts the bottom of the hill where Manger Square is situated, and nearly walked myself and two friends into the Ramat Rahel checkpoint, which given that the soldiers were very jumpy due to an imminent invasion would not have been a fab idea. Scared the hell out of me, anyway.
Chapter 36, given how far behind I am on this project, is fortunately mainly a list of the sons of Esau and their descendants, the kings of Edom. Edom is one of those myriad Old Testament kingdoms which warrant brief mentions in the act Bible because they aren't in the bloodline which will form the people of Israel, but which were actually very interesting and in some cases powerful regional polities in their own right. Edom itself was situated in what is now Southern Jordan and part of Southern Israel and the Negev, mainly desert areas which contains such natural and architectural wonders as Wadi Rum and Petra and the historically significant Via Nova Traiana, or King's Highway, built by the Romans to maintain control over this part of their empire. Although archaeological evidence for the start date of the Edomite empire is hazy, it certainly lasted a thousand years, often warring with Israel and allying with Babylon to sack Jerusalem.

Genesis 25-33: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob

Despite his advanced age, Abraham somehow manages to remarry after the death of Sarah, and fathers yet more children (as if the first two hadn't resulted in enough troubles). Fortunately - since there's quite enough internecine bloodshed in this book as it is - they seem to be happy enough to be sent away with 'gifts' on Abraham's death, as befits the sons of a mere concubine.
Ishmael also dies at a great age, bestowing on us the phrase "gave up the ghost" (Ch 25 v 17).
There is also a certain sense of repetition in many of the themes. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law, proves to be barren, necessitating more prayer from Isaac before the Lord relents and 'opens her womb' (interesting how the bodies of women are such potent tools of men's relationships with their God, despite the fact that many of the women concered don't even seem to believe in the same deity. In a similar manner to Robert Graves' interpretation of way in which different versions of the Greek Myths reflect the shift of power from women to men in Bronze and Iron Age societies, could all of this be a reflection of the declining power of female deities in the region and concomitantly of women in increasingly patriarchal societies?)



So, despite her initial barrenness, Rebekah conceives, accompanied by predictions of yet more familial strife:

"And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger" (Ch 25 v23)

And this prediction is brought about by the younger - Jacob - very sneakily cheating his starving brother out of his birthright in exchange for "a pottage of lentiles" (actually I'm not convinced that this is such a bad deal, if you've got a really good lentil soup recipe).
In yet another sense of deja vue, Isaac imitates his father's weird shenanigans by telling poor old Abimelech, King of the Philistines, that Rebekah is his sister not his wife, again apparently in fear that having a good-looking wife will get you killed. This is despite the fact that Abimelech proved himself perfectly honourable last time, and does so again, although he must be getting pretty confused about hsi repeated bizarre guests who go around apparently getting jiggy with their sisters.
Unsurprisingly, relations with the Philistines start to deteriorate somewhat, although the whole weird sister/wife thing is just a sideline to the growing economic (read: sheep) power of Isaac. In yet another disturbing precursor to modern strife in the region, Isaac and the Philistines get aggro over water supplies, with some proper conflict (Ch 26 v16-22) and a bit of extra well-digging and negotiation, leading to the establishment of the modern city of Beersheba.
Having cheated him of his birthright, Jacob and Rebekah now collude to make sure that when Isaac is dying, Esau is also deprived of his father's blessing. This is achieved by Jacob dressing up in the skins of a couple of young goats, which just goes to show the amount of blood and killing that goes into keeping these internecine conflicts going, and even the poor livestock get hauled into it all.
And, just so that history can repeat itself yet again, Jacob gets sent away to marry "outside the land of Canaan" (more exogamy), as Rebekah and Isaac have already been angered by Esau marrying some local Hittite girls:

"34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the duaghter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah."

In order to find a wife from outside Canaan (but not very exogamous - he's gone to find his uncle Laban to marry one of his daughters), Jacob heads off to Haran, now in modern Turkey. He falls sufficiently madly in love with Rachel, Laban's second daughter, that he's prepared to work for seven years to earn her, and is therefore somewhat understandably miffed when he gets given Leah, Rachel's older sister, instead. As usual, Laban is calling the shots and the women aren't obviously getting much of a look-in here (however, as I'll be writing about later, we could put some of this down to the male authors, not entirely to events themselves, and there are some attractive literary alternative versions of this story.)
But to stick to official version for the moment, once Jacob has done two lots of seven years labour in return for Rachel, she turns out to be barren as well:

"And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren."

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the LORD giving Leah some kind of consolation for the fact that she's stuck with a husband who's doing nothing to hide the fact that his is profoundly dischuffed to be married to her, or if he's just playing more nasty games with women's bodies. I have my suspicions.
In an attempt to address the fact that Leah has stopped bearing children (after four, which seems reasonable enough) and that Rachel's not having any at all, Jacob now also gets to sleep with Bilhah and Zilpah, Rachel and Leah's handmaids respectively. So yes, once again, the slavegirls get shagged, presumably without anyone asking their opinion on the matter. And have we learnt from all the bitterness and jealousy and people getting slung out into the desert that we saw with Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael? No we haven't. And, as with Sarah, Rachel finally gets pregnant after all that anyway and produces two sons to get all jealous and internecine with Leah's six and the several that the slave women have had forced on them too.
After all that, you'd think that Laban might actually be quite glad of the peace and quiet of a smaller family, but Jacob feels compelled to sneak off with large numbers of sheep and goats which he has legitimately earned. A bigger deal seems to be the fact that Rachel secretes the household gods in with the packing too, pretending to be menstruating when Laban asks where they are, which implies that there is still little unanimity on the subject of the LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but not apparently of their wives and other relatives.
However, on the way Jacob wrestles with a mysterious figure who might indeed be God himself and who renames Jacob Israel, just as he's about the cross over the Jordan River back into Canaan. This is a key moment in the consolidation of both a religious and ethnic identity amongst this branch of the descendants of Abraham. And, despite his general sneakiness a couple of decades before, Jacob finally comes home to Canaan to a warm and generous welcome from his brother Esau.

Genesis 30 to 31: Handmaids, Catfights and Good Fences

Genesis 30

Catfight between the sisters! Rachel, the one Jacob wanted from the get go, can't get going with the pregnancy thing.

Verse 3 “And she said, Behold my maid Billah, go in unto her,and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her.”

Yup, I remember Faye Dunaway lying down so Robert Duvall could schtupp Natasha Richardson in the film of The Handmaid's Tale , which was nowhere near as good as Margaret Atwood's book.

So, there's a lot of boring bearing, as Rachel and Leah compete for Jacob's favours.

And Reuben (Leah's oldest) went

Verse 14-5 “in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.
And she said unto her. Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? And wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he [Jacob] shall lie with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes.”

The pimping backfires, cos somehow Leah goes from post-menopausal to spitting out MORE brats. Then God, who seems forgetful (huh?)

Verse 22 “And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.”

And she spits out Joseph

And Jacob wants to leave his host (Crikey, it must have been at least 20 years, and you'd think Laban would be glad to see the back of him). But no, they haggle and in lieu of a severance payment for work rendered, Jacob says

Verse 32 “I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thene all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goatts: and of such shall be my hire.”

And Jacob has some sneaky selective breeding/genetic engineering scam afoot, involving rods of green poplar etc, and ends up with a bigger stronger load of animals than Laban.

A fine way to repay Laban for his hospitality. These Old Testament blighters aren't very Christian...

Genesis 31

Laban ain't happy. Jacob tells his wives Rachel and Leah “your ded ripped me off for wages.”
This is why you need to be in a union.

Anyway, Rachel and Leah leg it with Jacob.

Verse 19 “And Laban went to shear his sheep: and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father's.”

So there's a hot pursuit (a sheep chase rather than a car chase?)

Verse 25 “And then he took his brethren with him, and pursued him seven days' journey: and they overtook him in the mount Gilead.”

God does a cameo in one of Laban's dreams, telling him to play nice or else.

Laban tells Jacob that he is protected, but that he wants his gods (i.e. the images Rachel half-inched), back. Jacob doesn't know Rachel did this. Laban looks everywhere, but Rachel is sitting on them, and says she's on the blob.

Verse 35 “And she said to her farther, Let it not displease my lord that Icannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. And he searched but found nto the images.”

Jacob gets angry and “chode” with Laban.

Verse 37 “Whereas thou hast searched all my stuff, what hast though found of all thy household stuff?"

So they argue some more, pile some stones like a cairn and from what I can gather agree that that is the boundary between them, but if Jacob beats Leah or Rachel or takes more wives There Will Be Trouble, God or no God.

You know what they say- good fences make good neighbours... Presumably all this obsessing about whose sheep is whose and where boundaries between tribes will be is a reflection of the shrinking wilderness as populations increased and/or environmental degradation kicked in? Dunno.