Dinah Dinah Dinah
The Red Tent by
Anita Diamant
Reviewed by Stephanie Hiller
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Tree
of Life by Suzanne
Deveuve
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Nearly 30 years ago,
Merlin Stone snapped a familiar paradigm in two
when she wrote that the Hebrews who descended on
the rich, fertile valley of Canaan with their
thunder-god and trompled the peaceful
goddess-worshipping culture under the hooves of
their horses were actually the descendants of
Aryans.
When God was a
Woman &endash; as she entitled her book
&endash; women were powerful, rooted in the
land, and deeply connected with a sacred,
feminine, source of being. And despite the
threats and admonitions of successive prophets
and preachers through the ensuing centuries,
Jewish women maintained their religious
practices, though covertly. Thus the process of
conversion from goddess culture to patriarchal
religion did not occur overnight.
In her new novel, The
Red Tent, author Anita Diamant shows us how
these women's traditions were kept alive during
the very early days of Jewish history by the
Canaanite wives of the first patriarchs until
the link to the maternal tradition was shattered
in the time Jacob's only daughter, Dinah.
Diamant's novel appears
to draw upon the research of Savina J. Teubal,
who argued that the wives of the patriarchs were
all priestesses of the indigenous
goddess-worshipping tribes of the region in her
book, Sarah the Priestess. It was because these
were powerful women, Teubal suggests, that
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were able to establish
the new religion of Yahweh in this matriarchal
land.
Their stronghold was the
red tent &endash; the place where women
celebrated their womanhood together when they
were bleeding. In close tribal communities,
women tend to menstruate on the same schedule.
The red tent was where they could be in their
power together, undisturbed by their men and
relieved of the chores of everyday life. It's a
tradition has actually persisted to this day in
the form of the mikveh, or ritual bath, in
celebration of the New Moon, a practice which
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb has reintegrated with its
roots in the goddess tradition. (Please see her
description of Rosh Hodesh in this
issue.)
Jacob, grandson of
Abraham, returned to his mother's land to seek a
wife, and fathered twelve sons with two wives
and two maidservants, who are all characters in
this story. Dinah, the only daughter, was the
last of their lineage.
In the Bible it is said
that she was raped in the land of Shechem. But
Diamant has taken the liberty of reinterpreting
the story. In her rendition, Dinah falls in love
with the young prince of that neighboring
kingdom, who seeks her hand in marriage. Jealous
of his wealth, Levi and Simon, two of Jacob's
sons and the ancestors of the priestly tribes of
Israel, become outraged by the betrothal. After
extorting a high bride price for Dinah's hand,
including the circumcision of every male in the
kingdom, those two irate sons take murderous
revenge, with the result that Dinah is alienated
forever from her maternal clan.
It's a sad tale, well
told for the most part, though I found the first
third of the book rather slow going. Perhaps
tribal life in Palestine five millennia ago was
so simple as to be relatively boring; or perhaps
it is hard for a modern woman to capture in
vivid prose a way of life so simple and remote.
Interestingly the pace quickens as soon as Dinah
enters the city of Shechem to help deliver the
queen's baby (she is an apprentice midwife), as
if at last the author has come upon more
familiar territory. From then on, events carry
us swiftly to the end. The love story is
movingly written, the horror of the ensuing
drama well conveyed and Dinah's final years
round off the story nicely.
So it's a good read in
the end, and a significant work of imaginative
archeomythology, best read in the context of:
Raphael Patai's
The
Hebrew Goddess
Gerda Lerner's
The
Creation of Patriarchy
Merlin Stone's great
classic, When
God was a Woman
and of course the
massive work of Marija
Gimbutas on the
cultures of old Europe.
All the books cited in
this review may be ordered from Powell's
Independent Bookstore!
Order The
Red Tent from
Powell's
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