Later:

First a preface to my comments. As we discussed earlier, today's Jews (of which I am one) consider themselves to be direct descendants of the 12 tribes of Jacob. Consequently, I view many of the individuals who make up the characters in The Red Tent through the rose-colored glasses of family. When I read this book, I found myself having to remind myself that the book is speculative fiction and not meant to me taken as historical fact. It helped that many of the things Diamante writes about contradict their account in the bible (i.e. the 14 years of Jacob's combined labor for Rachel/Leah to 14 months, and the birth of Naphtali to Leah and not Bilhah.) Also I think she alleges that Jacob changed his name to Israel to avoid the infamy of the massacre but the bible mentions his name change after the fight with the Angel in Genesis 32 which was prior to the story of Dinah. So it wasn't too difficult to take the factual accuracy of The Red Tent with a grain of salt.

WRT, the story, I was fascinated by the descriptive naarative for the way of life in that time period: the humanizing of 4 women sharing 1 husband; the relationships between them and their staggered children and the patriarch; the rituals to the various gods and goddesses of the time; the way the characters amassed wealth and prestige.

It was also interesting to see a different take on the events of the bible, not just the rape/seduction of Dinah, but also Jacob's relationship with Laban, the fight with the Angel, the meeting up with Esau, and Joseph's story from sale as slave to vizier of Egypt. In the bible you get a whole bunch of so-and-so beget so-and-sos with regard to Jacob's and Esau's families and it's nice to see those names become actual people with actual stories.

I liked the way Dinah isn't part of the story until after the events of Shechem unfold. Really Dinah is just a device to tell Jacob's story of his wives and children for the first half of the book, which was nice, but it didn't give much depth to Dinah as a character until she first meets her cousin Tobeah (sp?) and experiences anger, frustration and loss.

I did find the characterizations in the book fairly two dimensional. I agree with someone who said upthread that it seemed like men were vilified in the book. But I was okay with that. Books by men often unfairly objectify women, and I see this as sort of the converse. If anything though, I think characters like Jacob and Joseph were made too perfect in the beginning and then made too flawed in the end. I didn't really see any character as "real" until after the massacre and Dinah moved to Egypt.

You know, it's for books like these that I'm glad we do this book club because I'd have never picked this book up on my own.

Hm, no resonance or especial fondness of any characters here. I think I liked this book because it was beautifully written. I respond when the author has made me "see" the characters.

I really have no excuse at all for being stalled at the gates of Part II. Except that I'm lazy and distracted by other books and hey, shiny things!

no resonance or especial fondness of any characters here. I think I liked this book because it was beautifully written. I respond when the author has made me "see" the characters.

ITA.

Y'know, I just realized I've been pronouncing her name "dee-nah" in my head, whereas the name in English is "die-nah" and I believe it was pronounced "die-nah" in my bible study class. Which way is correct?

Dee-nah is how it's pronounced in Hebrew, and I'm pretty sure she mentioned in the prologue that that's how it's supposed to be pronounced.

The pronunciation "Dee-nah" surprised me. I'd thought Dinah = Dye-nah.

??? Wutz ITA? Dern tiny brain, she can't remember.

I suppose it's no great surprise, since I picked this book, but I loved it. I bonded with the characters and loved the story. I loved how it expanded and how it changed that portion of the Bible for me. Several have mentioned that they have to remind themselves that it is fiction. I totally understand that, and love the power of really good fiction that requires this.

In a sense, The Red Tent is more real to me than much of the Bible. It's like I have lost some of the closeness of the Bible in multitudes of translations and the changes of time. When I first read The Red Tent a few years ago, it was around the time that I read another piece of fiction, based on the Bible: Testament, by Nino Ricci, which looks at the gospels from several points of view. It made the gospels close in a way that they never had been before, and completely changed how I think of Judas Iscariot. I don't know the reality of either Dinah's situation or the gospels, not really. No matter how much I read and study the Bible, much is left out, open to interpretation, or simply unclear.

All this meandering is a long and not very good way of saying that while initially I was conflicted by books like this, thinking of them as midrash has been very helpful for me. If they clarify matters, if they resonate, then why can't they also be inspired? I understand that a lot went into determining what was canon and what wasn't, and I don't mean to put this on the same level. On the other hand, the thought that many conservative Christian churches hold, that the Bible is completely and literally true, and is the only book that is, saddens me. I don't know if some or all Jewish denominations (Is that the correct term? I don't know what different Jewish groups like Orthodox, Reformed, etc., are called) believe about the inerrancy or completeness of the Bible. In any case, for me, I can't imagine that the divine would no longer feel a need to communicate with his or her people, or that people would stop writing divinely inspired words down.

I feel like I've said all of this really poorly. I feel so passionately about it, that I think it sometimes gets in the way of my words. If I offended, it was completely unintentional. We have so many eloquent writers here, so perhaps someone else can say it better.

I haven't been keeping track of the correlation between anyone's faith and their reactions to the book, but that's an interesting point, seeing it as an expansion on one story out of many in the Bible. It's been many years since I've personally done serious study of the Bible as anything more than a document with great influence on society and history. I forget that it has real relevance to people on a personal level.

Would the various stories of how Jesus spent the years before beginning his ministry be considered midrash? There are so many writings out there that have been, at one time or another, considered accepted parts of scripture but which are now left out.

Would the various stories of how Jesus spent the years before beginning his ministry be considered midrash? There are so many writings out there that have been, at one time or another, considered accepted parts of scripture but which are now left out.

Technically, Midrash refers to Rabbinic writings regarding the text of the "Old Testament." (Wikipedia [link] I think the main difference between Midrash and books about biblical figures, is that Midrash purports to be non-fiction, while the books are represented as fiction. This gives the books license to tailor the characters to resonate with our modern sensibilities.

In any case, for me, I can't imagine that the divine would no longer feel a need to communicate with his or her people, or that people would stop writing divinely inspired words down.

Wrod.

I understand that the closed canon and the doctrine of inerrancy are helpful when confronted with someone who says, "The Goddess of Victory has commanded that we be shod with her swoosh and divested of our manhoods and free of these mortal coils when the mother ship arrives," but I think it's doing calligraphy with a paint roller to suggest that God only speaks with an antique tongue and is constrained within the letterforms of a single book. John the gospel writer said, "If all the stories of Jesus were written down, I suppose that the whole world would not be big enough to contain them." OWTTE.

I suppose my personal beliefs run along the lines of "Israel is the chosen people (are the chosen people?); God chose to reveal himself to the world through them; therefore their history is most pertinent when seeking a true knowledge of him." On the other hand (or maybe on the same hand—I have difficulty following my logic), if all you're seeking is the means to justify your ends, pretty much any book will do, the venerabler the better. Just because you can find a verse or two that seems to support your case does not mean that the inerrant Bible supports your cause. The true truth, in some mysterious way, comes when you allow God's spirit to infuse the words with his meaning and his agenda, and he can do that through The Red Tent as easily as he can through the Bible with the caveat that the Bible is focused pretty exclusively on his character, whereas The Red Tent is pretty exclusively focused on Dinah's.

Since I fancy myself a writer, I tend to think of God as a writer. (One of us is made in the other's image.) I have this whole theology built up around this idea (and feel free to skip the rest of this post (if you haven't already) if you're really not interested in my theology). When I'm in the zone, writing is almost indistinguishable from reading, and my characters have free will to do whatever they want. Sometimes I'm surprised and delighted. Sometimes I'm surprised and horrified. The choice is always there to keep writing or to Select All Delete. God has thus far elected to keep writing, and his greatest story began (more or less) with the Exodus and ended (more or less) with the Resurrection. But the life of every single person/nation/donkey is a story written by God, and every single star and speck is a relevant detail he included. Seen in this light the Bible is the crib sheet to the Cliff Notes that someone scrawled onto their wrist, and we're trying to read it, if at all, from our seat two desks away in the middle of the exam.

In other words, God wrote the real story of Dinah more vividly and poignantly than Anita Diamant did. The writer of the Genesis narratives may not have thought it worth wasting much wrist space on, but that does not rule out the possibility that God was supremely pleased that Diamant did her best to recreate Dinah's story. He may have even whispered a favorite detail or two in her ear.