The Redemption of Dinah in Anita Diamant's the Red Tent

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The Redemption of Dinah in Anita Diamant's the Red Tent The Red Tent Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Reviewed by Jessica Schantz, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio The Redemption of Dinah in Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent* The Red Tent, Anita Diamant’s first work of fiction, reinterprets Genesis’ account of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter. Dinah’s story is briefly recounted in Genesis, though her choice as a young woman to leave the territory of her tribe and “visit the women of the land”1 led to the massacre of the Hivvite’s of Shechem. Diamant admits that rewriting the entire history of a figure whose voice is mostly absent from the Torah required “imaginative wrestling”2 and cites the rabbinic tradition of Midrash as her guide. While she took many liberties in recreating the details of the women’s lives in Jacob’s tribe – namely Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah – Diamant’s interpretation that Dinah was not literally raped is shared by many contemporary biblical scholars. According to Diamant, and to scholars such as Ita Sheres, the “disgrace”3 Dinah caused her family was not due to rape, but to her coupling with an uncircumcised man, an act that violated Abraham’s covenant with God. In her book, Dinah’s Rebellion, Sheres argues that the Deuteronical redactors of the Torah would have used Dinah’s story as an “ideological weapon” against “the Israelites of the First Commonwealth…who gave in to their evil impulses (with the help of women who led them astray).”4 Bolstered by this knowledge and the liberties of fiction, Diamant attempts to redeem Dinah’s story in The Red Tent. In doing so, she has also engages the mainstream readership’s desire to hear the “undertold” and misrepresented stories of biblical women and perhaps develop a new and discerning relationship with biblical storytelling. However, because The Red Tent is so focused on the female perspective, one critic has called it “a touch too feminist and progressive for [its] time”5. The Washington Post similarly criticized Diamant’s third work of fiction, The Last Days of Dogtown, saying that, like “The Red Tent,” the book was an “overlay of a modern sensibility on an imagined past”6. In fact, critics of The Red Tent seem to fall into two categories: those who praise it for providing a radical feminist take on biblical storytelling, and those who vehemently oppose it for the same reason. At the center of this criticism are differing attitudes toward writing novels based on biblical themes. Diamant has said that her use of Midrash, which calls for the dynamic interpretation of ancient scripture in order to glean meaning that is not immediately evident, is what allowed her to feel confident re-imagining Dinah’s story: “You are supposed to bring every element of your intellect, your emotions, and your imagination to this sort of study…It’s up to us to figure out what it means”7. Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Spring 2008 Volume 5 Number 2 ISSN 1209-9392 © 2008 Women in Judaism, Inc. Page 1 of 14 The Red Tent Yet one of her harshest critics, Benjamin Edidin Scolnic, argues that her Midrashic interpretation “is nothing short of anti-Semitic,” especially, he argues, “in its depictions of some of the characters, such as Jacob, and in its virulent antipathy toward the essential early Hebrew ritual of circumcision.”8 In Diamant’s interpretation, ordering the circumcision of Shechem’s men is cruel and unnecessary. Dinah is ashamed of her brothers’ dictum and pleads with Shalem not to agree. When Simon and Levi subsequently murder all the men and rampage the city, Dinah places a curse on her tribe and says of her brothers, “[They] are no more to me than the livestock of our youth.”9 In response, Scolnic writes, “It is very curious why Diamant, who has written several wonderful books celebrating Judaism and Jewish rituals, would depict the Israelite characters in such horrible light while creating non-Israelites who are nothing short of perfect.”10 However, Scolnic’s criticism is informed by his belief that Dinah was, in fact, raped, and that Simon and Levi’s response was justified because the rape was “of the most heinous kind.” According to the passage of time suggested in the Torah, he estimates that Dinah would have been no older than nine when she left for the city. Scolnic and Diamant have very different emotional responses to Dinah because of their interpretations of the ambiguous details of her story. While Scolnic admits that, “Those who would recreate a female perspective on narratives and laws should be given imaginative space,” he is reticent to agree with the Midrash informing her story.11 Scolnic also considers the text anti-Semitic in its lack of forgiveness. In Diamant’s retelling, Dinah leaves for Egypt on her own volition and renounces her blood ties by taking up residence with the family of her slain lover. Genesis 46 gives Dinah final mention in a list of those family members who leave for Egypt with Jacob to visit Joseph. Jacob, or Israel as he is called at this point in the story, is redeemed in knowing that Joseph is alive and prosperous, and desires to see him before his death. It is unclear exactly how much time has passed since the slaying of Shechem’s men, but we can deduce that by the time of the voyage Dinah would have been a grown woman. There is no mention of her progeny in Genesis, though the sons of her brothers are all listed. Dinah may not have had any sons, or she simply might not have had children at all. Nonetheless, her presence in the caravan suggests familial loyalty, what Scolnic might consider a sign of forgiveness. Yet Sheres, in her analysis of the gender dynamics of Dinah’s nomadic culture, suspects that Dinah would have had few options outside of staying within the protective fortress of her family. Sheres examines accounts of men and women in relation to their environment, and concludes: The external world is portrayed as a world where “strangers” roam free, where there is deception and violence that the women cannot handle but that men can. Women are thus cast into a family framework which is perceived by the text to be protective but which limits the women to biological procreation.12 That Dinah’s venture beyond the confines of her tribe purportedly led to rape (or at least a violation of her family’s covenant) would have been reason enough to prevent her further travels and autonomous pursuit of a mate. To say that Dinah forgave her brothers is thus uncertain. Because of its liberal interpretations, The Red Tent has found much of its readership in the female reform community. The orthodox community has been more critical of Diamant’s use of fiction to tamper with direct translations of the Torah. Again, while Diamant considers Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Spring 2008 Volume 5 Number 2 ISSN 1209-9392 © 2008 Women in Judaism, Inc. Page 2 of 14 The Red Tent her retelling a form of Midrash (and thus her religious inheritance), the orthodox community makes the distinction between traditional rabbinic Midrash and “Modern” Midrash. In her highly critical article, “Popular Fiction and the Limits of Modern Midrash: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant,” Simone Lotven Sofian argues that Diamant’s inclusion of polytheistic ritual is idolatrous. She writes, “Idolatry or the worship of natural phenomena can not be encouraged by casting it in a positive light” because it “undermines the Bible’s ultimate sacred character.”13 Critic Naomi Graetz, in turn, argues that Diamant is not undermining the Bible’s sanctity but responding to the lack of direct covenant women have with the divine. By providing these women with a spiritual inheritance, albeit polytheistic, Diamant is creating a parallel to the inheritance of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. In her book Modern Midrash Unbound: Who’s Not Afraid of Goddess Worship, Graetz argues that “Goddess worship seems to fill a need” in that it personalizes the covenant by creating “feminine metaphors.”14 Diamant may not be incorrect in assuming that the women of nomadic tribes would have sustained a polytheistic spiritual culture amongst themselves. According to Sheres, Genesis’ focus on fertility and the responsibility of women to sustain the tribe is indicative of a much richer female culture than the Torah documents. She writes: Readers of Genesis have been struck by a major issue that keeps recurring in the various narrated sagas, namely, that even though the text is of a patriarchal orientation, all of its significant women seem to be quite powerful, even if that power is of a “domestic” sort.15 What is more, Genesis 35 indicates that the members of Jacob’s tribe were practicing god and goddess worship up until the pilgrimage to Egypt and long after the murder of the Hivvite men. Jacob tells his tribe to “Put away your foreign gods that are among you”, a command he feels will both “purify” them and allow him to construct an altar “to the God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”16 Thus the relinquishment of polytheism was not a logical conclusion made by the entire tribe, but rather a command by Jacob so that he may find favor with the patrimonial god of his lineage. In The Red Tent, Diamant does not perceive the obedience of Jacob’s tribe to mean agreement and instead constructs a world in which the diminishment of polytheism and goddess worship is a result of the redactors’ removal of involved feminine narrative.
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