The Red Tent - Dinah's Rite

The Red Tent

Author: Anita Diamant

If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter. –Dinah

My world was filled with mothers and brothers, work and games, new moons and good food. The hills in the distance held my life in a bowl filled with everything I could possibly want. –Dinah

In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks — for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood. –Dinah

Amazon.com's description of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant:

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons.

Told in Dinah's voice, Anita Diamant imagines the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of the mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through childhood, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past.

I don't really know what to write about this book. There were some beautiful parts: Dinah's first experience with the flowing water of a river; her relationships with her mothers, with Tabea and with Meryt; her love for her son. But there were some very disturbing moments, as well: the few references to men fornicating with uncooperative sheep; the ceremony that takes place when a virginal woman experiences her first menstruation cycle; the vicious slaughter of a whole palace of people.

These moments – especially the first blood ceremony – left me feeling uncomfortable and voyeuristic. Sure, the whole book could essentially make the reader feel like a voyeur – and really, couldn't any first-person narrative be considered voyeuristic, when you get down to it? – seeing into the life of the narrator and the lives of her family. But this was different… it was… private. And the customs of Biblical Israel are far from the American culture I am part of today. What happens today when a girl first gets her period? She's shown how to use a sanitary pad and a tampon and told that heating pads and Midol can help with the cramps. Though there are still some women who "celebrate" their daughters' first period with a day of pampering and bonding, it's certainly not the trend I'm used to.

But this ritual was far more invasive. And the first blood was reserved to offer to the gods of the women, which makes me incredibly happy that my God does not require such – for lack of a better word – gross sacrifices from me. It’s hard for me to see the ritual in the book as anything but "weird." I know that my objectiveness is clouded by my grounding, to use a word from my linguistics studies in college. Because of who I am and what my personal experiences have been, it is not easy to approach such different rituals as a normal practice.

There is, of course, a lot more to the book than a ritualistic rite of passage for a young woman. The book expands on the life of a character who is afforded very little mention in the Bible as I know it. The author takes liberties and creates a realistic life for her narrator, with the ups and downs, tragedies and victories we all experience in a lifetime, proving her prowess as a Historic Novelist. I can see why Anita Diamant has received such recognition for the book, even if it won't be making my list of re-reads.

My takeaway: There is beauty and power in storytelling – it was the duty of the daughters in Biblical Israel to carry their mother's stories as legacy; Dinah, being the only daughter of her father's four wives, was granted the gift and burden of carrying all four women's stories as well as her own. And we have come a long way in menstruation sanitation... thankfully.