The Red Tent imagines the life of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, named only a few times in the Bible’s Old Testament.  She is the only daughter mentioned among the 12 sons of Jacob. Her name, like those of any sisters she may have had, would have been lost to history had it not been for the part she inadvertently played in the massacre at Shechem, in the land of Canaan as told in Genesis 34.

The story is told by Dinah, but it is also that of her four mothers:  the two wives of Jacob, Leah and Rachel, and their maidservants, Zilpah and Bilhah respectively, who were also given to Jacob and bore him sons. It also tells smaller stories of women – Rebecca, Inna, Werenro and Ruti. The red tent is the women’s retreat, where they go (or are sent) during menstruation, childbirth, illness and death. It is where the women share their knowledge of life and death, of food and men, gods and goddesses.  It is there that they learn of their place in the world as daughters, mothers, sisters and friends. Dinah tells us the story of her life in a sweeping arc, from her birth to her death, and through her travels from Mesopotamia, to Canaan and Shechem (Israel) and finally to Egypt.

In the red tent, the women find a sense of family and community. They share knowledge and pass it from one generation to the next.  They worship their own gods and goddesses. They find beauty and grace in the world around them. However, it was argued, that whatever comfort they may have found there, it was a small victory in the larger story of the womens’ lives.  In the ancient world, women were little more than chattel, wholly owned by men and the gods the men worshipped. So rather than accepting what was, the women could have used the tent as a place of solidarity and power to fight back against the traditions that held sway over their lives and the lives of their children. Instead, the red tent became a place to jockey for position, and to maintain the caste system already in place.  Leah and Rachel fought for their place as Number One Wife in Jacob’s life, together, maintained their power over their maidservants, who were also wives of Jacob, and all the women in the community treated Ruti, the poor slave/wife of Laban with contempt, thereby cementing the hierarchy of their community as second-class citizens. In other words, they used the tent to focus inwards,on the lives of women, rather than turning their attention to understand the wider world that they lived in, with their men, not apart from them. We understood full well that in the ancient world, these women may not have even conceived of the idea that they could fight back, let alone had the wherewithal to do it.  However, having said that, we all know of the existence of parts of the world and cultures where women are treated this way today. Is it okay to accept it, to chalk it up to “cultural differences” and let it be? Or in the interest of human rights, are we obligated to speak out when we can?  

I found the female characters in the book to be well-developed and believable, but at the same time, I was struck by the fact that it was often done at the expense of the male characters.  I was hard-pressed to find even one rounded, or even likeable male character in the book.  Isaac was distant, Laban was disgusting, and Jacob just flat. Joseph, a strong voice in the Bible was weak. The other sons of Jacob were spoiled and entitled – and murderers to boot.  Shechem was dead before we had a chance to know him, Re-mose was sent away as a child, and Benia, Dinah’s husband was little more than a cardboard cutout. I think it is unnecessary to portray men in this way in order to bring more pathos to the women characters.  Even developing one strong male character may have made it all less glaring. I found myself thinking that if I were a man reading the book, I might have been a little incensed.

All in all, we enjoyed the book.  It was well-written, and the subject matter might have been something we had never given much thought to before. In the end, though, it was the heated discussion around the table that proved to be the most enjoyable part of the story. Now that’s what a book club is supposed to be about!

“Bad things are like knots on a necklace – necessary to keep the beads in place.”

Anita Diamant, the Red Tent