This and other book reviews can be found at Canticle Magazine, the Voice of Today's Catholic Woman.
by Marilyn Prever
This is a best-selling historical novel based (very loosely) on the Old Testament story of Dinah, the daughter of the patriarch Jacob. It's the first work of fiction by the author, an award-winning Jewish journalist. As a Catholic of Jewish origin, I was curious about the way Ms. Diamant would handle the story.
After reading the first fifty pages I thought the book was hilarious—the story of a bunch of 1990's New Age feminists dressed in ancient Semitic garb, huddled together in the Red Tent of some imagined pagan women's ritual, trading stories of men's stupidities, recounting in stupefying detail their obstetrical histories, and congratulating each other on their deep female wisdom, which consists mostly of glorying in their menstrual blood (I'm sorry to say that particular bodily fluid reappears with depressing regularity and in great quantities throughout the book) and telling each other stories illustrating how wise and strong women are and how much they suffer. The men in the book hardly ever suffer, except from the results of their own stupidity.
The cover is wonderful: it shows a large, young Jewish-looking woman, maybe 5' 10″ and 225 pounds, draped in yards of earthy brown material, with a splitting headache—the New Age Sarah Bernhardt. My mother used to call that star of Yiddish theatre Sarah Heartburn. I recount this detail, my sisters, because, as Ms. Diamant tells us, “If you want to understand any woman, you must first ask about her mother.” So now you know something about my mother and we can move on.
Most of the women characters are large and muscular and many speak in “throaty” voices. These are the Strong Women of the new feminism, not the whining victims of the decade before, nor the bra-burning political types of the 70's.
I enjoyed the occasional anachronism the author lets slip, such as referring to labor pains as “contractions” in proper Lamaze style, or having a second-millennium BC woman speak of “the mechanics of sex.” And I admit I also enjoyed the scene where four or five women pass around a newborn infant before the afterbirth comes out (I guess it was a long umbilical cord), though that sort of slip-up can happen to any writer.
After the next fifty pages or so, I was not so amused. The detailed descriptions of childbirth, lovemaking, and other activities centered on what used to be called women's “private parts” (whatever happened to privacy?) began to be oppressive. Later on there is a graphic description of a gang rape, which seemed to me entirely gratuitous.
And I was offended by the almost light-hearted references to bestiality, though I understand it must have been fairly widespread, judging by the prohibitions in Leviticus.
Halfway through the book, I began to understand the message, and I was no longer laughing.
The story has for its theme the superiority of women's “wisdom,” as embodied in the pagan goddess-worship of the ancient world, over the violence and stupidity of most men, represented by Jacob and his sons, whose actions and words as reported in the Holy Scriptures are revised by the author to the point of reversing the moral and spiritual meaning of the stories. The God of Israel (who is the true Hero of both Old and New Testaments) comes onstage occasionally as a minor and unpleasant character, cruel and arbitrary, Who is worshipped for no discernible reason by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and nobody else at all, certainly not by their wives.
The author, who has written books with titles like Living A Jewish Life and How To Be a Jewish Parent, has apparently converted to another religion between books, but I am not sure she realizes it.
Of course this is a novel, not a theological work, and depicting paganism is not the same as recommending it, even when the depiction is sympathetic. But what reason could a practicing Jewish writer have to attribute the miraculous conception of Isaac to the moon-goddess Nanna? Or to report the story of Jacob's wrestling with the Angel of the Lord at the River Jabbok as the confused and meaningless dream of a neurotic, overwrought man, which inexplicably leaves him physically beaten up? And in her account, the name Israel is not given to Jacob as the fruit of that struggle, but invented much later by Jacob himself in a pathetic attempt to avoid responsibility for a massacre. Why does she consistently refer to “Abram” and “Sarai,” never using their God-given new names of Abraham and Sarah?
What kind of Jew rewrites Israel's prophetic deathbed blessing of his twelve sons as the confused rambling of a demented old man, evoking nothing but “pity and disgust,” or changes the magnanimous Joseph into an arrogant, “self-absorbed” tyrant motivated by ambition and revenge? As you might guess, in Diamant's version he really was fooling around with Potiphar's wife. And as for Potiphar's relationship with his handsome young servant, there are, as Saint Paul says, some things that should not even be mentioned among the people of God.
Diamant makes her heroine Dinah a midwife, taught that art by Rachel. It will come as no surprise to the reader that Rachel is not averse to performing an occasional abortion, in the tradition of the pagan midwife and with the author's obvious approval. It seems these ancient women exercised “reproductive choice” just like their modern counterparts, except that the men knew nothing about it. In the place where the Book of Genesis says simply that Leah “ceased bearing,” Diamant gives us the inside story—fennel and a beeswax pessary. There follows a passage describing the blessings of archaic contraception which is worthy of an ad for Planned Parenthood—not excluding the improvement in her health and her marital pleasures. It concludes, “She gave thanks for the fennel seeds and the wisdom to use them.” All natural, no side-effects. And yet, even wise women are not perfect. Dinah herself, daughter of Leah, is depicted as the product of an unplanned pregnancy.
The “accident” comes about because the pharmacist (the head midwife, Inna) is late in bringing Leah her pouch of contraceptive herbs. Rachel refuses to abort her sister, but only because her womanly wisdom tells her the child is a girl.
The book is not all bad, and not all silly. The author does succeed in giving the reader some feel for life in an ancient culture, and for the experiences that are the same for all women at all times. The second half of the book, which takes place in Egypt, is somewhat more convincing and less oppressive—perhaps because there is no more Red Tent. There is even a good man, the only one in the book: Benia, Dinah's second husband, a carpenter reminiscent of Saint Joseph.
I would have no quarrel with the book if it had been written by a woman of no religion or by a self-styled New Age neo-pagan. I would not have expected her to have any reverence for the Holy Scriptures or for the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel who, with all their faults, yet struggled to walk in the way of the God of Abraham. But from the pen of a Jewish woman!
The book even did me some good, in an indirect way. It made me appreciate, by way of contrast, the cleanness and beauty of the true Torah, and the wisdom of God's laws for His people. G. K. Chesterton said that the trouble with worshipping nature is that sooner or later you end up doing unnatural things. Nature was never meant to be our end; the only way “back to the garden” is the long way around—through keeping the Commandments, and finally through the Cross. Etz Chaim, the tree of life, is no longer in the midst of the garden, but on a hill named Golgotha.
As my husband said after hearing my description of the book, “Just be grateful she's not telling the Gospel story through the eyes of her version of Mary.”
