Recently the book appeared on that other megalith, the paperback best-seller list, reaching the New York Times’s in December and the Los Angeles Times’s No. 1 this month. There are 750,000 copies in print, rights have been sold to 15 countries and Hollywood has optioned the film rights. And, if that weren’t enough, Julia Roberts told Oprah magazine that “Tent” is one of her favorite books ever. Says first-time novelist Diamant, “I’m going to be able to send my daughter to college!”
Dinah’s story in the Bible is generally referred to as “the rape of Dinah.” Diamant makes up a new, fleshier tale for her in which, instead of rape, there is a love story–and Dinah gets to narrate it. Jacob’s only daughter also tells of her mother and three aunties–and all the sex they had with their shared husband. They were ruled by men, gods and curses, except during those sacred days of menstruation and giving birth, when, sequestered in the red tent, they were renewed by their private community of each other. Faithful to New Age principles, the book is achingly earnest: the line “a local oracle… foresaw love and riches for me in the steaming entrails of a goat” is not supposed to make you laugh.
With its trinity of woman empowerment, God and quivering thighs, the commercial appeal of the book seems obvious, but it took an unheard-of two and a half years to become a best seller. According to publisher St. Martin’s, an approximate “not many” were sold when it was first published in 1997. It was ready to pulp the remaining hardcovers squatting in a warehouse when it heard from Diamant. She had address lists for more than 1,000 rabbis: “Let’s send them out.”
Books reached essentially every woman Reform rabbi in the United States with a letter from Rabbi Liza Stern, of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She suggested using it to teach women “to see themselves as central to the story, not as marginal two-bit players in a story about men.” Also to embellish the Bible themselves. And the sex? “It made it a good read.”
Independent booksellers were the next to enlist in the cause. The entire staff at Newtonville Books in Newton, Mass., was struck by the book, says owner Tim Huggins. “They were hand-selling it to everyone who came in,” including a lot of book-club members.
Finally, in late 1998, “The Red Tent” took off. It had crossed over to the Christian community (another mailing went to women ministers) and on and exponentially on. Says Diamant, “It’s become a real word-of-mouth book-group find.”
Ellen Berliner Davis, whose group in Parkland, Fla., took Diamant to lunch, didn’t mind that a rape was reimagined as a love story. “A lot of discussion had to do with the believability of the rape scene [in the Bible].” Amy Wisotsky, whose group in East North Fork, N.Y., is reading the novel now, shared the book with her 19-year-old daughter. “I keep thinking about the unity and bonds between the women.” Also: “They go to the market, I go to the mall. You could relate.” Says Diamant, “Reading groups are like the red tent. You get together once a month but [the books] are really not why you’re there.”
Sandy Barton, whose word led to the monument, likes to think of the book as a midrash, a Jewish oral tradition that fills in the holes in Biblical texts. “It’s like ‘The West Wing’–you wish these were the conversations they were having.” Having read in the Bible that Jacob loved only his wife Rachel, Barton says, “It was nice to know Jacob loved Leah, too.” Even though it’s made up? “Even though it’s made up!”
“Baloney!” says an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who did not wish to be associated by name with the book. He says it is a mockery and like an argument a rapist would use in court. “A woman was raped! It’s disgusting to portray it as a love story.” But he believes good can come from bad. “It’s going to give me tremendous material for a sermon!” In that way, he is like all the other readers: he can’t resist talking about “The Red Tent.”
