Beginning AnewThe Red Tent Anita Diamant, Saint Martin's Press, LLC. Review The Biblical text speaks to modern folks not only through what it says, but sometimes in a deeper way through what it does not say. The ancient Rabbis found a way to fill in those gaps, the silent spaces, the places where the text leaves the reader wondering or wanting more details, through a process called midrash. The Midrash is full of stories and parables which stretch the Bible reader's imagination, sometimes to places the Bible itself could not imagine. That is the gift of The Red Tent: a modern midrash in novel form, that fills in the troubling gaps in the Biblical story of Dinah's rape. Who was Dinah? What kind of woman was she? And whatever happened to her after the episode with Hamor? These are some of the questions The Red Tent helps resolve. Diamant also brilliantly connects this story with other parts of the Torah narrative (with quite a surprising twist- we won't tell). Diamant has done modern readers a great service by not only fleshing out this story fragment from Torah, but helping us imagine what women's life might have been like. She has helped reclaim the woman's voice so frequently absent from the Torah. This is Dinah's story told by Dinah herself. The saga has the feel of an epic tale. Sophisticated, engaging, at times so engrossing I felt like I was sitting in the tents with the matriarchs and patriarchs myself, this book is midrash in both the classic sense and the modern sense: an extrapolation, an interpretation, a meandering and wandering away from the text and back again to see it with fresh eyes. Never mind that Diamant sometimes strays from the original intent of the text- so did the ancient Rabbis in their midrashim. This book is fascinating, entertaining, and educational all in one. You will never read the Biblical story of Dinah the same way again Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

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