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ST. MARTIN’S, 1997
(available in paperback from Picador, 1998)
THE COMPRESSED STORIES and images in the Bible are rather like photographs,” explains Red Tent author Anita Diamant. “They don’t tell us everything we want or need to know.” Diamant longed to know more about the circumstances surrounding the rape of Dinah, Jacob and Leah’s only daughter. Recounted in only one line of the Bible, in Genesis, chapter 34, the story of Dinah’s rape by Shechem is followed by a longer account of vengeance visited on Shechem’s people by Dinah’s six older brothers.
“The drama and Dinah’s total silence—she does not utter a single word in the Bible—cried out for explanation,” says Diamant. “I decided to imagine one.” The Red Tent gives voice to Dinah—her feelings of betrayal, grief, and ambition—while illustrating the daily existence of biblical women. The Red Tent’s depiction of women—their daily chores, monthly rituals (retiring to the red tent during menstruation among them), and momentous life events—focuses attention on the Bible’s peripheral, often silent characters, conjuring lives of sisterly bonding and deeply felt emotions.
Food and its preparation figure prominently in the daily lives of the women of The Red Tent and with good reason, according to Diamant:
Food is front and center in The Red Tent because food preparation took so much time in a traditional or premodern society. The growing, processing, cooking and clean-up must have taken so many hours every day. Yet another reason I am not at all nostalgic for the ancient world of my imagination.
Because their roles were strictly defined by a patriarchal society, women had little bargaining power. They ruled the kitchen, though, and food became a useful tool. Leah hopes her meal, which she “suffered over … like nothing else I had ever cooked,” will win Jacob’s heart, and she gains confidence from his approval: “I knew how to please his mouth…. I will know how to please the rest of him.” The women comfort one another with food, as when Inna, the midwife, feeds Rachel bits of bread dipped in honey and mead while whispering “secret words of comfort and hope” into her ear.
The richness and variety of food in The Red Tent is striking. The book’s pages are laden with references to produce, grains, meats, and spices of the ancient world—figs, dates, quince, melon, pomegranates, mulberries, cucumbers, barley, olives, lamb, goose, fish, coriander, and mint. Anita Diamant tells us that she chose foods “self-defensively,” making sure that no modern-day items slipped into the book. “I didn’t want there to be any anachronisms—foods that would not have been part of the diet in that place or at that time. So no tomatoes—they’re New World. And no chickens—as ‘Jewish’ as chicken seems to us today.”
Readers can learn something about biblical chronology by attending to food in The Red Tent. As Diamant told us:
Readers may have noticed that there was liberal mixing of meat and milk in the cooking in The Red Tent. That was intended as a signal that this book is historical and not religious in its bones. The first strictures against boiling kids in their mother’s milk comes in Exodus, after Moses gets the Torah. Milk and yogurt are effective and standard marinades for meat in the Near East to this day, after all.
To make use of the bounty of fruits, nuts, and grains available in the ancient Middle East, we adapted the Dried Fruit, Cinnamon and Red Wine Compote recipe in Kitty Morse’s A Biblical Feast: Foods from the Holy Land (Ten Speed Press, 1998) for the fig spread here. The Bible mentions figs at least fifty times—a testament to their popularity. Both figs and dates are among the seven foods listed in the Bible in praise of the Promised Land. Prized for their sweetness and long shelf life when dried, in ancient times figs were used by the poor in place of honey, which was reserved for the wealthy. Dates enjoyed popularity at all levels of society.
The fruit compote came to our attention when Judy Bart Kancigor, book club member and cookbook author, made it for her Red Tent “biblical feast.” She served the sweet, intensely flavored compote as a dessert. Here, we pair it with toasted pitas and a goat cheese topping to make an ancient world appetizer for a modern discussion of The Red Tent.
Place the apricots in a bowl and cover with warm water. Let soak until plump, about 30 minutes. Drain and finely chop.
Place the chopped apricots, dates, figs, raisins, wine, and cinnamon in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until mixture thickens. Remove from heat.
If using almonds or walnuts, toast them briefly in a hot frying pan until fragrant but not browned. Spread the nuts on a flat surface and crush (the flat side of a cleaver or flat end of a knife handle is good for this).
Add the crushed nuts to the compote and stir to blend. Stir in the lemon juice, a little at a time, to taste. Allow to cool.
Spread a thin layer of the compote on a toasted pita triangle, put a dollop of goat cheese on top, sprinkle with chopped pistachios and serve.
Yield: 10 to 12 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The women of Les Livres Book Club in Beaufort, South Carolina, found much to discuss in The Red Tent, especially the issues it raises about women’s physical and emotional health. With three obstetrician-gynecologists and several nurses in the group, much of their discussion focused on giving birth. In The Red Tent, Leah’s sisters attend her difficult labor and delivery, while Inna, the midwife, offers herbs, oils, and massage to ease her pain. “We’ve taken something that’s supposed to be so natural, childbirth, and made it so clinical,” says Carol Morrissey, a former critical-care nurse. “Coming into womanhood was celebrated in The Red Tent, but modern Western society has taken all that away. Even the ob-gyns in our group agreed that women have lost control of the birth process.”
Group members also mourned the passing of a time that nurtured close female bonding. In The Red Tent, Rachel and Bilhah “strained and reddened together, and they cried out with a single voice” when Bilhah’s baby was born. “In the world today, we feel like we have a couple of close friends, but the sisterliness of those times is just not around anymore,” says Morrissey.
More Food for Thought
Cookbook author Judy Bart Kancigor assembled a gourmet biblical feast for her book club’s discussion of The Red Tent. Her Second Wednesday Dinner Book Club of Fullerton, California, enjoyed a menu of bread dipped in toasted ground almond and sesame dip or pomegranate molasses; salad (arugula, thinly sliced onions, olives, and cucumbers) with olive oil and wine vinegar dressing; and Jacob’s pottage (a hearty lentil stew). Kancigor found most of her recipes in Kitty Morse’s A Biblical Feast: Foods from the Holy Land (Ten Speed Press, 1998), a cookbook that uses only the approximately eighty ingredients mentioned in the Bible to create dishes appealing to the modern palate.
Bonnie Kulke, of the Bethel Bookwomen, in Madison, Wisconsin, baked molasses-seed cookies, an original creation, for her book club’s discussion of The Red Tent. Kulke, an herb grower, especially enjoys cooking with herbs and sharing her knowledge of their history.
“Some of the seeds in this recipe were discussed in the book, so I thought it would be fun to tell everyone some of the interesting history and uses of these herbs and spices,” says Kulke. “For example, coriander was thought to have been an ingredient in the Old Testament manna. Caraway was so treasured that Egyptians were buried with it. Fennel was eaten in ancient times by women to prevent obesity, and anise is helpful for soothing colic in babies and to stimulate the milk supply in nursing mothers,” says Kulke.
cup (about 2 ounces) dried Mission figs, chopped