Anita Diamant: a mikveh of her own: the queen of Jewish lifecycle books and author of the best-selling The Red Tent is the founder of the world s first freestanding pluralistic mikveh.
Moment › Vol. 33 Nbr. 4, July 2008
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Anita Diamant: a mikveh of her own: the queen of Jewish lifecycle books and author of the best-selling The Red Tent is the founder of the world s first freestanding pluralistic mikveh.
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THANKFULLY, ANITA DIAMANT does not sigh when I ask her the question she has been asked countless times. She smiles graciously, accustomed to fielding inquiries about The Red Tent, one of the first contemporary novels to transcend the patriarchal lens of the Bible. Her magnum opus has sold three million copies since its 1997 publication, a staggering number not just in the world of Jewish books--where sales success is usually defined in the range of five to ten thousand--but by any measure. We are sitting on the patio of her small, sunny backyard in Newton, Massachusetts. Like others who have read The Red Tent, I can't wait to talk to her about her vivid portrait of the Biblical women who, in her telling, made up the heart and soul of Jacob's prosperous clan: Dinah, Jacob's only daughter by Leah; Leah herself; Rachel, her rival for Jacob's affections; and their sister-handmaidens, Zilpah and Bilhah. Thus the oft-repeated question: Was there really such a thing among our ancient foremot...See the full content of this document
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