How many beginnings are there? How many beginnings have been lost, with the people who grew from them? When men conquer and obtain, who is left in the remains, to tell their tale? What women have passed on their tales, mouth to mouth, to have them disappear when womanhood loses meaning? In The Red Tent , we can see a glimpse of what was. It is, for all our knowledge, a part of the beginning of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But it was told from quite a unique point of view—that of a woman. From the Bible, Torah, and Koran, we have been able to see, to hear, this very same tale, written from a masculine point of view. From a feminine one, it looks quite different. More life, more colour, more personal, the author brings to life the one daughter of Jacob and his four wives. We already know about Josef and his brothers. In this book, we learned of someone else—his one sister.

While we may not to be able to discern history or biblical history from this ‘fictional’ tale, it is a tale to inspire, all the same. While reading this book, a part of me longed for those times of the red tent. When womanhood did not mean to be obsessed with shopping, manicures and facelifts. When womanhood was something more, something beautiful and even unified. It is not to be put down into words, what it means to be a woman. It is not to be described, but to be told. This book told it with quiet precision, cutting into the times of old when, even as we were ‘less than’ men, we were still more.

All throughout the tale was that one, underlying being; ‘God’. El, they named him then, and a bloody, wrathful god he was, as also depicted in the Holy Scriptures. Dinah, Jacobs’s daughter, has her own struggle with El, with the pain and torture of mankind, and her ideals of what a god should be. She wanders through spirituality in a kind of fog, never taking on a faith of her own, and mixing her faith in her mothers’ ‘heathen’ gods with that of El, and other, Egyptian gods through her journeys. While she never settles on a faith, she never denounces her spirituality, choosing instead to simply believe in some form of higher power. It was not a conscious choice, more of a quiet acceptance, something she was not even aware of accepting.

It is a paradox of sorts—this book describes the beginnings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and yet the main character has no specific faith of her own. I think this truly makes it more powerful—had the book been wrought with fiery conviction on The One God, it would have seemed less personal, less true. As it is, the book is a unique specimen that tells of the time period without the heavy weight of religion. The book in itself is not religious—it is the time period that is. The book is historical and spiritual, one that anyone of any faith may read, and anyone of any faith may take inspiration from.

In that, it is also a book for women, to remind us of who we are, as a whole. This book reminded me that my blood is red. That with this blood, I nurture and bring forth life. That no matter the circumstance, I will always have a sisterhood of women to surround me—it is our common bond, something deeper than spirituality, origin, or title. Dinah called to me through history, and I felt her pain as my own, as I’m sure many other women did. All women, no matter who or where they are, share these things, and with this unique connection, we are linked through time, and through the ages. This book was a reminder of that. Of life, and of death. Of sorrow, happiness, tears and laughs.

It also gave me a stark reminder of how isolated we are today. There is no longer a red tent. There is no longer a quiet celebration of our nature. In fact, many women seem to forget our nature, trying to equal men. We do not equal them, in some things. In other things, we surpass them. Womanhood today can seem pretty superficial, with all the bad publicity we get. But I believe that, at our core, we are not so much different than those ancient women who gathered under a red glow on hot earth, to speak of their men and boys, to taunt and tease and laugh and cry. To celebrate life, and death, in it’s turn.

Somehow, I think that’s what the author of The Red Tent would like us to remember. That throughout everything life may throw at us, we have each other, and our spirituality. That the voices of our ancestors should not and do not go unheard. That a woman’s history is just as vitally important as a man’s. That our passions, our smolder, may balance the stark, and usually violent, history a man would record.