COVE

Plate One: About The Author - 

Anita Diamant is a fiction and nonfiction writer born on June 27th, 1951, spending her early childhood in Newark New Jersey, and later moving to Denver Colorado. She attended University of Colorado Boulder, then transferred to Washington University graduating with her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature in 1973 and earning her masters in English from Binghamton University in 1975. She is best known for her 1997 novel The Red Tent and has written six guides to contemporary Jewish practice. Much of her writing revolves around lives of women, and stories that go untold. Diamant defines herself as a Reform Jew, joining a Jewish congregation at the age of 12 upon her move to Colorado. Since then, she's written journals, essays, and novels centered around the Jewish faith. In 2004, Diamant opened a mikveh in Newton Massachusetts. Diamant wanted to open an mikveh that "encourages the prayers of the heart in Jews of every denomination and description" (Mayyim Hayyim). Mayyim Hayyim has now been functioning for 21 years and has celebrated it's 20,000th immersion and it's 3,000th conversion. 

Plate Two: Plot Summary – 

The novel depicts the life of Dinah, the first and only daughter of Leah and Jacob and the sacredness of “The Red Tent”. The book is split up into Three Parts. Part one is three chapters titled “My Mothers Stories” which tells the story of Dinah's mothers and how Jacob came into their lives. Leah is the birth mother of Dinah, but each of the sisters Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah help in raising her due to their strong family bond and Dinah being the only daughter means she’s the only one that will pass down the women's stories, so they feel obligated to impart their knowledge and customs onto her. 

Part Two is eight chapters titled “My Story” Where Dinah depicts her adolescence and her growth into womanhood. In those chapters she learns skills of midwifery from Rachel, she falls  in love and marries prince Shalam, and her brothers Simon and Levi seeing this marriage as a dishonor to the family which results in the brutal massacre of Shalam and the other men of Shechem, under the pretense of defending Dinah's honor. Furious, Dinah then curses her family and flees to Egypt.  

Part Three is five chapters titled “Egypt” Here, Dinah becomes a midwife in Egypt and reconnects with her son who was taken from her as a babe. She also reconnects with Joseph and the rest of her family - inheriting Rachels lapis ring which was left to her by Leah. Leah realizes she has been forgotten about by Jacob, but that her story is alive in the minds of her young nieces. The novel closes with Dinah reflecting on her life and thanking the reader for listening to her story and “visiting the echoes of her name” She closes the story with a blessing: “Wherever you walk, I go with you. Selah” (Diamant, 321).   

Plate Three: Biblical Material Relevant to the Book – 

The novel expands on chapter 34 of the book of Genesis which briefly recounts the story of Dinah, and her time in the house of Jacob. The majority of her mentions in Genesis appear in a list of genealogy, but in chapter 34, the story of her defilement is expanded upon, which is also the majority of The Red Tents plot. Although Diamant reconstructs the story to make it one of love, she homes in on the relationship between Shechem and Dinah, and how it divided her from the house of Jacob. Plate three is the depiction of Shechem asking Jacob for Dinah’s hand in marriage, and Jacob in return asking for the circumcision of Shechem and his men. Painted by Maarten van Heemskerck in 1585. 

Plate Four: intertextual Analysis - 

In The Red Tent, Anita Diamant takes the brief and overlooked story of Dinah from Genesis and turns it into a three dimensional, emotionally complex narrative told entirely from Dinah’s point of view. In the Bible, Dinah doesn’t speak. She’s mentioned only as the daughter of Leah who was “defiled” by Shechem (Shalam in The Red Tent) and the story quickly shifts to focus on her brothers’ revenge. But Diamant flips the script by giving Dinah a voice and a life beyond that one event. In the novel, her relationship with Shalem is not violent or shameful—it’s portrayed as a mutual, loving connection. When her brothers betray her trust, Dinah dishonors them and packs her bags, starting her life anew. This major shift forces readers to question the assumptions in the biblical version: Was Dinah’s story really about dishonor and vengeance, or was it about men using a woman’s experience to justify their own violence? Diamant also goes further by developing the world around Dinah, especially the lives of the women—her mother’s Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah—who are often footnotes in the Bible. Their rituals, especially those that take place in The Red Tent during menstruation and childbirth, become a kind of spiritual center of the novel. Through this retelling, Diamant doesn’t just fill in the gaps; she challenges the structure of the original text, offering a version of biblical history that centers empathy, memory, and the female experience. It’s not meant to replace the Bible, but it asks us to imagine what the stories might have looked like if women had written them too. There aren’t many depictions of Dinah in physical artwork or other media, but for my final plate, I decided to use a still from The Red Tent mini-series. This still is of when Dinah goes to see the other daughters of the land prior to her “defilement.” I chose this photograph because it shows the love and laughter shared between women that is seldom depicted in The Bible. Like the photograph, The Red Tent invites readers to see The Bible not as a closed book, but as a starting point for deeper, more inclusive storytelling. By giving voice to Dinah and the women around her, Diamant opens up space for empathy, and the reexamination of stories that have long been told from only one perspective.

Works Cited 

Coogan, Michael David, et al., editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha: An Ecumenical Study Bible. Oxford University Press, 2018.  

Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent - 20th Anniversary Edition (Anniversary). Picador USA, 2007

Mayyim Hayyim, 14 Sept. 2020, www.mayyimhayyim.org/. 

Image Citations 

1.  Staff, NPR. “First-Generation ‘boston Girl’ Becomes Career Woman in Diamant’s Latest.” NPR, NPR, 6 Dec. 2014, www.npr.org/2014/12/06/368714299/first-generation-boston-girl-becomes-ca....

2.  “Suzanne Daniels " The Red Tent: A Novel by Anita Diamant [Learn More].” Suzanne Daniels, www.suzannedaniels.com/2013/02/06/book-recs/redtentbook/. Accessed 3 May 2025.

3. “The Dinah Story: A Missed Opportunity for Intermarriage and Conversion.” TheTorah.Com, www.thetorah.com/article/the-story-of-dinah-a-missed-opportunity-for-int.... Accessed 3 May 2025.

4. “Dina: Women of the Bible: Dikla Laor.” Dikla Laor Photography | Women Of The Bible, 9 Jan. 2024, en.diklaphotography.co.il/dina/.