{"id":1726,"date":"2006-12-12T15:24:03","date_gmt":"2006-12-12T15:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/12\/deep_in_a_dream\/"},"modified":"2016-06-19T13:35:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T20:35:17","slug":"deep_in_a_dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/12\/deep_in_a_dream\/","title":{"rendered":"DEEP IN A DREAM: THE RED TENT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Redtent\"<\/a> While I was in Jerusalem I went several times to Pardes Institute<\/a>, a remarkable school to study the Bible, Talmud and commentaries.\u00a0 My husband and I love to study while we’re visiting places; it all seems so much more real – and sinks in more, too.\u00a0 We were there during the week that the story of the rape of Dinah is read on Shabbat.\u00a0 It’s pretty profound and provocative and a wonderful teacher named Rabbi Reuven Grodner<\/a> taught the class.\u00a0 We were transfixed: the story of the vengeful brothers and their far from vengeful father Jacob is troubling to anyone – but particularly to women.<\/p>\n

I remembered that The Red Tent was written in Dinah’s voice, so I decided to read it.\u00a0 I had tried once before but it seemed too overwrought and almost overwritten then.\u00a0 Now though, I find myself more interested in the stories in the Torah — the universality of Bible stories and all they represent — so I stuck it in my suitcase — and once we’d studied the Genesis story of Dinah I pulled it out.<\/p>\n

\"Virgin_suicides_1\"<\/a> It’s really quite an experience — almost a fever, like The Virgin Suicides<\/a>.\u00a0 The sisterhood and love among women, the pain of childbirth, the rivalry and particularly the remarkable power author Anita Diamant provides to each of the main characters — is thrilling.<\/p>\n

There’s a kind of Biblical interpretation called a Midrash <\/a>and those that I, as a beginner, have read, are all pretty male-oriented.\u00a0 This book is one big women’s perspective\/Midrash full of love, passion, pain, loss, love, birth, death, misery, joy and poetry.\u00a0 Much of it does NOT appear in the Bible but that’s true of the old Midrashim as well.\u00a0 I can’t stop thinking about the women of this book, their lives and stories.\u00a0 I came to love them and their stories — so very very different from the ones the conventional Bible stories tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I was in Jerusalem I went several times to Pardes Institute, a remarkable school to study the Bible, Talmud and commentaries.\u00a0 My husband and I love to study while we’re visiting places; it all seems so much more real – and sinks in more, too.\u00a0 We were there during the week that the story … Continue reading DEEP IN A DREAM: THE RED TENT<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6,7,98],"tags":[2413,251,3884,220,219,2415,2412,602,2414,44],"class_list":["post-1726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-life","category-religion","tag-anita-diamont","tag-books-2","tag-culture-book","tag-jewish","tag-judaism","tag-midrash","tag-the-red-tent","tag-torah","tag-virgin-suicides","tag-women-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-rQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4569,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions\/4569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}