By Diana Brement, JTNews Correspondent
When Anita Diamant published The Red Tent, her novel about the lives of the Biblical foremothers, did she imagine she was spawning a new genre of literature? Our current Bookshelf adds two new works of fiction that flesh out the lives of women of the Torah along with books about Torah study, the role of women in worship and stories of Jewish holy women.
It has been said that if a woman is mentioned by name in the Torah, pay attention! The text might not reveal much, but the very existence of her name signifies importance, even though the details are lost.
Yael Lotan has crafted a beautifully written and vividly drawn novel on this premise. The Israeli author takes as her subject and title, Avishag, (The Toby Press, $19.95 hardcover), the virgin who is brought to warm the aging and ailing King David in I Kings 1:1-4.
“Let a young virgin be sought,” counsel his advisors, “and let her lie in your bosom, and my lord the king will be warm.” Despite the king’s well-known ways with women, the Bible is clear that he “was not intimate with her” — or, in the grander, King James fashion, “he knew her not.”
The biblical text makes it clear that Avishag (or Abishag in most English versions) becomes very important to the king and court. The text does not say why, but in reading between the lines of the Torah, Lotan has delightfully imagined the story, bringing together current archaeological evidence and an authentic feel for the land itself.
The lines have been filled in for Moses, too. With the exception of his sister, Miryam, even less has been said about the women in his life, particularly Pharaoh’s daughter, his adoptive mother, and Zipporah, his wife.
These three are the subject and narrators of best-selling author Angela Elwell Hunt’s new novel, The Shadow Women (Warner Books, $19.95 hardcover). Pharaoh’s daughter, whom Hunt names Merytamon, dominates the first half of the book. This author of popular fiction weaves extensive research on ancient Egypt into the story — almost to the point of distraction — although it authenticates her vision.
Miryam and Zipporah take turns telling the story of the wandering in the desert. Archaeology, of course, does not serve here the way it does in Egypt. The author assures us that the Biblical text is her “plumb line,” her guiding source for the story. For the rest we depend on her imagination.
Hunt is not Jewish, but she has done thorough research in Jewish literature. She even manages to include a discussion between Moses and Zipporah of the problematic translation of Moses’ first introduction to Adoshem, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” often translated as “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). Hunt’s use of “YHWH” to indicate the name of God may disconcert some readers, although she gives no hint to its pronunciation.
Like midrash, the rabbis’ and scholars’ ongoing attempts to tease out the details missing from the Torah’s sometimes mysterious shorthand, these books help add to the reader’s understanding of bible stories.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg draws extensively on midrash in The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, now in paperback (Image/Doubleday, $19.95).
Zornberg may be best known to Americans as a commentator on Bill Moyers’ PBS series, “Genesis.” A scholar of both literature and religion, this daughter of an Orthodox rabbi has taught Torah in Israel, England and the U.S. These essays are based on her lectures.
This is Torah with a twist, as Zornberg blends midrashic study with a psychoanalytical approach. The text is the patient whose subconscious needs to be drawn out. The intent of psychoanalysis is the same as midrash—to uncover hidden meanings. (Does this explain why so many analysts are Jewish?) The subconscious must be accessed, with all its repressed dreams and desires. And what or who is the subconscious of the Torah? Why, the women, of course, sometimes appearing, sometimes hidden, but ever present.
Reading this challenging book is like studying with Zornberg herself as she picks apart each weekly portion, melding ideas from literature, philosophy and psychology to create a unique interpretation of Exodus and its “idiom of redemption.”
What should a woman’s role be when it comes to the Torah? A group of women in Israel have been struggling for almost 15 years for the right to hold full Torah services at the Western Wall. Their endeavor, now a legal matter in Israel, is detailed in Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site, edited by Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut (Jewish Lights, $34.95 hardcover). The authors of these essays, women from all branches of Judaism, offer eyewitness accounts of physical violence and intimidation at the wall, along with personal stories and interpretations of Jewish law.
Like the Women of the Wall, Yitzhak Buxbaum believes women have a contribution to make to Jewish spiritual life.
A maggid — storyteller and teacher — who received his s’micha (ordination) from the singing rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Buxbaum has compiled Jewish Tales of Holy Women, (Jossey-Bass, $19.95 hardcover). The stories range from Hasidic times (including two about Edel, the daughter of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism) and conclude with accounts of Holocaust martyrdom and extreme self-sacrifice. Each woman’s holiness is exemplified by selflessness or fierce devotion to Jewish teachings.
According to the author, who teaches at the New School University in New York City when he is not writing books, lecturing or performing, many of these stories have never been published in English. Buxbaum adds a little summation at the end of each tale, concluding the book with the hope that when we raise up Jewish holy women “like banners” we will be on the way to redemption.