{"id":20249,"date":"2014-12-03T06:43:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T12:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=20249"},"modified":"2014-12-03T06:43:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T12:43:59","slug":"the-red-tent-gets-new-life-in-gauzy-lifetime-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/the-red-tent-gets-new-life-in-gauzy-lifetime-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Red Tent\u2019 gets new life in gauzy Lifetime movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

By DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN<\/p>\n

(JTA) — Surely the Torah\u2019s redactors never imagined that their Dinah \u2014 voiceless daughter of Jacob and Leah, rape victim avenged by her brothers \u2014 would one day be portrayed on the small screen as a lusty young midwife\u2019s apprentice who takes her romantic fate into her own hands.<\/p>\n

Anita Diamant<\/a>\u2019s 1997 novel \u201cThe Red Tent\u201d took the shards of Dinah\u2019s story, told in a fairly short chapter of Genesis, and recast them as a layered tale of sisterhood, friendship and love. The book sold 3 million copies and has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Now it’s been adapted into a\u00a0Lifetime miniseries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two-part series, to be broadcast Dec. 7-8, stars the Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson as Dinah, Minnie Driver as Leah and Morena Baccarin (Jessica Brody from \u201cHomeland\u201d) as Rachel. The Scottish actor Iain Glen (\u201cSir Richard Carlisle on \u201cDownton Abbey\u201d) plays Jacob, and the Israeli actress Hiam Abbas bears a setting-appropriate accent in her portrayal of Queen Re-Nefer.<\/p>\n

Lifetime\u2019s vehicle draws heavily from Diamant\u2019s wildly successful novel, which would ultimately help pioneer a new literary genre based on Bible stories.<\/p>\n

The novel \u2014\u00a0named for the tent in which the book\u2019s characters take refuge when they menstruate or after giving birth \u2014\u201clegitimized the kind of imaginative examination of women\u2019s narratives that women had been writing and circulating [on a] small scale since the early 1970s,\u201d said Susan Weidman Schneider, editor in chief of the feminist Jewish magazine Lilith.<\/p>\n

And Carolyn Starman Hessel, the director of the Jewish Book Council, said that Diamant \u201copened the door\u201d for other writers of biblical fiction. Although \u201cThe Red Tent\u201d may not have been the very first historical novel written in the voice of a biblical woman, \u201cthis was the first one that made national headlines, that made best seller lists,\u201d said Starman Hessel.<\/p>\n

Before hitting on the story of \u201cThe Red Tent,\u201d and after writing four non-fiction books, Diamant, then working as a journalist, decided to try her hand at fiction. Inspired by what she was learning about midrash, or stories that flesh out and analyze biblical narratives, she turned to the story of Rachel and Leah, but didn\u2019t find much to work with and kept reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I got to Dinah and it doesn\u2019t say anything, but the prince doesn\u2019t act like a rapist,\u201d since he agrees to be circumcised in order to marry her. \u201cI sort of meandered into it, but that was a great story,\u201d\u00a0said Diamant, a founder of Boston\u2019s non-denominational mikvah,\u00a0Mayyim Hayyim<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When \u201cThe Red Tent\u201d at first garnered few reviews and didn\u2019t sell well, Diamant hit the book club and synagogue circuit, turning it into a New York Times bestseller.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the response I get from readers, the book hit a whole lot of chords,\u201d the author told JTA, noting that she continues to hear from readers as varied as high school students and midwives \u2014 including one who set Diamant\u2019s text to music and sings it to laboring clients.<\/p>\n

In the 17 years since \u201cThe Red Tent\u201d was published, many other novels based on biblical characters have hit the market. Most of them, such as Jill Eileen Smith\u2019s series \u201cThe Wives of the Patriarchs\u201d and \u201cThe Wives of King David,\u201d are by Christian authors and geared toward Christian audiences. Notable exceptions include Maggie Anton\u2019s Talmud-inspired \u201cRashi\u2019s Daughters\u201d trilogy and \u201cRav Hisda\u2019s Daughter\u201d books — the second was recently published.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew \u2018Rashi’s Daughters\u2019 would appeal to that same niche audience and because of [Diamant\u2019s] example, I knew where to find them and how to reach them,\u201d Anton said in an interview with JTA.<\/p>\n

Diamant herself, however, hasn\u2019t been tempted to delve back into the Bible for its fiction plot potential since \u201cThe Red Tent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once \u201cit came out and became popular, I couldn\u2019t think another way to do it that would be as fresh,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But the Lifetime series indeed freshens the story, at times to the point of being overripe, while taking ample liberties with Diamant\u2019s text, much as Diamant did with the Bible\u2019s. For example, at the end of the miniseries Dinah returns with Joseph to reconcile with their dying father, Jacob, a scene for which there is no basis in either the novel or the Bible. And while \u201cThe Red Tent\u201d novel speaks of the calloused hands of Dinah and Leah, in the Lifetime movie they and Rachel are all pale English roses speaking with British accents.<\/p>\n

The miniseries provides Lifetime\u2019s heavily female audience with gauzy love scenes that verge on soft porn. In one scene, light plays across the chiseled abs of a virile young Jacob as he beds his surprise-wife Leah on their wedding night. Instead of Shechem taking Dinah \u201cby force,\u201d as Genesis 34 recounts, in the miniseries Dinah and the Shechem character (Lifetime calls him Shalem) meet \u2014 glimpsing one another through sheer fabrics hanging in the marketplace \u2014 flirt and fall in passionate love.<\/p>\n

Diamant, whose fifth and latest novel, \u201cThe Boston Girl,\u201d is to be published Dec. 9, declines to say much about how she feels about the Lifetime adaptation of her book, in which she had no role after selling the rights to it. Her novel has just been reissued with the miniseries poster as its cover.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was worried [the main characters] would be really blonde, and at least they weren\u2019t,\u201d Diamant said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

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