In The Red Tent, Anita Diamant retells the story of the Biblical character Dinah. Throughout her narrative, the author expands upon the original account of Jacob’s only daughter by giving voice and emotions to the previously silent and static character. Diamant’s Dinah is not merely the victim of rape as portrayed in the original text, but instead is an active participant in both the highlights and tribulations of her life. Throughout all of her struggles struggles, another element of the character, silenced by the male-dominated perspective of the Genesis story, arises into view: Dinah’s religious self. From the early chapters of her life, in which Dinah shares the religion of her mother and aunts, to her seclusion and despair in Egypt, Diamant explores how the religious nature is shaped by the people and circumstances surrounding a person. The main character’s personal religion is wholly tied to the rituals and customs of her surroundings. Dinah’s experience proves that the one’s religious self is a product of the rituals that define it.

Clearly defining the whole Dinah’s religious identity and self is a hopeless endeavor. John Caputo presents an argument that one’s identity is too complex to be boiled down to a single nugget of truth. Similarly, understandings of the Sacred and Absolute are equally elusive, for the spiritual is too great for comprehension. In order to truly be religious, he argues, one must understand that nothing of real importance is understandable.

To present this incredible schism between what can be known and what will remain unknown in a way that makes sense to the human mind requires a way to bridge these two realities. Communal, shared ritual is humankind’s attempt to reduce unthinkable concepts into understandable entities. At its core, according to Richter, ritual provides a “connection to the Sacred Ultimate Reality” (228). While the deity itself is no more fathomable, there is a communal bond that is created among similarly searching followers. Religious rites of passage, portrayed commonly through baptism and confirmation, are actions that symbolically provide the participant with a direct connection with God, but also with a community of people with similar backgrounds. In this way, a community is formed through the shared performance of rituals.

Just as the community as a whole is created from shared religious acts, the individuals who comprise the society are defined by their rituals; these rituals are not based upon the self. For instance, the earliest ritual undergone by most children is the birth ritual, of which the participant has not control. Eliade’s article on ritual specifically notes circumcision of newborn males because of its transformative effects; this simple action within the Jewish community not only allows the child to enter their society, but also it acts as a sense of identity, a confirmation of the covenant (190). Other rituals are performed consciously, but still transform the participant. The modern marriage ritual, although modified slightly by the wishes of the participants, still serves primarily to alter the people involved. Women go so far as to lose their former identity completely, taking on the name of their new husband. Through rituals, the identities of participants are created.

To examine the religious self of Dinah, one must trace her progression through the novel to find the highs and lows of her spiritual selfhood. For instance, her childhood was a high point in her life, owing to the strong community of faith with whom she lived. Her brief time with her husband in Shechem saw a complete change in her identity as Dinah forwent her prior rituals as the community she once knew abandoned her. Later in her exile, all of Dinah’s rituals are completely forgotten in her perpetual grief, leaving her without an identity. Without a series of ritualistic traditions to guide her, Dinah loses track of who she is, living both in the past and future, but never the present. Finally, as Dinah remembers the simple ritual of forgiveness, her identity is returned. She attempts to make amends with her past and live in the present, and suddenly her name is no longer forgotten to the world. Indeed, it seems that at the moment that any kind of religious hope and action return to Dinah’s life, life returns to Dinah. For Dinah to have an independent religious self, she first needs to surrender herself to a community of rituals.

Dinah’s religious identity is strongest in her childhood, as she is enveloped in a community full of shared experience and common rituals. Long before Dinah is born, the women of the camp establish traditions and rituals that unite them into a single community. One of the first evidences of this communal love is the puberty ritual undergone by Rachel. To aid her transition into womanhood, the other women in the camp perform an elaborate, well-rehearsed ritual involving both pampering of her body and singing of prayers to the goddesses that will protect her (24-5). Dinah is born into this community, and rapidly becomes a full member of it. Major transformations in her life highlight the connection between her actions and her sense of self. For instance, Bilhah’s instruction for how to spin thread was a crucial step in Dinah’s life, changing her from a child into a productive member of their group. Just as important was this event’s changes to Dinah’s spiritual self; Bilhah’s instruction was based not just on communal knowledge, but also in the calling upon the name of the goddess Uttu. From then forward, Dinah’s spinning was a religious experience, a ritual. Dinah’s identity and religious self were shaped by both the community in which she lived and the rituals in which she participated.

Although brief in time, the effects of Dinah’s time with Shalem are profound. Just prior to her so-called rape and subsequent marriage, Dinah participated in her final ritual with her maternal community: her puberty ritual, which is portrayed very similarly to Rachel’s ritual years before. This act is a final welcoming into the world of women, featuring prominently the use of teraphim as an active part of a ceremony, not just a passive, overlooking role. Through this ritual, Dinah’s physical life and spiritual life were redefined, as she was given a new role in he community and a new goddess to watch over her. After she finds love in Shalem, she begrudgingly allows her husband to go through the ritual of circumcision, under the guise of him being allowed into the family of Jacob. Once the ritual is used for the slaughter of the entire city, the foundation of her spirituality was shaken. If the rituals which defined who she was had turned to evil, they could no longer be tolerated. In an effort to distance herself from the atrocities of her brothers, Dinah loses two vital parts of her being: her community and her rituals. Without these keys, she has no identity, no self. Dinah enters her time in exile without a true religious being.

Dinah’s time in exile, easily viewed as the doldrums of her spiritual life, reveal a lot about the nature of her spirituality. Living with Re-nefer, Dinah physically secluded into her garden for the span of years, watching her son grow, attempting to live her life through him. There were no actions, only inaction. Caputo argues that this lack of action is the key indicator that Dinah had lost all of her religiousness. Although she was physically still alive, her identity and religious self had “died of grief,” as the stories were told (317). Near the end of her life, Dinah returned to her homeland, seeing her family once again and hearing the tales of her own sad life. Receiving a connection with her past helped her to reenter her former community. In a way, visiting the tribe of her birth and seeing the change that years had brought allowed Dinah to conduct the ritual of forgiveness. Through regaining both a community and a ritual to which to cling, a spark of religious life was reignited. Dinah, owing primarily to her simple rituals, was given a new religious being, one that carried her over into her afterlife.

Through the character of Dinah, Diamant shows how the religious identity of a person is created through communal ritual. The religion which defines Dinah is a product of the rituals in which she and the people around her partake.