Something else about The Red Tent

which may seem obvious to everyone but me....the people in the tale, they are not Jews. I know that this may seem kind of like, duh, but I always thought of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Leah, Rachel, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Joseph, Benjamin, Asher, Gad, etc. - those biblical characters of those generations and those times - I always thought of them as Jews. But although Abraham may have worshipped one god, and although the boys may have been circumcised eight days after their birth, it seems that until Moses received the laws from God, there was no organized religion at all, but rather the seeds of a religion and the tribes of people who had come to accept these seeds as their customs. I know - reading what I have written, I can only laugh and say, well, duh. But I honestly envisioned all of those characters as Jews. Probably because of my sleepaway camp and because so many Jewish people I know are named "Jacob" and "Rachel" and "Benjamin". Of course, many non-Jews also have these names. Again, duh.

But here's the thing: where I talked about the "Jewish people" in my story of Passover, it really doesn't seem accurate now that I think about it unless by "Jewish people", I mean the large tribes of people who lived amongst one another in ancient Egypt and worshipped the "God of Abraham" and who circumcised their boy babies eight days after birth and adhered to many of the same customs and were (possibly, more or less) related to one another through their having descended from Abraham. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to call them the "People of Israel" or the perhaps the "People who would become Jews".

If I am wrong, I would be happy to be corrected here. I am just now trying to piece all of this together.

Another thing - and this may or may not be true - it SEEMS as if it is possible that Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, gave birth to an Egyptian prince who MAY have been an ancestor of the Pharoahs who tormented the Jews in the story of Moses. I am not sure about this.

YC