Eva Etzioni-Halevy is professor
emeritus of political sociology at Bar-Ilan Univeristy, Israel, now
turned into a biblical novelist.
A child Holocaust survivor, she was
born in Vienna, Austria. She managed to escape as a small child with
her parents in 1939 and spent World War II in Italy, partly in an
Italian concentration camp and partly in hiding. She moved to what
was then Palestine in 1945.
She also spent time in the United
States and Australia before returning to Israel and taking up her
position at Bar-Ilan. Eva lives in Tel-Aviv with her husband; she has
three grown children.
To find out more about Eva follow the
following link: http://www.women-in-the-bible.com
To Purchase Any Of Eva Etzioni-Halevy's Books Click Here
By profession, I am a political
sociologist; but after a lengthy academic career, I burst out in a
totally different direction and reincarnated myself as a biblical
novelist. Why?
It so happened that some years ago I
began reading the Bible, and was entranced by it. What fascinated me
was that it is full of dramatic and traumatic stories about people
who lived thousands of years ago, and yet are so strikingly similar
to us in their hopes, passions and anxieties. I began to identify in
particular with the women, whose lives I could visualize as if they
were my own.
A few years ago, I participated in a symposium on
women of the Bible at which a lady in the audience asked: Why should
we, women of the 21st century, be interested in biblical women, who
were so limited in their lives? They were concerned mainly with
marriage and giving birth to sons, while we have so many more options
and ambitions for our lives.
Since then, I have been thinking
about this question, searching for an answer. I came to the
conclusion that the question was based on misconception. The women of
the Bible are not only fascinating but also relevant today and even
in the 21at century we can derive inspiration from them.
Abraham
was commanded: "Whatever Sarah says, listen to her voice."
Sarah and the other biblical women are still calling out to us from
across the generations and we will do well to listen to their voices
carefully, and doing so can have an empowering effect on us
contemporary women.
For one thing, they lived in a
male-dominated society, in which they had few legal rights and they
were downtrodden in family and society. Yet most of them were strong
personalities. Naturally they were not--and could not be--"feminists"
in the modern sense. But neither did they merely sit around and
bemoan their fate. Instead, they took destiny into their own hands
and shaped it to do their bidding.
Deborah - the heroine of my
novel The Triumph of Deborah is a shining example. She was a
prophetess or religious leader, a chief justice and a national leader
all wrapped in one, and the people adored her. Despite the difficult
conditions for women prevailing at the time, she "cracked the
glass ceiling" over three thousand years ago, without losing her
femininity.
Most women have no wish to become national
leaders. But what all women can learn from Deborah is that no matter
what the field in which they choose to realize their potential, no
matter what is right for them, they can draw on their inner feminine
strength to achieve their goals and remain women and mothers at the
same time.
Secondly, there was a great diversity among
biblical women. Contrary to their image, they were not concerned
solely with marriage and bearing sons, but also with a whole variety
of other issues.
Tamar in the book of Genesis wanted
children, to be sure, but she was not concerned with marriage.
Instead, she was set on becoming what we would call today a "single
mother," and her wish was granted.
Bathsheba forcefully
strove to become a king's mother, the most eminent position for a
woman at the time. Taking advantage of some court intrigues, she,
too, was successful in her endeavor. And there are many more examples
of the great variety of biblical women's goals and achievements.
In
this sense they are particularly close to us today, an era in which
feminism is frequently combined with a celebration of diversity, of
women doing what feels right for them, for each woman,
personally.
Thirdly, and most surprisingly, several of the
biblical women were very sexual personalities. They were not merely
"sex objects," but initiated sex. Occasionally they did so
as part of what we might call "sexual politics," in order
to gain power and obtain various objectives in life.
Ruth - the heroine of my novel The
Garden of Ruth used sexual enticement to achieve marriage to a
wealthy and prominent man, and thereby became the ancestress of a
dynasty of kings.
For all these reasons I was mesmerized by
the biblical women and decided to hand them a "loudspeaker"
by writing novels about them, so that their voices could be heard
loud and clear across the millenia. I wrote about them as I think
they deserve to be written about: stories of love, betrayal and
redemption through more love, which are yet totally faithful to the
Bible, for which The Triumph of Deborah is the most recent
case in point.
To Purchase Any Of Eva Etzioni-Halevy's Books Click Here