Lit Talk: Anita Diamant

Many readers remember Anita Diamant for her unforgettable bestseller, The Red Tent, the story of Jacob’s daughter Dinah over whom the Book of Genesis glosses over. She writes with poetry and an innate understanding of women. Her latest novel, Day After Night, carries these same strengths and focuses on a group of young women who escaped from Nazi Europe to Israel during World War II. In this 2003 interview with William Novak, Ms. Diamant discusses her Jewish identity and a new mikveh (ritual bath) she has helped to start.

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What are you thinking about these days?

Mostly Mayyim Hayyim, the new Boston-area mikveh, which should be up and running by the time this is published.[As indeed it is: www.mayyimhayyim.org] I'm spending way too much time on it instead of writing, but it's my choice so I’m not really complaining. I've never done a non-writing project before, or a community project. I've never been much of an activist, or an organization person. I've even written an essay on how much I dislike going to meetings, but now I'm going to them all the time. It’s a complicated process building a mikveh; there’s nothing about them when you look them up in the zoning ordinances.

How did this new mikveh get started?

Anita: For me, it began in the mid-1990s when I was writing Choosing a Jewish Life, a guidebook about conversion. I went to the mikveh a number of times with various rabbis as they took converts. I was also chairing the outreach committee at Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, because I thought it was important for the community to have a representative at conversions, so I would try to show up at conversions of our members with flowers and gifts. Only one mikveh in the area--in Brighton, near Brookline--has been open to the liberal community for conversions, and that's only two hours a week, which makes it tough to schedule. There are other mikva'ot which aren’t open for conversion, including a new, Chabad-sponsored mikveh in the western suburbs.

You mean not open to the non-Orthodox world?

Anita: Yes, although I don't care for that phrase, because it seems to imply that Orthodoxy is normative Judaism in the way it refers to the rest of us are “non.” But the problem of most mikva'ot goes beyond that. There's nowhere to stand, to sit, to celebrate, or even to wait. I've been to many conversions, and each time I am moved to tears by the power of the moment, but I've never seen a mikveh with an appropriate space in which to mark the hour after the immersion--or before, for that matter.

I was at the Boston mikveh one spring afternoon when candidates for conversion in the liberal Jewish community were lined up outside, waiting for their turn, and while it was inspiring to see a dozen or so men, women and children waiting to become Jews, having people lined up outside is not a very graceful or welcoming entry into Judaism. Most mikva'ot are set up only for women to come individually and privately, at the end of their periods. Traditionally the mikveh is used at night for modesty's sake, and also because of how Jews count days.

You use the noun “convert,” although many people go out of their way to avoid it, speaking instead of Jews by choice.

Anita: I think "convert" is an honorific, a title of honor, and I see nothing wrong with it. Being a convert, or a Jew by choice, if you prefer, should be a term of the highest praise. For someone to choose this identity and to embrace it--it's a gift to the rest of us. Neither term is great: "convert" makes me think of currency, and "Jew-by-choice" is a little awkward. In the Torah and in classical Jewish writings, the word is ger, which can also mean stranger or sojourner. "Proselyte" comes from the Greek translation of ger, but it's far too archaic.

Where do you think our discomfort about converts comes from?

Anita: According to Jewish law, we are not supposed to make any distinction between someone who is Jewish by choice and someone who was born Jewish. Evidently, Jews have behaved badly toward converts for a long time: there is mention in the Talmud about Jews making fun of them and talking in demeaning ways about their "pig-eating ancestors." And yet the great majority of comments about converts in the Talmud and the Midrash are favorable, such as, "The convert is dearer to God than Israel." When a convert wrote to Maimonides, asking whether he could recite prayers that included the phrase, Elohei Avoteinu, God of our ancestors, Maimonides answered with a resounding yes, saying, "There is no difference whatever between you and us."

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The rest of the fascinating interview is available here. Ms. Diamant will be touring the east coast in the upcoming weeks:

Thursday, September 10 at 7:00 p.m.
Newtonville Books
296 Walnut St.
Newtonville, Mass. 02460
617.244.6619

Monday, September 14 at 7:00 p.m.
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince St.
New York, N.Y. 10012
212.274.1160

Tuesday, September 15 at 7:00 p.m.
Book Revue
313 New York Avenue
Huntington, N.Y. 11743
631.271.1442

--Emmaline Silverman

Photo by Mark Ostow