“There is a fascinating paradox in the Bible,” says Eva Etzioni-Halevy, child Holocaust survivor and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. “The women lived in a male-dominated society, in which they had few legal rights and their position in the family and society was far from equal to that of men. At the same time they are described as strong personalities, who did not just sit around and bemoan their fate. Instead, they used their femininity to take destiny in their own hands and shape it to do their bidding.”
This paradox has inspired Etzioni-Halevy to write a series of novels based on the lives of these biblical women, the most recent of which is The Triumph of Deborah (2009)
Not About Religion interviewed Etzioni-Halevy about the novel and her “Women in the Bible” series.
Can you describe your religious background?
Having spent the war years in Italy, I came to what was then Palestine in 1945. As a child I was very religious, but as I grew up I abandoned Judaism and Israel to seek greener pastures in other countries and other cultures, first in the United States and then in Australia.
While I lived in Australia I began seeking my roots. I returned to Judaism and to Israel, and today I am what you might call a “born again” religious Jew.
The biblical account of Deborah is quite brief. How do you create a novel based on what little we know about her?
The story of Deborah in the Bible is indeed brief, but in “The Song of Deborah” [Judges 5] there are a few hints about her life and the political situation at the time. We know that she had children. Yet the Scripture tells us that she went off with warrior Barak to his hometown in another part of the country, and there is nothing to indicate that her husband Lapidoth accompanied her.
I found this very intriguing. I asked myself, what would her husband have to say to this? What would ANY husband say if his wife went off with another man and left him to do the baby-sitting? This is what triggered my particular interest in the story and I built the plot around it.
Of course, I also filled the blanks through research and imagination.
Is there a lot of research that goes into your writing?
Absolutely. I have been doing extensive research that spanned over several years, and includes scouring the Bible itself for all hints it yields about social structure, family structure, the position of women, adultery, foods, cosmetics, diseases, medicinal herbs, and more.
I did not have to travel far, since I am so fortunate as to live “on location” so to speak, that is, in the Holy Land. I could not have written those stories had I lived anywhere else. My research included visiting the locations in which the plots of the novels took place. I visited some locations of The Triumph of Deborah twice, and it was awesome to see the castle in which part of the story takes place, still in existence, though in ruins!
[I have] visited a variety of excavations, such as Hazor, Tel Quasila and more, which showed the layout of houses and temples, the devices used for cooking and pressing oil and wine in the period described. [I have also] read a variety of books and encyclopedias on ancient Israel, its historical background and social structure, as well as that of the Canaanites, Philistines and Moabites.
Virtually everything written in my novels about social and family structure, food, etc. is based on one or more sources. For example, all the foods mentioned in the novels are mentioned in the Bible, and/or have been discovered in excavations. The layout of houses and cooking devices described in the novels are based either on what I saw myself, or on articles in Biblical Archaeology Review, or both.
Is it important that you remain faithful to Scripture as you write, or do you merely use scripture for basic ideas?
To me it is very important to remain faithful to the Scripture. My novels don’t deviate from the Bible by even a hair’s breadth. But as mentioned before, the biblical stories are brief and leave many gaps. Those I filled out with my own interpretation and imagination, but more importantly with my identification with the women of the Bible and the sense that this is how things truly happened.
What was your initial inspiration for creating this series?
During the years in which I made my journey back to Judaism, I began to read the Bible on my own, and I discovered what an amazing set of books it is. I found it to be full of the most dramatic and the most traumatic stories about people who lived thousands of years ago, and yet are so similar to us in their anxieties, hopes and desires. I began to identify in particular with the women of the Bible and I felt as if I knew them personally and they had become part of me. Continued on page 2
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