Water from the Well is a journey four thousand years back to the time of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah. These biblical matriarchs and their fascinating stories come alive in the hands of renowned author Anne Roiphe, whose graceful prose captures the biblical landscape and makes it take flight.
As each story unfolds, we find that the matriarchs had to overcome the same devastating obstacles women face today, such as infertility, lust, abandonment, and uncertainty. Roiphe demonstrates how the lives of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah helped to lay the foundation of womanhood in the Western world. Though these women lived many years ago, their lives bear a striking resemblance to our own. They suffered the same pressures and pitfalls, enjoyed the same pleasures and activities, and shared the same responsibilities as today's wives, mothers, and daughters. What is more, they managed to cope with betrayal, death, sacrifice, and jealousy while dealing with the emerging reality of a new faith period.
Little of the drama in the Bible is seen from a woman's perspective. Would Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah share the same point of view as contemporary women? With life having changed so drastically from the days of the Bible, what can we really know about the women who appear in one of our most sacred text? In Water from the Well these questions and many others are addressed in a most enriching fashion, allowing us to discover that women played larger roles in biblical history than many care to acknowledge.
Roiphe opens a window onto the distant past and presents it, through the tales of four remarkable women, to the modern reader with relevant observations and allegories. Combining the deep insight of Bruce Feiler with the narrative skill of Antonia Fraser, Roiphe delivers a fascinating work that deftly brings these four biblical matriarchs into our own age.
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Feminist Midrash Mar 16, 2007
Ann Roiphe has written an enthralling story based on various midrashes on Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. She has used the tradional patriarchal interpretations of these women's lives and given them a feminist augmentation and perspective. Well done!
Golden Girls of the Bible Jan 4, 2007
Can't believe this book found no other takers but the people from MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW, at least if the reviews posted on good old reliable this site are any indication. I picked up this book because I was thirsty for some retellings of stories of eminent women from the Old Testament. Was I one hundred per cent satisfied with what I got? No, but in this case I don't feel the problem is all in Anne Roiphe's hands. Obviously she knew what she was doing targeting these particular four women. She must have been going for the women who had problems. None of these four walked without fault, as do none of us today, but I bet none of us reading these reviews on this site.com ever did anything as awful as Roiphe's four heroines here.
She explains away their behavior saying, first, that the times have changed so much it's hard to tell if the ungenerous acts of her "Golden Girls" were considered unseemly back then, and secondly, she pulls out every stop to make excuses for them. And God allowed all these women to do exactly as they pleased, for He gave them all free will. To account for Rebekah's complicity in helping Jacob steal Esau's inheritance, Roiphe reaches into Theology 101 and writes, "God gave Rebekah the intelligence to think up the plot, the will to see her way to carry out the deception, the conviction to do what she thought was right. God knew that Rebekah there at the beginning of history made the right choice."
Anne Roiphe isn't the nation's most lapidary stylist, and she often jumbles up her sentences with frou-frou, like the birds and mice piling ribbons on the ballgown they make for Cinderella. But why does she think Rebekah made the right choice? Hard to say. How about that Sarah? OK, I felt sorry for her being barren and having Hagar laugh at her (if that really happened), but why send Hagar and little what's his name out into the desert without any water? Horrible! Just because Hagar was a slave didn't mean that Sarah plotted against her in a perfectly passive-aggressive way. "Oh, just cast her out into the desert with Ishmael, let God decide their fate." Roiphe quotes some Biblical scholars who speculate that Ishmael deserved to be punished because he had been molesting little Isaac (Sarah's son by Abraham). I don't think so!
Her book has a bibliography but no notes so it's hard to tell from her "Some say" usage who really said what, but if there's an alibi for Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah I don't know what it could be. I guess Leah comes off the best, but what do you make of her sneaking into the bed tent on Jacob's wedding day, after he's worked for Laban for seven years and he's married the beautiful girl he loves, Rachel, only to find her sty-eyed sister there instead? Nice going, Leah!
A blend of anthropology, religious study and folklore has been culled to build a foundation of knowledge Nov 6, 2006
WATER FROM THE WELL: SARAH, REBEKAH, RACHEL AND LEAH focuses on the true stories of four Biblical women whose influence on the early stories of the Bible will reach not just Christians but Jewish and Muslim faiths. Texts of different religions, from the Torah and prayer books to the Bible, are utilized in Roiphe's study of the women's personalities, struggles, and interactions with God. A blend of anthropology, religious study and folklore has been culled to build a foundation of knowledge based on known facts and source materials in this outstanding study.
