8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful!, March 21, 2006
This review is from: Seven Days to the Sea: An Epic Novel Of The Exodus (Hardcover)
I loved this book even more than Rebecca Kohn's first novel, "The Gilded Chamber".
Upon opening "Seven Days to the Sea", I was instantly transported back into Ancient Egypt. The amount of research the author put into this book must have been immense. I could feel the sun and the dust of the desert, and see every moment of the story play out before my eyes. This is the best kind of historical fiction--a portal to the past, not a TV drama with modern characters in cheap period clothing. By reading this book, you will come to understand what daily life in the time of Moses might have been like, and some of your perceptions of a familiar story will be challenged. (Can you imagine Moses as a passionate young man, instead of an eighty-year old man with a white beard and staff?)
Miryam and Tzipporah are both complex, sometimes flawed three-dimensional characters who are also easy to admire as strong women in very different ways.
Miryam gives up a life as a wife of a man she loves in order to follow a higher calling. She has true religious passion and fervor--her deepest longing is to know the God of her people, and to serve him. Miriam is a natural leader and organizer, who becomes the chief leader of the Israelite women. However, as she grows older and doubt creeps into her heart, she becomes harder and sterner from the disappointments she has suffered, and comes into conflict with her sister-in-law Tzipporah.
Tzipporah provides a stark contrast to Miryam, because she is a woman who asks the hard questions about religion. The youngest daughter of Yitro, high priest of Midian, she is a servant of the Goddess, who often questions Yahweh's (God's) harsh judgements on his people, as well as her own beliefs and the customs of her people.
In the end, Kohn weaves a story of two women who loved a great man, and their struggle to find peace with themselves and each other. I would highly recommend "Seven Days to the Sea" to a biblical or women's fiction enthusiast, or anyone who wants to read a compelling and beautiful story.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE RESPONSIBILITY THAT FREEDOM DEMANDS:, March 22, 2006
This review is from: Seven Days to the Sea: An Epic Novel Of The Exodus (Hardcover)
For her second biblical novel, Rebecca Kohn has taken on a tougher challenge than in the first. In the excellent, The Gilded Chamber, she told the story of Queen Esther, who is so central to the action that she even gets her own eponymous book in the Bible. In Seven Days to the Sea, she once again relates an episode from the Old Testament--that of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt--from the viewpoint of the women involved. But here her characters are necessarily not present at key moments in the action--because only Moses and Yahveh are there or because Moses and Aharon are meeting with Pharoah--so there's an odd secondary quality to the first person narrative of Moses's sister, Miryam, and wife, Tzipporah. Think about it--a book about Moses with no burning bush, no scene where he gets the tablets, etc.--it's a pretty daring authorial decision. And, I have to admit, I was awfully dubious about it through at least the first half of the book, but then, to my surprise and great satisfaction as a reader, it paid off brilliantly in the end.
What Ms Kohn has done here is quite precisely to give us a somewhat slantwise view of the story, the view that the Jews who followed Moses, in rather bumptious fashion, would, after all, have had themselves. Though it was Moses who had to bear the difficult burden that Yahveh placed upon him, he did at least have the advantage that belief had been forced upon him. His people had to, for the most part, take his word for it that he was doing God's will and they should follow. Theirs was then the greater leap of faith and that they struggled mightily with it, and often against Moses and God, becomes all the more understandable when we look through their eyes. The Yahveh of Exodus is, as you'll recall, an exacting taskmaster and puts the Jews through their paces for forty long years before letting them get to the Promised Land. In Ms Kohn's narrative we get a sense of why a people whose leader had seemingly disappeared might cast a golden calf and also of why God, through Moses, would punish them so harshly for doing so. In one of the powerful dialogues near the end of the book, Tzipporah is treating the sores on Moses's face that are caused by drawing near to Yahveh and she is troubled by the demands God makes upon them, to which her husband responds:
"It is better for us to live by Yahveh's laws than the tyranny of men. Unlike men, Yahveh values life more than property."
"His punishments are too harsh," I whispered.
"Would His children listen otherwise?"
I could not bring myself to give the answer Moses sought, though I knew it to be true.
Moses sighed. "The people have not learned to act with the responsibility that freedom demands. In their hearts they are still slaves. For the time being only fear of His anger will teach them the wisdom of His laws. I pray it will not always be so."
It is a vain prayer, I said to myself.
"The yoke of leadership is heavy," he added.
And not just of leadership, but of freedom, because it does require that we learn to act responsibly and that we bend to His laws. It is as she teaches us these timeless lessons again, and makes us see how great was the struggle to accept them even as God Himself was teaching them, that Ms Kohn's novel achieves a real resonance that applies to our own lives. This is a book that will reward the patient reader greatly.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Bible Story for Adults..., August 13, 2007
I loved hearing Bible stories as a child, and so now that I'm adult, I've been thrilled to read the same stories but written with more detail and depth. I love relating to these women from thousands of years ago - finding similarities and stark differences in culture.
I was looking for a good follow up from THe REd TEnt - and this book was wonderful in how it explored the relationship of Miriam and Zipporah. I gave it 4 stars because although I enjoyed it, it took me a long time to get through it, slow, but interesting read - it covers a lot of detail, description (moreso than plot). But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Upon finishing I was excited to read the Exodus again - to see how much reference is given in the Bible to these women's characters.
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