The Marriages of Jacob: A Poem-Novella (review)

Book Reviews 113 The Marriages of Jacob: A Poem-Novella, by Charlotte Mandel. Marblehead, MA: Micah Publications, 1991. 110 pp. $10.00 (P). Story-telling through poetry, often of epic proportions, lends an emotional dimension to ancient legends which prosaic writing achieves more laboriously. This is particularly evident in modern poetry that pursues the human experience in the examination of feelings and definitions of self-image, stressing both our commonality and our distinctiveness. Women poets have been especially gifted in their perceptions of the affective life in personal development and in interpersonal discourse. Charlotte Mandel has taken the Biblical narrative ofJacob's indenture to his Uncle Laban and has fashioned a poetic reconstruction in novella form of his servitude for the love of Rachel. The unfolding action is seen through the eyes of his wives and concubines. Multiple deceptions haunt Jacob in which women play a role. These are highlighted in Rachel's acquiescence to her father's falsification of a marriage agreement, by secretly having his older daughter Leah replace Rachel as the bride. A precedent of deception had been set by Rebecca, Jacob's mother and Laban's sister, who had encouraged her son to misrepresent himself to his visually impaired father in order to obtain his blessing. The manipulations of Laban for extracting service from Jacob and the latter's countermanipulation in order to acquire more adequate compensation suggest a competitive style of family interaction that parallels the sibling rivalry of Esau and Jacob. Underhandedness and deception are no strangers to an ethos of intrafamilial competition as is further borne out when Rachel steals her father's idols and, using a clever excuse, diverts his search away from her. Later, when Dinah, Leah's daughter, is raped and sought after by a Canaanite prince, her brothers demand a wedding contract whereby the suitor and all males in his city undergo circumcision before the wedding rite, a ploy of deception which allowed Simeon and Levi to slaughter them during their convalescence. Another episode, beyond the time constraints of the novella, was Jacob being deceived by his sons who, having rid themselves of Joseph, reported his assumed death as having occurred from an attack by a wild animal. In the poem, the recurring subterfuge is balanced, if nor muted, by the passion for life in conjugal bonding. Since Jacob's women defined themselves in terms of their reproductive potential (and are so defined by their society), the sisterhood is strained by the competition in fertility which permeates the poetic lines. Creating new life becomes a singleminded goal, with Jacob in the role of stud. 114 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 Mandel skillfully blends these incongruent themes into lyrical verses which give voice to the sensuality of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Pastoral allusions are interwoven with descriptions of the inner life as if the surroundings were extensions of their selves. Fusion and boundlessness oscillate throughout this work, perhaps best typified by the allegorical meeting of Jacob and the nocturnal visitor with whom he struggles until the unnamed other fades into the ether with the dawn. However, because the figure of Jacob is drawn rather larger than life, Mandel is not as successful in picturing his essence in the dynamic terms which she achieves for the women. The poem-novella is divided into three parts and subdivided into ninety short "chapters," each consisting of a few verse lines rarely exceeding one page. Direct and indirect Biblical references suffuse the text without detracting the flow of poetic narrative or obscuring its meaning. Only the names of the handmaidens' pagan gods appear as artifactual contributions to the work, as if to jar the reader. For the poetry aficionado, The Marriages ofJacob is an enjoyable way of appreciating a well-crafted poem and of obtaining a woman's imaginative interpretation of Biblical lore. Werner I. Halpern, M.D. Rochester, New York Stories of an Imaginary Childhood, by Melvin Jules Bukiet. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992. 197 pp. $12.95 (p). Melvin Jules Bukiet's Stories of an Imaginary Childhood is a bold attempt to imagine what it would have been like to be a Jewish child on the eve of the...