Eva Etzioni-Halevy | The Triumph of Deborah

September 6, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. My first guest will be Eva Etzioni-Halevy, and she’s the author of the novel The Triumph of Deborah. The second guest on the show will be John Wareham. He’s the author of The President’s Therapist, which is a fascinating book, and it’ll be fun to talk to him. And then we have Sarah Allen Benton, the author of Understanding the High Functioning Alcoholic: Professional Views and Personal Insights. It’ll be a great show today. And without further ado, I’d like to welcome Eva Etzioni-Halevy onto the show. She’s the author of the Triumph of Deborah. Welcome to the show.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: No, thank you very much. It’s nice to be on your show.

Dr. Kent: So tell me a little about this book, The Triumph of Deborah.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well, it’s a story about one of the most special women in the Bible, the purpose of Deborah. She was like a sort of, like a national leader, chief justice, chief religious leader, or acting one, a very prominent woman. Maybe the most prominent woman in the Old Testament of the Bible. And this is about her and about her relationship with a warrior named Barak. Not Barac Obama, another Barak, and the novel is about, basically about their relationship and some other people who come in as well.

Dr. Kent: Well, and now women in the Bible have been famously under-represented in society, and you’ve written these three books, The Song of Hannah, The Garden of Ruth, and The Triumph of Deborah. Talk about the importance of women in the Bible and of course then in your books.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well as you say, they have been sort of represented as side characters, unjustly, I think, and because they’re very special women. They are strong women and each woman is different from the other. Each woman has a very important goal and has a very complex emotional makeup. And in my novel, in my three novels actually, I try to push the women into the center of the stage, to turn the spotlight on them and to hand them a sort of loudspeaker so that we can hear their words loud and clear across the generations. This is really what my novels are about, apart from being entertaining and very readable and enjoyable novels.

Dr. Kent: Well, now, when we look at The Triumph of Deborah, we’re looking at the front cover, and it’s a beautiful image of a strong woman. Is it a story about her relationships, is it a story about like you said, her sending off the warrior Barak, it’s a war story?

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well it’s a little bit of a war story, but more importantly it’s a love story with a twisting plot, with a lot of suspense in it. It’s based on a very intriguing story in the Bible which really, I could hardly believe it when I saw it written. Let’s cast our minds back about 3,000 years ago to ancient Israel. Israel was in deep trouble because it was threatened with destruction by the Canaanites, and this national leader Deborah, she calls Barak to come to her from a different part of the country, and she says, “You have to go out to war so save our people from this act.” And here’s where the very intriguing part comes in. He says to her, and I quote, it’s in the Bible, “If you come with me, I will go. But if you don’t come with me, I will not go.” So it’s very strange. That set the wheels of my mind turning, and I said to myself, this is 3,000 years ago and the warfare is for man, not for women at that time. And so why did he want her with him in the battlefield? And she goes with him not only to the battlefield, but to his hometown. So why did he want her in his home? What was the true motive, the true reason that he wanted her with him? And yet she was a married woman with children. So then the next question of course was well, what would the husband have to say to that? What would any husband say if his wife went off to distant parts with a handsome young man and left him to do the babysitting? So this is really what passes me off, and this is what the novel is basically about, the relationship that developed while they were away. And when they returned, and some other women come in and also those who have defeated Canaanite’s king, coming as well, and their very complex relationship, love relationship, that develops between all those people.

Dr. Kent: So what started you off in this series wanting to write these books based on the Bible, and then going deeper into these women’s lives?

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well it so happens that at some space in my life, rather late I must say, I started to read the Bible and I was totally fascinated. I found it to be an amazing collection of books, something very different from what I had thought. I found it to be full of the most dramatic stories about, full of he most dramatic stories about people who lived thousands of years ago. And yet they’re so close to us, so similar to us in their hopes and their anxieties and their desires. And I was just really entranced by them, and particularly by the women. I started to identify with the women. I felt as if they were part of me, and I was part of them, and I just felt totally compelled to write about them.

Dr. Kent: Well and your story is also very compelling as a woman, and as a role model. You got a PhD as well as having escaped from Europe many, many years ago. Tell me a little about how you came to writing.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well, by profession I’m really a sociologist, a Professor of Sociology, and now I’m a Professor of Math, just retired, and I’m a, when I had the time to write I started to do something completely different. I really consider myself a Biblical novelist, which is very unusual, and people sometimes think that it’s something very strange and very odd, which people don’t usually do. But I wanted to express myself in a different way, in a completely different area, to write. I’d written before, academic books, which were heavy and difficult to read, and I wanted to write something which is attractive and light reading, enjoyable reading, which people would not have to read for the course work, but would want to read for just for simple enjoyment.

Dr. Kent: Right.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: And this is how I came to this area.

Dr. Kent: Well, now how about coming from a family with two very strong feminists, my sister and my mother, many of their criticisms of the Bible are the sort of anti-woman sentiments that come out of the Bible What kind of, obviously this choosing of characters and lifting them up is extraordinary. What kind of other things have you confronted or run into in the Bible and re-reading it in this time in your life?

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well I once said that the Bible is anti-women. It certainly describes society where women did not have many rights, women lived in a male dominated society, and that was considered natural at the time. Again, taking into account that it was so, so many years ago. But the women, it’s very an interesting paradox. The women of this class is very strong willed. Women who did not just sit around and bemoan their fate and say, “Oh, we don’t have any rights.” But they went out and empowered themselves. They didn’t have any power, they took power into their own hands and they achieved things, they shaped fate to do their bidding, and they were just incredibly strong, and they can, particularly Deborah, I think, and really be a role model, a shining inspiration for modern women.

Dr. Kent: How specifically, would you say?

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: Well she, if you have feminists in your family, you probably know the expression, she broke the glass ceiling.

Dr. Kent: Yes, yes.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: As we call it today. You know, they say there’s a glass ceiling that women cannot break because they are women. And she broke the glass ceiling 3,000 years ago under difficult conditions. So of course not every modern woman wants to become a national leader, but I think what we women today can learn from Deborah is that we’re strong, we can do it, we can, whatever our area, whatever the walk of life in which we want to realize ourselves, we have this thanks to achieve what we want to achieve. She could, if she could do it so many years ago, under such difficult conditions, there’s no reason why we should not be able to do it today. So I think this is what we can learn from, particularly from Deborah, but also from other women in the Bible described in my other novels.

Dr. Kent: Well, so the book is called The Triumph of Deborah, and the other books are The Garden of Ruth and The Song of Hannah. Are you working on another?

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: I’m working on another one, it’s about a lady named Tamar. She’s the daughter of King David, and she suffered the incestuous rape of her brother. But I’m still struggling with this novel, so it’s still far from publication, but I’m certainly working hard on it, and I hope it’ll come out as good, as fascinating, a page turner, like my three written novels.

Dr. Kent: Well, wonderful. It’s been such an honor speaking to you. I’ve been speaking to Eva Etzioni-Halevey, and her book is called The Triumph of Deborah, and…

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: I just want to mention that the books and samples, Deborah and the other books, are available through bookshelves. If they’re not there they can be ordered and online, on Amazon.com and also on Barnes & Noble, particularly Amazon.com has got a very good price for The Triumph of Deborah, so I hope it will (inaudible).

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. And there’s excerpts and more on Eva’s website at evaetzionihalevy.com.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: That’s right.

Dr. Kent: It’s been an honor speaking to you.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy: And a pleasure for me. Thank you very much.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and my next guess guest on the show is John Wareham, and he wrote a book called The President’s Therapist, and it’s a psychological thriller. We are going to be right back to speak to him. Come back for that.

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