Guest post written by Daughter of a Promise author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg
Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg is an award-winning author and essayist who co-chairs the board of directors of the Boston Book Festival and serves on the Executive Committee of GrubStreet, one of our nation’s preeminent creative writing centers located in Boston’s Seaport.
Women have been conceiving and grieving on the page since the creation of Eve. One might think thousands of years of human evolution would have resulted in “progress,” but the book of Genesis makes it abundantly clear that relationships between women and men, and parents and children have not changed much. The Jewish matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, navigated desire, infertility, child-rearing, and sibling rivalry as if modeling how not to behave as a mother.
Welcome to the study of the Torah, where one zeroes in on biblical characters’ imperfections to gain insight into how to live better. My study of the Torah began twenty years ago in preparation for my conversion to Judaism. I have continued as part of a study group at Temple Israel in Brookline led by Senior Rabbi Elaine Zecher which delights in creating midrash, that is imagining how to fill in what appear to us to be gaps in the text.
This approach attracted me right away because biblical women had always read as flat on the page. Treated as minor characters, one-dimensional, often misunderstood, and prone to tropes. For example, a common interpretation is that Sarah is “jealous,” and Rebekah is “conniving and manipulative.” However, when viewed from a different perspective, Sarah and Rebecka become mothers with keen intuition, and a knowing about how things are supposed to play out. Would it be too much to infer they could not only bear children but could also be GOD’s agents on earth?
In addition to shifting away from a patriarchal paradigm, the invitation to midrash inspired me to become a novelist. My debut, EDEN, is a contemporary reflection of paradise, set in a Rhode Island summer community; in THE NINE, the story of Hannah is retold as a boarding school scandal; and most recently DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE (She Writes Press, April 2, 2024) retells the tale of David and Bathsheba as an office place romance that blossoms under cover of COVID. It’s a tale that’s been remade throughout history, even famously dramatized in a 1951 film starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. However, I had never found a version told from Bathsheba’s point of view.
Rabbis have debated for centuries as to whether David and Bathsheba’s initial sexual encounter was consensual. The story’s themes of desire, sex, adultery, and power dynamics read as eerily modern, mirroring the #MeToo outings of powerful men. In addition, the couple’s loss of a child and ensuing grief resonated with the despair felt during the COVID pandemic. I wanted to write DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE not only to give Bathsheba the starring role but to amplify her voice. The brevity of the story in II Samuel allowed her none.
I wanted to paint a picture of a young woman with desires of her own, attractions that equaled those of her male counterpart. I placed my characters in the spring of 2019, working on Wall Street where Betsabé is a recent college graduate in an investment banking analyst training program and David is the firm’s rainmaker, an MD in Mergers and Acquisitions.
Ultimately, it did not feel far-fetched to turn this ancient tale into a contemporary drama. Last summer’s regressive Supreme Court decision rolling back Roe v Wade was a reminder enough that despite the feminist movement women have come pitifully far when it comes to our status within the patriarchal system. We still battle for basic medical rights and autonomy over our bodies. In addition, capitalism ties our economic welfare to a large degree, to men.
There are other reasons Bathsheba, who bathed on the roof and was summoned by King David, reminded me of a modern woman. Not only did she exist in a society where her survival and that of her offspring depended on a father and a husband, there was the fact of her body. Women have always carried the burden of their bodies. Bathsheba’s body attracted a man; it felt pleasure as well as gave pleasure. Her body, and later, her womb would cause a great controversy. Like Eve and millions of women since, she bore and raised children, however, what I found most timeless about Bathsheba was, that despite everything, she mastered her circumstances, collecting wisdom along the way, a knowing that women universally understand as our greatest power of all.
