I noticed that I got a new review from a reader in New Jersey. She gave Rashi's Daughters five stars but could have done without the "steamy" parts. Other readers have objected to this and I thought I'd tell you why I wrote the wedding night that way. First of all, I don't like historical fiction that closes the door on its characters, so I resolved to follow Joheved no matter what she was doing: eating, praying, using the privy, studying, dealing with menstration, preparing a corpse for burial, and making love. As for the later, Joheved is young woman, newly married and hoping to get pregnant, so naturally, sex is an important part of her life.
Of course, I wrote the book I wanted to read - which is why the Talmud scenes are in there as well (and there's a lot more Talmud than sex; although some of the Talmud texts do discuss sex). In any case, I encourage my readers - those who liked the book, that is - to go on Amazon and write me a review.
Welcome to Maggie's new blog, where I hope to keep my readers up to date on Book Two: Miriam and answer other questions. Don't worry, I'm almost done with the first draft of Miriam, and then the big editing and revising job begins.
So what's with the Happy Birthday Rashi (a couple of days late, but since nobody's celebrated his birthday for a long time, we'll overlook that). According to legends, Rashi's parents couldn't decide on a name for him. Even on the day of his Brit Milah, when his new name was to be announced with the blessing, he was still nameless. Well, it was Shabbat Trumah (each Sabbath is name after the Torah portion read that week) and they were reading the section from Prophets for that Shabbat, which was 1 Kings: Ch 5. They got to line 26, which starts, "God gave Solomon wisdom," and voila, Rashi's father, obviously hoping for a wise son, decided to name him Solomon.
So if Rashi's brit was on Shabbat Trumah, he had to be born 8 days earlier. A quick look at a perpetual Hebrew calendar showed me that in 1040, his birthday must have been February 22. So happy belated birthday, Solomon ben Isaac - wherever you are, I hope you enjoyed it.