The ground was still damp from recent rains when I recognized the ridge where Gitlam and I had rescued the sand kittens. It had been over fifty years since I fled Egypt with my family, leaving me and Gitlam among the very few who remembered crossing the Sea of Reeds.
At first, I thought we’d come to the wrong place. The lake was as I remembered, but there were only a few tents on the low hills around it. Instead, there were various permanent residences up on the hillside terraces, many sharing adjacent walls. Those located closer to the lake had olive trees on their terrace level to facilitate moving the harvest to the oil presses, while those higher up the hill had vineyards. Some structures were made of stone, others from mud and straw bricks like our ancestors had slaved to make in Egypt. Gitlam and I stood still in confusion. Some of these must house our adult children and grandchildren who’d remained in Kadesh Barnea while their fathers battled the Canaanites, but I didn’t recognize anyone.
Suddenly we were surrounded by children yelling, “Grandfather, Grandmother.” Two of the younger girls grabbed my hands and began pulling me up a path leading to where the tribe of Simeon had been located before the Tabernacle moved to Shiloh. Two other boys took hold of Gitlam.
The girls, either sisters or cousins, couldn’t stop bragging. “The adults and big boys worked from dawn to dusk to get enough houses built for everyone.”
“I hope it’s stone rather than brick,” I whispered to Gitlam. Most of our boys had married girls from the nearby Simeonite tribe, which meant their ancestors had likely been slaves making bricks for the Egyptians. If I were them, I’d rather not be constantly confronted by those unpleasant memories.
“There are advantages to both,” he replied, squeezing my hand. “What I hope is that there’s a private place for the two of us to sleep together.”
As we walked closer to the small village, which I could now discern was not merely an area of randomly placed stone dwellings but a rectangle of them surrounding a protected field where vegetables were growing. Olive trees stood on the terraces on both sides. Every so often there were breaks in the outer walls where a person could walk from the outside of the rectangle to its center. One break led into an empty enclosure that, by the large amount of goat pellets on the ground, had to be where the herds spent their nights.
A larger break in the perimeter was the entrance to what Gitlam and I immediately recognized as a wainwright’s workshop. Only the outer walls were stone; the interior partitions were brick. All around were partly built wagon boxes and wheels, as well as shelves holding tools and various lengths of planed wood. We smiled at each other and nodded. Of course, some of Grandfather’s descendants would have carried on his occupation; and the curtained entries on either side likely led to their homes.
Sure enough, Sagar was standing in one of them.
He gave each one of us a long hug below saying, “I’m sorry, but I heard that Grandmother Asenet and Grandfather Maratti died just after the Israelites took Jericho. I expect that the rain and cold were too hard for them at their age.” He sighed before adding, “It was quite an honor that Joshua allowed them to be buried at Hebron in the Cave of Machpelah. I would have liked to attend.”
I took Gitlam’s hand as tears filled my eyes. I felt almost relieved that they had died within a short time of each other. But it must have been a heavy blow for Sagar and those other descendants who hadn’t being able to say goodbye to them, especially to my mother.
“Would you like to tour the village now?” Sagar asked. “Or would you prefer to get settled first?”
Gitlam’s chin quivered as he tried to hide his grief. Maratti had been like a father to him. “I think we’d like to get settled first,” he said, more to me than to Sagar. “We can visit the village later.”
Sagar sighed with relief when I nodded. Then he motioned us to follow him.
In front of us was the house’s main room, which was divided by two rows of stone pillars that supported a second floor. “It looks like these places are built from both stone and brick,” Gitlam whispered to me.
I inspected the fabric hanging in the doorway. “With doorways covered with what remains of our tents,” I pointed out.
One long room formed by the pillars was paved with stones, with an empty manger standing in the middle. The area apparently served as stables for oxen that were now out in the fields. At one end there was storage for ceramic jars of beer and large amphora of olive oil; above those were shelves of empty pottery, some beautifully decorated. I wondered which of my many daughters and granddaughters were responsible for the lovely designs.
The main room, which was open to the sky, seemed to have many uses, most performed by women. Certainly, it was an area for food preparation, as it contained tools and cooking equipment including sets of grinding stones, plus the hearth, oven, and cistern. At the rear of the main room were two storage rooms, one containing tall jars of water and the other holding dishes, bowls and cooking pots.
On the other side of the main room, opposite the stables, were two smaller windowless rooms, windowless because they shared a wall with the house adjacent to it. Both were storage rooms, one for foodstuffs, especially grains, and as if to demonstrate this, when I looked into the grain room a sand cat ran out, a large mouse clenched between its teeth. The other room held a variety of sleeping mats and bedding, some of which appeared to have been used recently. It would have been stifling in the summer, but warm and cozy when the weather was cold. It occurred to me that this room might be where impure women sequestered themselves following childbirth or when they had their menses. In my recollection, the majority of women in a household usually had their menses at the same time, in which case this room would get pleasantly crowded.
The back room and the two side rooms on the main floor had roofs reached by ladders. This was where the family slept on all but the coldest nights. The back room, which housed looms, weaving materials, and a large bed, was roofed as well, providing shade for the weavers and space under their watchful eyes for children to nap and play. There would also be privacy for couples who wanted it. Gitlam and I eyed the ladders with apprehension and shook our heads. We would be spending our nights on the ground floor.
There was a roof over the second floor rooms at the back of the house as well, but this area seemed to be used for drying washed clothes and grain stalks. The view of the lake and its oasis was impressive, as was the water channel that descended from further up the hill to cisterns in the village’s walled open air, center area. In the middle was a large circular, flat surface on elevated ground that was smooth. clean and hard.
“This is the village’s threshing floor,” Sagar informed us. “All our families here take turns using it, starting in early spring, when barley is harvested. And from what I saw when I was in the fields last week, that should be any time now. Once the barley is done, we’ll have a rest until the wheat harvest after Pesach.”
From Egypt to Jericho
After years of archaeological research and biblical studies, award-winning author Maggie Anton has created a historical novel filled with adventure, warfare, and romance, that is true to both Torah and to history.
The Bible contains many extraordinary stories of a sometimes benevolent, sometimes vengeful deity, who guides the Israelites out of slavery, across the Sea of Reeds and through the wilderness to the Promised Land.
Maggie Anton's The Midwives' Escape: From Egypt to Jericho brings to life this exceptional Biblical journey through vivid descriptions of what daily life was like at this time, epic battlefield scenes and a colorful cast of characters.
An Egyptian mother and daughter, Asenet and Shifra, a midwife and her apprentice, wake up on the morning of the tenth plague to find Asenet's husband and son, both firstborns, dead. Asenet's sister Pua, married to an Israelite, urges Asenet's family to leave Egypt with them, which they reluctantly do, along with Asenet's wainwright father and his two apprentices. Recognizing that the Hebrew god is more powerful than any of the Egyptians' gods, other non-Israelites join the exodus, including Hittite and Nubian palace guards. Once hearing and accepting God's commandments at Mt. Sinai, these two Egyptian midwives join the Israelites on their forty-year journey to The Promised Land where they tend to the wounded, share hardship and adversity, fall in love, and start a new home and a new generation.
With The Midwives' Escape, Anton has written an original and stunning recreation of the trials and tribulations on the road to the Promised Land.
Christian | Women's Fiction Historical [Banot Press, On Sale: March 5, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9780976305088 / eISBN: 9780976305095]
Maggie Anton is an award-winning author of historical fiction, as well as a Talmud scholar with expertise in Jewish women's history. She was born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, California, where she still resides. In 1992 she joined a women's Talmud class taught by Rachel Adler. There, to her surprise, she fell in love with Talmud, a passion that has continued unabated for thirty years. Intrigued that the great Jewish scholar Rashi had no sons, only daughters, she started researching the family and their community.
Thus the award-winning trilogy, Rashi's Daughters, was born, to be followed by National Jewish Book Award finalist, Rav Hisda's Daughter: Apprentice and its sequel, Enchantress. Her latest work is The Choice: A Novel of Love, Faith and the Talmud, a wholly transformative novel that takes characters inspired by Chaim Potok and ages them into young adults in 1950s Brooklyn. Since 2005, Anton has lectured about the research behind her books at hundreds of venues throughout North America, Europe and Israel. She still studies women and Talmud, albeit mostly online. You can also friend her on Facebook and Goodreads.
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