c. 2004 Religion News Service

PARIS _ It is dawn in the ancient city-state of Ur, and Sarai has just woken up. She rushes to the courtyard of her family’s sumptuous residence and stares at the blood on her hands.

“She closed her eyes to hold back her tears. She did not need to know that her tunic was stained …”

So begins the novel “Sarah,” the first of a trilogy celebrating women of the Bible by French-Polish writer Marek Halter. Sarai is just 12 years old, a little girl living in what is now modern Iraq, and she is having her period for the first time. Many years later, God will change her Sumerian name Sarai, or “little princess,” to Sarah.

Sarah, the beautiful and barren wife of Abraham, who seemed never to grow old. Who slept with Egypt’s Pharaoh and finally gave birth to Abraham’s son, Isaac, at the ripe age of 80.

Sarah _ who probably knew how to write, Halter believes, and can therefore be credited for passing Abraham’s tale to future generations.

“Because he couldn’t read or write, Abraham’s story, in my opinion, would have disappeared with him,” says the 68-year-old Jewish author, as he stirs his cappuccino at an outdoor Paris cafe one recent weekday morning.

“But he met Sarah, a Sumerian, from another civilization,” he continues. “And when you read the Sumerian texts, you see that it was the women who knew how to write, and who taught writing in schools.”

While weekday commuters hurry past under a chilly autumn sun, Halter munches on a croissant as he mixes anecdotes about his childhood growing up in a Warsaw ghetto with his opinion about why ancient scribes gave the Bible’s women such short shrift.

Made up of easy, richly written reads, Halter’s “feminine Bible” trilogy is an attempt to set the record straight. The English version of his first novel, “Sarah,” was published in the United States by Crown earlier this year.

The second of the trilogy, “Zipporah,” tracing the life and times of the black wife of Moses, will appear in hardback next year. And the third, “Lilah,” is due out in the United States in 2006.

All three are strong women living in remarkable times.

All three are tales easily translatable to the 21st century, Halter says: Sarah, who lets Abraham conceive a child with another woman; Zipporah, who personifies age-old questions about race relations and freedom; Lilah, sister of Ezra, whom Halter describes as the first feminist.

“I chose the texts that corresponded best to the problems men and women face today,” Halter says. “I’m persuaded, for example, that if Moses hadn’t had a black wife, he wouldn’t have written as he did. People only know about the Ten Commandments. But Moses actually wrote 613. And underlying all of them is this constant reminder of respecting others.”

Halter is hardly the first author to re-examine the Bible from a feminine angle. A rash of new books, from scholarly works to the best-selling thriller “The Da Vinci Code,” attests that biblical women are finally finding a voice.

A burly man with a bushy beard and mustache, Halter is a seasoned master of biblical fiction. His novels include the best-selling “The Book of Abraham” as well as “The Messiah” and “The Mysteries of Jerusalem.” He is currently working on a novel about the Virgin Mary, whom Halter describes as “the first Jewish mother.”

He admits writing from a woman’s point of view is not always easy.

“When I had to describe Sarah’s period, I went to interview daughters of my friends,” he recalls. “At first, they were a bit embarrassed. But I needed to understand their feelings.”

Halter has his own theories about why women play such a small role in the Scriptures. Once considered equal to men, women living in the biblical Middle East were eventually relegated to subservient roles as housewives and mothers.

Their status also influenced the Bible’s first editors, Halter reasons. “Women had not only lost their influence in society in those times, but they had a stigma as temptress,” he says. “So it’s not impossible early editors even destroyed texts that said the contrary.”

Halter’s trilogy is a mix of historical fact and fiction. He pads out biblical references to Sarah, Zipporah and Lilah with vivid descriptions of their lives and times.

“Thanks to thousands of tablets we’ve discovered, we know exactly how people dressed in that era,” he says. “How they married and gave birth. How society behaved. Even what they ate.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Halter’s own story began in a Warsaw ghetto in 1936. Son of a printer and a Yiddish poetess, he recalls the day his grandfather handed him two books that marked him forever.

The first was a children’s edition of the Bible. The second was the French novel “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas.

“That sealed my destiny,” he says. “I like telling stories, like Dumas. And I like finding the moral in biblical tales.”

In 1941, Halter’s family fled Poland for Russia and Uzbekistan. He arrived in Paris as a teenager shortly after the end of World War II.

Despite his grandfather’s gifts, Halter did not begin writing until the 1970s, after first making a name as a painter and peace activist. In 1967, he founded an international Middle East peace coalition and helped organize the first official meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.

He has known Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for years. Indeed, he claims he first introduced Arafat to his wife, Suha.

“They are old men now,” he says of the two long-battling leaders. “I’m an optimist about peace in the Middle East. But it won’t be made by these people.”

In 1995, Halter released a widely acclaimed documentary, “Tzedek: The Righteous,” tracing the stories of ordinary Europeans who saved Jews from the Holocaust. He helped found the French anti-discrimination group SOS Racism and is currently working with ethnic Arab youths living in France’s gritty housing projects.

Halter’s very visible image _ he also heads two French universities in Russia _ has earned him his share of admirers and skeptics.

While crediting Halter for his popular appeal, French Jewish historian and writer Esther Benbassa dismisses him as an intellectual lightweight.

“He brings nothing new, either to writing or to the (Middle East) peace table,” Benbassa said in a telephone interview. “He has good intentions. He wants to bring Jews and Arabs together. But good intentions aren’t enough to find solutions.”

But French-Arab feminist Fadela Amara describes Halter as a leader in France’s anti-discrimination fight.

“He brings light,” said Amara, who heads Ni Putes Ni Soumises, or Neither Whores nor Submissive, a women’s activist group working in France’s immigrant-heavy slums. Halter, she says, is an active member of the movement.

“With the mounting anti-Semitism in France, it’s particularly important to have people of all confessions who are engaged,” Amara says. “Particularly Jews like Marek Halter who are fighting for peace.”

MO/PH END RNS