From the Editor

This issue marks the completion of LILITH’s first year of publication, although the first four quarterly issues took more than a calendar year to produce. This milestone seems an appropriate time to talk about how the magazine was created and how it now operates.

We are a group of Jewish women, mostly in our thirties, comprising a range of politics, lifestyles and backgrounds. Most of us have worked in writing and editing—for magazines, books, newspapers, TV, films. Some of us are single, some are married, one of us has children. We range in our Jewish identification from traditional to secular— with all gradations in between—and have all participated in a variety of Jewish communal activities. We are committed to the creative survival of the Jewish people, and of Israel, and to the equality and advancement of Jewish women and of all womankind.

Our process of working together has evolved over the past year, and during the three-year gestation period that preceded the premiere issue. We make all editorial decisions together, by discussion and compromise and, if necessary, by vote. All of us—with the generous help of friends and student interns—do the clerical work (the “housekeeping”) necessary to keep the magazine going.

Although we trust that the form and the content don’t suggest it, LILITH is published on a shoestring. The bills are paid partly by subscription money. The rest of our income for this year consisted of small foundation grants, some advertising revenue, and tax-deductible gifts.

Neither the editors nor other staffers are on salary, nor are our authors paid—yet— although we are committed in principle to paying for all the time and talent now being contributed.

Our production costs—typesetting, printing, mailing—use up almost the whole of our six-dollar annual subscription price. Other expenses, pared to the bone, include our one-room office, which we moved into last summer after years of working out of each other’s living rooms and bedrooms, and once even out of a walk-in closet!

From a charter subscription list of 1200, we have grown to over 5000 subscribers. And sold 5000 single copies of Issue 3. Bookstores and newsstands across the country are beginning to order LILITH. What we need, of course, are even more subscriptions, the lifeblood of the magazine.

Please help:
• Renew subscriptions early (for two or three years, if possible, to save us the expense of renewal letters and to save you some money also).
• Give gift subscriptions of LILITH.
• Send us the names and addresses (with ZIP) of friends who might not know about the magazine but who should.
• Tell us about anyone with a product or service to sell, and we’ll inform her/him of our low advertising rates.
• Let us know the name and address of any bookstores or newsstands in your area that you’d like to see carry LILITH.

We need your support. If you can make a large or small gift to the magazine (tax-deductible, of course), please help. Your gift will also help us to get matching funds from foundations.

We welcome your suggestions, your participation, your tax-deductible contributions and your continuing support of the only independent magazine speaking out on issues of concern to Jewish women.