Fall 2024

Her bitter year, and ours.

Jewish identity and anxiety now • "Write Like a Man" • How to be an Orthodox atheist 

In This Issue

Lilith Feature

Our Cover

The outspoken Rachel Goldberg-Polin has become the emblem for families of the more than 240 seized by Hamas in the attack on Israel October 7, 2023 and taken captive into Gaza.

Lilith Feature

Identity & Anxiety in Our Turbulent Times

Admin

In the year that has passed since October 7, 2023, how many of us have felt our Jewish identity and sense of belonging shift—suddenly, violently, unexpectedly, or maybe gradually and... Read more »

Lilith Feature

“Write Like a Man”

Ronnie A. Grinberg

The New York Intellectuals v. Women’s Liberation.

Lilith Feature

A Hider

Eleanor Reissa

A songbird and performer says that lately, she’s a chicken looking for courage.

More Articles

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From the Blacklist to the Ghost List

feature

Who benefits when scholarly and literary and artistic communities engage in purges?

Ready to Create a New Form of Judaism

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The horror of all of the genocides that happen throughout history doesn’t diminish each one’s individuality.

The Torah of Our Mothers

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Ever connect Torah study with crafting and painting? Meet the rabbi who teaches sacred text via studio art!

Matrilineal Dissent

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A new book aims to complicate the legacy of the mid-century male writers.

Zibby Owens: On Being Jewish Now

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Publisher and podcaster Zibby Owens, 48, told Lilith how she’d been called a “Zionist racist” on the crowdsourced book review site GoodReads. “What was so abstract became personal,” Owens said.... Read more »

Poem: “Complicated”

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"Israel I call out to you./ I ache for you Gaza."

Barbie Garb

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Hand-sewing Barbie’s wardrobe as the tool for surviving her own adolescent angst...and, later, for generational connections.

Fiction: Sisters

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"In the basement of the synagogue, the Schneider sisters discussed the mechanics of a first kiss."

Losing My Religion

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I am an Observant Jew, and an atheist.

Buried Stories Resurface

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In "Songs for the Broken-Hearted," Ayelet Tsabari uses the sweeping scope of a novel to reveal the struggles and stories of Yemenite Jews that have remained too long unknown or undervalued on the margins of Jewish history and storytelling.

The Rooms That Knew

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Coming back to her mom’s after the nights at her dad’s, she “felt like a prisoner of war returning to the homeland.”

Discussion Has Become Complicity.

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I am at a loss as more and more people whom I admire insist that in the face of what they consider a genocide, discussion is complicity.

In Town vs. Up the Hill.

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My experience of living in rural Maine while simultaneously working on an elite college campus disproves many of these stereotypes.

We’re Giving the Guns to People to Shoot Us in the Face.

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Jews are acting like we are the ones who are being hunted when Palestinians have been utterly dehumanized, with Gaza destroyed and 40,000 dead so far.

I’m Not Going to Shut Up.

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I believe that many of my critics didn’t bother to read my essay—it was enough for them to know I was Jewish, that I lived in Israel. Nothing else mattered.

Make Me Afraid, and then Blame it on Me.

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Trust that while I’ve been quiet, I am untangling the knots.

Why Put Our Face on It?

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Antisemitism is dependent on noticing the bad things that are happening in the world, and that Jews are suspected to be the shadowy puppeteers behind them.

We Can Build a World Where Hate Has No Place

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Addressing antisemitism requires us to build these bridges, to find common ground with other marginalized groups who face different forms of hatred and discrimination.

Experiences Tell More than Academic Theory.

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It scares me how politicians use Jewish people as political pawns, yet how all political parties can feel unsafe for Jewish people right now.

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