Fall 2021

The Bellybutton!

Let's revere the bellybutton • Gender, bodies and rituals • Snacks for when women feed women • What it's like being LGBTQ at Jewish Day School • Online dating after divorce

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In This Issue

Lilith Feature

The Bellybutton!

Attachment IS Power. Why the navel—our body’s bull’s-eye—had to be trivialized. Here, seriously, a birth doula watches one becoming two, an artist reembodies the Western canon, three prayers you can actually say. Plus...Toni Morrison’s missing navel, the bellybutton in ancient rites, and how our bellyroots can save the planet.

Lilith Feature

When Women Feed Women

The special dishes that mark feminine gatherings.

Lilith Feature

Abortion on the Line

More Articles

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Thanking the Great Mother’s Body

feature

An All-Purpose Prayer for Victuals

“A Stomach Blind as a Knee”

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Toni Morrison’s Missing Navel

A Draconian Abortion Ban in My Backyard

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As a woman and a native Texan, I am scared. As a future rabbi, I am furious.

The Abortion That Saved Me

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Decades later, at a Jewish Theological Seminary symposium on abortion, a male religious leader self-righteously intoned, “Abortion is never an easy decision.” He’d obviously never been there.

Time to Confront Anti-Sex Theology

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“We are not used to mobilizing against the theology of any other tradition. But this is different.”

Poetry: Allen Street, 1903

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Michaelson’s poem brings to life a notorious locale on New York’s Lower East Side.

The Omphalos of Delphi and Mount Tabor

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If you’re wondering why the Omphalos of Delphi is an “outie,” rather than an “innie,” the accompanying article explains it all...

When Women Paint the Truth

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What if Francisco Goya or Petrus Christus were female?

When One Becomes Two

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We all start off as absolutely nothing. We came into being because of labor, of birth. The degree to which that feels sacred is a shock.

Bellybutton Prayer

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In the post-Zoom world, you can say this prayer in a circle while touching the navel of the person on your right.

Quajado Recipe

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Leek and Potato Casserole

Swipe Right, Like a Prayer: On Online Dating After Divorce

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“How do you keep going on these dates that go nowhere, week after week, without losing your mind?”

Yeshivas, Day Schools, and LGBT Kids

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Our intrepid reporter interviews students and graduates of Jewish schools to find out what progress has been made, and what it’s really like to walk the hallways and sit at desks with a queer identity.

Fiction: Sanctuary

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From the back of the congregation, the old men rush forward, their prayer shawls stream behind them, huge wings.

Three Initiations

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Her encounters with bread, blood and fire changed her relationship with her body.

Ritually Obligated By My Body

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Laying tefillin as a woman helped her unwrap herself from the self-consciousness plaguing so many of us.

How the Navel Was Erased in the Service of the Penis

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A tattoo on our navels should proclaim, like a dreidel, “Nais Gadol Hayah Po!”—“A Great Miracle Happened Here!”

Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish

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What’s not to like about an assertively Jewish film? This excerpt is from Chap. 5 of the author’s Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition, a book dedicated to Klal Yisrael, in all its diversity.

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