Spring 2020

Jewish Hair Now

Hair and all its complications • Raising feminist boys today • Tipping, service work and our changing world • A hot new Yiddish star • Taking off my wedding ring

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In This Issue

Lilith Feature

Jewish Hair Now.

Twenty-five years after Lilith’s original, classic, sold-out hair issue, new writers untangle the knots that connect us to our mothers, our bodies, our backgrounds and our politics. 

Lilith Feature

Raising Feminist Boys

How we can all help 

Lilith Feature

Tipping. A Feminist Issue.

Emotional Labor, Tipping, and Feminists’ Role in Promoting a Fairer Workplace Culture 

More Articles

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The Social Context of Hair: Hairstyles, Race and Status

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HAIR IS PERSONAL. Hair is political. To make sense of the social context of hair for Jews of color today, SARAH SELTZER talked to CHAVA SHERVINGTON, a longtime diversity activist in the Jewish community, as well as an attorney and mom, who by her own admission has become “obsessed with hair issues” as she helps her kids navigate the complex politics of their Black hair.

Taking Off My Wedding Ring

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I wanted to take off my ring, but I needed a ritual to acknowledge that Divinity was present, even at this moment of loss.

Head Covering: The Evolving Choices

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My mother’s hair is colorful ropes of cotton, carefully and methodically wrapped in a rainbow of layers growing in width as the ends disappear into hidden corners below her hairline.... Read more »

When Your Family Is Someone’s Boss

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Rabbi Mary L. Zamore on being an ethical family employer.

Poetry: Burnt Offering

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Poetry by Alisha Kaplan

Fiction: Driving Lesson

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And yet, as she looked around at the paintings in their gilded frames, the polished silver candlesticks, the maid scurrying into the room with a china bowl filled with sugar cubes, she thought she might go through with it anyway. She was a milliner, after all. She had the taste for beautiful things. The possibilities tantalized her.

Making Yiddish Hip, Heymish & Hot

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Channeling her own past, the remarkable diva Eleanor Reissa is singing, directing, writing and performing Yiddish for 21st-century audiences.

A Sample Gender Email

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A sample email to schools and camps

Fiction: Paved With Gold

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So they leave, two more huddled masses sailing from old world to new. The newlyweds carry their tightly bundled life on board: Candlesticks, prayer shawl, brown crusted bread, hand-stitched lace, a family ring tightly sewn into the band of her thick wool skirt.

I’m Eleven and I’ve Lost My Hair

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For the last five years I have worn my hair long, thick and wavy, half-way down my back. I put it in ponytails, or I wear it down, or I... Read more »

Waxing Nostalgic

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In 2014, my friend Tess and I went to see a comedy called “The Other Woman,” starring Leslie Mann and Cameron Diaz. Its jokes were dumb and obvious, and although... Read more »

My Mother’s Unshaved Legs

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There’s an age at which you start noticing the things about your parents that are embarrassing. The fact that your dad will say something and your mom will then burst... Read more »

At the Beauty Parlor

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I arrive on time for my 10 AM cut-and-color, but my new hairdresser isn’t there. It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m newly unwed and I want to party, but I look... Read more »

Combing My Mother’s Hair

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An erotic/sensual memory trip through crackles and changing colors of her hair. Heavy frizzy… foamy blonde… long wavy auburn… short Mamie Eisenhower bangs… little girl barrettes…. Still defiantly long and... Read more »

The Books that Taught Me to Love My Body Hair

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When I begged my mother to teach me to shave my legs, I was nine years old. “Your body hair is normal,” she said, “And it’s not healthy to worry... Read more »

Hair-Pulling

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Before my hair was patchy and thinned out from years of trichotillomania, the body-focused repetitive behavior of hair-pulling, I took unabashed pride in the fact that I was blessed with... Read more »

The Weight of Shiva

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Sitting shiva for my father was hard. Our house was filled with people from morning until night, and I was sad. I wore the same clothing every day, with the... Read more »

Hair as a Jewish Art Form: A Parasha Haircut Project

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It was late October. I had been going to a new barber recently. I had seen Billy’s (@Odabu) incredible line work on Instagram and was ready to start doing bolder... Read more »

Fiction: Anniversary

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The longer they sat without stirring, the more concrete and real the other became. As the evening progressed it became a conversation in which they spoke in their own impenetrable, unutterable language, which only they could perceive.

Big-Mouth Bar Mitzvah

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prepping for bar mitzvah with a raunchy Netflix show

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Since 1976, Lilith magazine charts Jewish women’s lives with exuberance, rigor, affection, subversion and style.