Inhuman But Still Humane
reviews
Growing Up Golem: How I Survived My Mother, Brooklyn and Some Really Bad Dates (Magnus Books) joins the collection of memoirs about difficult childhoods, a genre that is becoming at... Read more »
Winter 2013-2014
The politics of paradox—finding Jewish meaning in unexpected places: a white, middle-class mom turned civil rights pioneer, a bacon sandwich, and a dirndl dress.
Table of contents Get the issueIn This Issue
Lilith Feature
The Politics of ParadoxMore Articles
Sort by: Features | From the Editor | Voices | Reviews | Happening | All
The Idioms of Jewish Dress: Buttons, Wigs & Gartels
feature
In the 17th century, European authorities initiated the slow repeal of mandatory Jewish dress codes. Vienna annulled its regulations in 1624, followed by Mannheim (1691), Austria (1781), Rome (1798), Prussia... Read more »
Even in Dreams, She Leaves Me Every Time
feature
I thought I’d found a clever way around this ending, and yet we’re barreling toward the moment that always leaves me smeared and choking on my pillow.
Wednesdays in Mississippi
feature
Polly Cowan worked to bring interracial teams of glove- and hat-wearing middle-class Northern women to Mississippi every Wednesday during Freedom Summer. Polly’s daughter figures out what drove her mother’s work.
How Not to Trust
feature
A resilient girl foils assault, thanks to the awkward lessons learned in her own unreliable family.
Four Photographs of Rukhl
feature
The author would never have been born if the woman in these pictures had survived. Read Isaacs’s homage to her father’s first wife.
BLT Judaism
feature
Bacon? One woman creates her own Jewish tradition out of the most untraditional food of all.
Mrs. Akiva Speaks
feature
The life of Rabbi Akiva’s wife, told in her own words, topped the fiction charts in Israel. Find out why.
The Woman Who Brought Smut Up from the Gutter
feature
Pioneering anti-obscenity lawyer Harriet Pilpel (Columbia Law ’36) understood
that both birth control and Ulysses were banned for offending “gentlemen of the upper middle class.”
My Grandfather Changes His Last Name
feature
At the Grand Canyon Red Rock Motel he signs the register. The shiny Buick out front my grandmother holding the picnic basket boiled chicken, she glances at the paper, the... Read more »
Chet
feature
Not the aspirate in achoo, transliterated CH like a faux ami tricks the American eye. Worn fingernail-sized for luck where a neighbor dangles the cross, this letter coughs up the... Read more »
Always a Desert
feature
Wherever I go, it’s always a desert. I’m always thirsty. I don’t know if I have enough in my hump. It’s satiation that I long for. It’s the possibility to... Read more »
