The Lilith Blog

January 24, 2019 by Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin

5 Classic Novels for Jewish Feminists

The distinction between female and feminist stories seems to blur sometimes. “Strong female leads,” while catchy, aren’t as important as complex, well-developed protagonists.

For your reading pleasure (and edification), I’ve selected fiction written by women of different feminist eras, all of whom set out to depict women in historical moments ranging from Biblical to 70’s suburbia. Their visions of womanhood are honest and thoughtful, and I bet that even the ones you don’t like at first will prompt fierce thought and discussion. Don’t see your favorite books here? Tell us what they are in the comment section!

The Lilith Blog

June 28, 2017 by Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin

Memorials versus Modern Jewish Life in Poland

In May I visited Treblinka with a small group of Global Leadership fellows. We arrived at the extermination camp in the evening, the only people there, to silence and swarming mosquitos. 

Treblinka was a gravel mine before the Nazis took it over in 1940. The pits and mounds of the tunnels are still visible, though now covered by grass. As are the train tracks that transported the gravel away, and then the humans towards. The vast field of grass is ringed with trees and interrupted every so often by enormous, right-angle stones, nearly as tall as a person. They’re jagged and imposing, seemingly placed at random along the path. 

Then all at once you turn a corner, the only corner past the trees, and the full scale of the memorial comes into view: 17,000 more stones, standing in clusters, with an eight-meter high monument of flat grey stone at the center. Carved across the top are terrified faces, eyes open, surrounded by other forms left featureless. Above them two hands reach upwards to the sky; a final impression of being buried alive.

In the summer of 2015 I worked full time at a Holocaust Education Centre. I listened to and summarized over 120 hours of recorded witness testimony, gathered from survivors living in Canada. It was my job to find each story’s unique qualities and identify them for possible exhibitions. Polish testimonies were the most horrifying, with the most time dedicated to the camps. I would avoid transcribing them for weeks. It would take me over a year to write about the experience for Lilith’s Spring 2017 issue.