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January 13, 2021 Daisy Friedman
Creating a Reflection of Myself
Let’s face it. It’s a challenge being a young woman. Society’s perceptions of us mixed with the perceptions we have of ourselves get jumbled up inside to create a warped, often poor, self-image. Especially in this era of media inundation, our self-image is crafted in large part by the representation of people who look like us on screens. It’s a lot to try to reconcile with. Now, imagine if we never saw someone who looked like us at all. How would we derive our self-image? Would we even have one?
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January 12, 2021 by Alice Sparberg Alexiou
QAnon: An Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory Sweeps the Nation
Editor’s note: After last week’s Capitol riot and attack featured prominent QAnon flags and symbols, and a figure known as the “QAnon Shaman” was arrested for his role in the insurrection, the connection between the QAnon conspiracy theory and violent racist and anti-Semitic far-right movements is firmly in the spotlight.
But what is QAnon? How exactly is it anti-Semitic? And why does it count so many women among its adherents? Read on for a special preview from our forthcoming winter issue:
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January 11, 2021 by Madison Hahamy
Finding My Judaism in the Middle of Nowhere
It seemed like the natural choice in 2020: when a group of friends from college offer you the opportunity to join their quarantine pod for the fall semester, in an Airbnb in the middle of a forest in the Hamptons of Long Island, NY, you say yes. When that offer comes after more than six months of no contact with anyone other than immediate family (love you all), that YES is even more emphatic.
I was so excited by the prospect of something, anything, that would allow me to be reunited with college friends and have a change of scenery that I brushed off the fact that all of them are on the Orthodox spectrum of Jewish observance—and I am very much not.
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January 8, 2021 by Abigail Fisher
Foxes in the Temple of Democracy
When Congress resumed its certification of the electoral votes, I watched senator after senator, Democrat and Republican, use religious language when talking about the violence of the attempted coup earlier that day. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi invoked St. Francis and urged Americans to honor the Feast of Epiphany, which coincidentally fell on that very day, as an opportunity for national healing. Rep. Conor Lamb spoke of “desecration of some of the most sacred ground in the United States.” And many senators referred to the building as a “temple of democracy.”
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January 7, 2021 by Sharrona Pearl
The Maddening Whiplash of This Week, This Year, This Presidency
Was it really just yesterday morning that I was playing the clip of Senator-elect Reverend Warnock on a loop for my kids talking about a historic election as won by him and proud Jew Jon Ossoff.
Tears were in my eyes every time I heard him say, “I think Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Rabbi who said that when he marched with Dr. King he felt like his legs were praying, I think that he and Dr. King are smiling in this moment.” My heart could not have been fuller as Warnock – the first EVER Black Democratic Senator from the south – pledged that “to make them [King and Heschel] proud.” In an ugly election marked by images of Warnock’s skin darkened and Ossoff’s nose exaggerated, I was profoundly moved by Warnock’s homage to their unbroken allegiance “against the forces that seek to divide us,” through those that came before and his commitment to helping it shape the present and future.
We have talked so much about Black-Jewish allyship. How wonderful, how meaningful to see it celebrated and enacted on a national stage. I felt…hope. I felt…pride. I felt – for once – that the conversation I was having with my children about American politics was an easy one that they understood, and cheered. After all, it’s not 2020 anymore.
But if our recent era has anything to tell us, it’s that nothing can ever feel simply good anymore, even with 2020 in the rearview mirror. Backlash is a powerful force.
The day that marked the definitive loss of Republican control of the Senate, was also supposed to be the day that votes were ratified in Congress. Perhaps it couldn’t have gone any other way. Perhaps it could only have ended with domestic white terrorists staging a seditious coup on Capitol Hill, aided and abetted by both the sitting President and numerous Senators and members of Congress. Perhaps the end of this Presidency could only be marked in history by the violence that was fomented and encouraged.
After all, he was telling us so all along. None of this, not a single aspect of it, is surprising. Not to anyone who has been the victim of white supremacy. Not to anyone who has watched it happen.
But despite all the forewarning, : it’s embarrassing, terrifying and shocking that it came to this. That the rioters were seemingly treated with kid gloves after the brutal crackdowns on Black Lives Matter protesters this summer, and earlier on anti–Kavanaugh protesters, and protests for healthcare at the very same Capitol building.
And it’s bloody exhausting.
This past year has been hard enough, in so many ways, for so many people. And it’s not over yet.
January 6, 2021–just yesterday–has been a hell of a year, friends. If someone were scripting it, I’d send it back as being way too packed, way too ironic, way too on the nose. It’s just too much for any one day to handle; the plot needs to be spread out, even just a little. The audience can’t manage quite this much action; no one can
Certainly not us Americans, sitting glued to our twitter feeds as we weep for our country, weep for all those who have died this year, and weep as we realize – again and again and again – that it is far from over. Certainly not us Jews and African-Americans, connecting in solidarity and celebrating the words of Reverend Warnock, hoping to make Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King proud. And praying that we still can.
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January 7, 2021 Arielle Silver-Willner
A Little Backyard Writing School
It’s Friday afternoon and I am in my backyard, setting out plastic cushions six feet apart, disinfecting pencils, and copying my lesson plan onto a dry erase board with multi-colored markers. It’s starting to get cold, but I’m armed with a case of hand warmers and a list of activities that will keep my students moving.
I’m ready for winter.
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January 6, 2021 by Yona Zeldis McDonough
A Q&A with Jennifer Robson, Author of “Our Darkest Night”
It’s 1942, and Antonina, a young Jewish woman, is no longer safe in her native Venice. With help from a benevolent priest, her father finds her shelter with a family of farmers outside the city. Although she knows she should be grateful for the chance to escape, Antonina grieves the separation from her parents and is terrified of accidentally exposing the charade she is forced to perform — assuming the role of the young farmer’s wife. Novelist Jennifer Robson talks to fiction editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about Our Darkest Night (William Morrow, $17.99), her newest novel that is devoted to Antonina’s brave and harrowing story.
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January 6, 2021 by Rachel Fadem
Every Safe Space Has a Door: An Interview with Comedian Judy Gold
Comedian and author Judy Gold has a joke about her son that sometimes makes people mad.
My son Henry years ago was like, ‘I’m getting a tattoo.’
And I’m like, ‘no, you’re not.’
He said, ‘yes, I am.’
I said, ‘no, you’re not.’
And then, and I said, ‘all right, what are you going to get?’
And he said, ‘I think I want to get something that says I’m from New York. I’m thinking of getting our zip code tattooed on my arm.’
And I said, ‘Henry, you’re a Jew. You’re not getting numbers tattooed on your arm.’
“People really laugh because it’s funny,” Gold tells Lilith. “And then some people will be like, ‘I was uncomfortable with that.’”
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December 30, 2020 Lilith Staff
The Pop Culture That Got Lilith’s Staff Through 2020
We at Lilith, like everyone on earth, couldn’t be happier to say goodbye to 2020— but before we go, here are our recommendations for the books, podcasts, and television shows that helped us make it through the year.
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December 23, 2020 by Eleanor J. Bader
Art and Aid: an Interview with Margot Spindelman
When crises hit — whether fire, flood, or global pandemic — righteous people mobilize by bringing food, water, clothing, medical care and emotional support to those in need. These mutual aid networks often do what governments do not: offer concrete help to communities long ignored by public agencies.
Not surprisingly, COVID has led to a surge in such networks, with individuals in every part of the country phoning isolated seniors, feeding the hungry, tutoring kids and helping society’s most vulnerable populations with everyday chores.
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