In this issue: New ways to manage the expectations–and expenses–confronting Jewish mothers in the “lean in” era. After three generations tried to keep it a secret, a family’s Jewishness creeps out. Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin celebrates her Confederate great-grandfather. The kinesthetics of feminist prayer.  And, in this special fiction issue, the haiku as revenge, an angel on the balcony, and how to hate your hair.

Motherhood in the “Lean In” Era

by Gabrielle Birkner

In this report on nannies, nursery schools and national legislation, Birkner forecasts that the traditional Jewish preschool—retrofitted as a childcare center—may solve some of your problems. Then Elizabeth Mandel weighs in on the Jewish costs of Jewish education.

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2013 Fiction Prize Winners

Of an Honorable Antiquity

by Susan Schnur

It was a wonderful surprise when Lilith received a manuscript from the venerable poet laureate Maxine Kumin. “I’d been aware of Kumin’s feminist, and broadly maternal, sensibility, but not her Jewish one,” writes Schnur, “so I called PoBiz Farm to talk.”

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Flesh and Blood

by Penny Wolfson

The author inherited her father’s meat grinder, a reminder, literally, of flesh and blood. Now it sits on its side, an unused object of beauty, in her own kitchen, where she realizes that Jews think about meat more than most people.

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Jewsies, Jewosity & Identity

by Zazi Pope

From Vienna to Appalachia, why did her forebears keep secrets and make such strange choices? The remarkably suppressed identity of her concert-star grandmother, and how Zazi Pope found it out.

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Not Your Zayde’s Shokl

by Stacey Zisook Robinson

A new way a woman can move when she’s moved—the kinesthetics of feminist prayer.

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