{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Short description|American feminist magazine}} {{Infobox magazine| | caption = ''Lilith magazine '', Spring 2008 | title = Lilith | image_file = Lilith magazine cover.jpg | image_size = | company = Lilith Publications | editor = Susan Weidman Schneider | frequency = Quarterly | website = {{URL|http://www.lilith.org/|lilith.org}} | language = English | category = Feminism, Judaism | founded = 1976 | based = New York, NY | country = United States | issn = 0146-2334 }} '''''Lilith''''' is an independent, Jewish-American, feminist non-profit magazine that has been issued quarterly since 1976.
== History == The magazine was founded in 1976 by a small group of women led by Susan Weidman Schneider: "to foster discussion of Jewish women's issues and put them on the agenda of the Jewish community, with a view to giving women—who are more than fifty percent of the world's Jews—greater choice in Jewish life."<ref>Johnson Lewis, Jone. "Lilith Magazine - Jewish Feminist Magazine." About.com. Accessed December 31, 2014. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/periodicals/p/Lilith-Magazine.htm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304201733/http://womenshistory.about.com/od/periodicals/p/Lilith-Magazine.htm |date=March 4, 2016 }}.</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Lilith Magazine |url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lilith-magazine |access-date=2022-07-10 |website=Jewish Women's Archive |language=en}}</ref> Amy Stone served as the magazine's first senior editor. Aviva Cantor Zuckoff served as the acquisitions editor. Those consulted as part of the creation of the magazine included Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi in the United States, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin of ''Ms.'' Magazine.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rHNlZkqY6w4C|title=Women's Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues|last1=Endres|first1=Kathleen L.|last2=Lueck|first2=Therese L.|date=1996|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=9780313286322|language=en}}</ref>
Weidman Schneider and her colleagues founded ''Lilith'' to fill the gap in the feminist movement and feminist press with a publication that focuses on religion and specific experiences of women from minority populations. This aim was explained in the editorial of the magazine's first issue in 1976:<blockquote>As women we are attracted to much of the ideology of the general women's movement; as Jews, we recognize that we have particular concerns not always shared by other groups. How do we reconcile our sense of ourselves as worthy individuals while identifying with a religious and social structure that has limited women's options in the synagogue, the home, and the community at large?<ref>{{Cite web |title=Susan Weidman Schneider |url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneider-susan-weidman |access-date=2022-07-10 |website=Jewish Women's Archive |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>During its early years, ''Lilith'' focused on religious topics and the organizational establishment of the Jewish community. They chronicled the fight to ordain women at the Jewish Theological Seminary and published frequent updates and articles on the topic.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> ''Lilith'' also publishes fiction, poetry and reviews of books, films, theater, and music.
In 2022, the magazine published the short story collection ''Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women'', edited by Susan Weidman Schneider and Yona Zeldis McDonough with a foreword by Anita Diamant.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |date=2022-08-16 |title=Introducing "Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine" |url=https://lilith.org/2022/08/introducing-frankly-feminist-short-stories-by-jewish-women-from-lilith-magazine/ |access-date=2023-09-24 |website=Lilith Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-10-21 |title=Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine |url=https://brandeisuniversitypress.com/title/frankly-feminist-short-stories-by-jewish-women-from-lilith-magazine/ |access-date=2023-09-24 |website=Brandeis University Press |language=en-US}}</ref>
''Lilith'' magazine received five Rockower Awards in 2022.<ref>{{Cite web |title=AJPA - 2022 Competition |url=https://www.ajpa.org/page-18159 |access-date=2023-09-23 |website=www.ajpa.org}}</ref>
== Name == The publication is named after Lilith, a character said to be Adam's first wife. Though not mentioned in the Bible, the medieval Alphabet of Sirach claims that she was banished from Eden after refusing to be submissive to Adam.<ref>Lerner, Anne Lapidus. "Lilith Magazine." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on December 31, 2014)</ref> Lilith has been interpreted by modern feminists as a symbol of independence and social activism geared towards women's rights.
== Staff and Contributors == Susan Weidman Schneider has been ''Lilith''′s editor-in-chief since 1976.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneider-susan-weidman|title=Susan Weidman Schneider}}</ref> She is the author of the books ''Jewish and Female'' and ''Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences between Christians and Jews'', and co-author of ''Head and Heart'', about money in the lives of women. Writers, editors and contributors to ''Lilith'' include Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Nessa Rapoport, Blu Greenberg, Allegra Goodman, Myla Goldberg, Rabbi Susan Schnur (senior editor), Naomi Danis (managing editor), Sarah Seltzer (executive editor),<ref name=":2" /> Dara Horn, Jennifer Baumgartner, Marge Piercy, Alicia Ostriker (poetry editor),<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |date=2012-06-30 |title=Mission and Masthead |url=https://lilith.org/about/ |access-date=2023-09-26 |website=Lilith Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref> Sarah Blustain, Leela Corman, Liana Finck, Danya Ruttenberg, Shira Spector, Rachel Kadish, Anat Litwin, Ilana Stanger-Ross, Leslea Newman, Yona Zeldis McDonough (fiction editor), Alice Sparberg Alexiou, Amy Stone, Ilana Kurshan, Francine Klagsbrun, Lori Hope Lefkowitz, Tova Hartman, and more. ''Lilith'' has also published the work of visual artists, including Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Elana Maryles Sztokman, Joan Roth (photographer), Maira Kalman, Roz Chast, and Eva Hesse.
== References == {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[http://www.lilith.org Official website]
{{Women in Judaism}} {{Organized Jewish Life in the United States}}
Category:Political magazines published in the United States Category:Quarterly magazines published in the United States Category:Feminism in New York City Category:Feminist magazines published in the United States Category:Magazines established in 1976 Category:Jewish feminism in the United States Category:Jewish magazines published in New York City Category:1976 establishments in New York City