Featured Article
Beauty Parlor Seder
Looking back on a childhood of poverty.
Classic Lilith
Big Horn Passover
Classic Lilith
The Empty Seder Plate
Classic Lilith
Ode to the Passover Egg
The Latest
Lilith Online
Talking to KC Wagner About Ending Harassment at WorkThe courage of survivors inspires me. So many people who step forward do not see justice in their cases, or in their lives, but they see themselves as part of a justice continuum.
Lilith Online
Honoring Queen Esther’s Secret SelfThis year, with some unlikely help from Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie, I finally have the words to explain why honoring Queen Esther with the name Hadassah is so important to me.
Lilith Online
Crunching Poppyseeds on PurimThese flaky, gluten-free cookies are eaten for Norouz, the Persian New Year, and by Persian Jews for the holiday of Purim since both holidays often fall close together on the calendar.
Lilith Online
Our Embryos Aren’t Children, But I Wish They WereWe cannot let state or federal legislation determine when life begins, forcing the hegemony of Christian scripture on our wombs or on our dreams.
Lilith Online
Not All Who Wander Are Lost: On S.L. Wisenberg’s EssaysIn the end, the yearning for home, or perhaps more specifically to belong, is a shared human condition.
The best of Lilith, in your in-box. Sign up for our newsletters now.
The Magazine
lilithmagazine
"Deftly she scraped the silver scales and forced
one fish into the other; the soft feet
of the calf she boiled into jelly; she stuffed rice
into the plump hen and bound
its wings and legs; she poured hot fat
over the leg of the lamb. Spices
sizzled and baked as she stirred
the bones bubbling in the pot.
They sat round the silver, the red wine glasses,
and read the story of their deliverance."
"Passover" by Thilde Fox ❤️
"Deftly she scraped the silver scales and forced
one fish into the other; the soft feet
of the calf she boiled into jelly; she stuffed rice
into the plump hen and bound
its wings and legs; she poured hot fat
over the leg of the lamb. Spices
sizzled and baked as she stirred
the bones bubbling in the pot.
They sat round the silver, the red wine glasses,
and read the story of their deliverance."
"Passover" by Thilde Fox ❤️
"The next Passover, a former student of my mother’s—Mom had gone on to teach high school Spanish—now a reporter for the local newspaper, contacted her about a story she was writing on Passover cuisine. She remembered my mother as vaguely exotic—a Cuban Jew with roots in Turkey and Greece. Along with drilling her students in stem changing verbs, my mother also unfurled her personal history in the classroom. Here was a chance for my mother to expand her audience beyond the teenagers she taught."
Read "The Empty Seder Table" by Judy Bolton-Fasman from our spring 2016 issue. Linked in our bio 💥
"The next Passover, a former student of my mother’s—Mom had gone on to teach high school Spanish—now a reporter for the local newspaper, contacted her about a story she was writing on Passover cuisine. She remembered my mother as vaguely exotic—a Cuban Jew with roots in Turkey and Greece. Along with drilling her students in stem changing verbs, my mother also unfurled her personal history in the classroom. Here was a chance for my mother to expand her audience beyond the teenagers she taught."
Read "The Empty Seder Table" by Judy Bolton-Fasman from our spring 2016 issue. Linked in our bio 💥
Are you preparing for your Passover to look different this year?
What Haggadah inserts are you using? Will you have an orange on your Seder plate? An olive? A place setting for hostages?
Tell us in the comments.
Are you preparing for your Passover to look different this year?
What Haggadah inserts are you using? Will you have an orange on your Seder plate? An olive? A place setting for hostages?
Tell us in the comments.
We were having a lot of trouble getting into Passover this year. And then we saw @tirtzahbassel`s new painting, "Red Sea Parting," (23”x22”, gouache on paper, 2024.) Wish Miriam and her drummers could be our doulas, ushering us through this time.
***
@tirtzahbassel writes—Wound/Womb: A friend sent me an illumination from a medieval Haggadah that portrayed the Israelites emerging from the Red Sea through a vulva-shaped opening, and it made me think of the story of Exodus as a story of birthing.
After I gave birth to my son, I remember telling my friend that “giving birth is one thing you can’t think your way through”. Intellectual preparation or rationalization were so vastly inadequate to meet the intensity of this pain. There was no reasoning with it, only a dawning realization that the only way forward was through, that the most you can handle is one contraction at a time. You muster every ounce of psychic and physical power that you can command and count ten breaths because the doula said you can handle anything for ten breaths, and you have no choice but to believe her.
We often see our traumas as wounds, but can we see them as wombs? Could the blinding pain be a contraction that we cannot conceptualize, but can move through breath by breath, knowing it is not a mark of victimhood but an ability to birth new life?
We were having a lot of trouble getting into Passover this year. And then we saw @tirtzahbassel`s new painting, "Red Sea Parting," (23”x22”, gouache on paper, 2024.) Wish Miriam and her drummers could be our doulas, ushering us through this time.
***
@tirtzahbassel writes—Wound/Womb: A friend sent me an illumination from a medieval Haggadah that portrayed the Israelites emerging from the Red Sea through a vulva-shaped opening, and it made me think of the story of Exodus as a story of birthing.
After I gave birth to my son, I remember telling my friend that “giving birth is one thing you can’t think your way through”. Intellectual preparation or rationalization were so vastly inadequate to meet the intensity of this pain. There was no reasoning with it, only a dawning realization that the only way forward was through, that the most you can handle is one contraction at a time. You muster every ounce of psychic and physical power that you can command and count ten breaths because the doula said you can handle anything for ten breaths, and you have no choice but to believe her.
We often see our traumas as wounds, but can we see them as wombs? Could the blinding pain be a contraction that we cannot conceptualize, but can move through breath by breath, knowing it is not a mark of victimhood but an ability to birth new life?
