Lilith Liveth

Lilith Magazine, a new quarterly dedicated to “exploring the world of the Jewish woman” has published its first issue here. The magazine, the only independent Jewish women’s magazine in North America, is named for Adam’s legendary first companion and co-equal, originally “the embodiment of independent womanhood.”

Lilith is a non-profit venture started by a group of Jewish women journalists headquartered at 500 East 63 Street. It is sold by subscription at $6 a year and on selected newsstands. The executive editor is Susan Weidman Schneider, originally from Winnipeg.

Lilith’s goal, its editors state, “is to foster discussion of Jewish women’s issues and put them on the agenda of the Jewish community.” The magazine intends to serve as an “ongoing forum” for exploring Jewish women’s concerns, conflicts, experiences and history, and plans to devote special issues to the Jewish family, the Holocaust, and Israeli women. Among the articles in the 48-page first issue are:

An interview in which Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women, calls upon Jewish women to stop raising money for Jewish organizations which discriminate against them or exclude them from membership and decision-making; an analysis of “The Lilith Question,” discussing how and why the story of Lillith, the first independent woman, was changed to make her demonic; an article by a psychiatric social worker on the toll on lower-class Jewish women and men of the American Jewish drive for success; and a scholarly piece by Blu Greenberg on how halacha can and must be changed so that the Jewish woman is equal in privileges and obligations.