Lilith Magazine

Distortion of “Lady Lilith,” Dante Gabriel Rossetti, original image from Wikimedia.org. Of all the figures in Jewish mythology, Lilith is perhaps the most polarizing. Demoness, sex goddess, sexual predator, dark archetype of femininity, devourer of newborn flesh, terror in the night, feminist icon. How do we navigate a spiritual terrain so inconsistent? What if we believe more than one narrative? Can she be both liberator and perpetrator?

1959 Sisters, oil on board, 12 x 13.5 All I knew about the art world I absorbed because my aunt’s idea of babysitting was taking us to a museum and teaching us to recognize a Matisse or Picasso. Auntie Anna—the artist Anna Walinska—came to my fifth-grade class to teach everyone how to make collages, and she saved a folder of thank-you letters the teacher required us to write.

Tirtzah Bassel, Scapegoat, 30″ x 40″, oil on panel, 2026. Photograph by Barry Rosenthal, courtesy of the artist and SLAG&RX, New York. In Tirtzah Bassel’s vibrant and challenging exhibition, I Put A Spell, the viewer is immediately confronted with the question: Can the power of witchcraft—rooted in both ancient wisdom and intuition—serve as a potent metaphor for reclaiming women’s agency in art and beyond?

I whisper in my father’s ear, even though he is asleep, even though he is very deaf. I don’t really want him to hear. “You’re not going to die in the parking lot, right?” He opens one eye and looks at me. His eyes are still startlingly blue. There is war. There are sirens and missiles. We are in the parking lot of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Courtesy of the author. Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois coined the term “double consciousness,” the constant awareness of how one is perceived through the gaze of a dominant society while maintaining one’s sense of self. I know this awareness intimately; it is something I live every day. I am a Black Jewish single mother by choice. I move through public spaces aware that some people around me would prefer my absence to my presence, my erasure to my voice.

In my Brooklyn childhood home, we had a book closet. It was filled with all the Book of the Month Club selections that my dad ordered and read into the wee hours of the morning. My discovery of that closet set the stage for my life as a Jew, a feminist, and an English professor. Ironically, it also set the stage for heartbreaking battles with my dad over my choice of career. In that closet, I encountered Chaim Potok’s The Chosen.

I’ve been a Lilith intern for one week and I’ve spent much of my time reformatting each beautiful, acutely perceptive Liana piece available at Lilith Online. Mostly, though, I’ve just been quietly giggling at Liana’s hyper-specific narrations of love, loss, and awkward social situations, thinking to myself: Should I get back into drawing? And also, how did she write things 10 years ago that feel so relevant to a college girl living in 2026?

Photo of Gal Beckerman by Beowulf Sheehan Earlier this spring, Lilith Editor in Chief Anna Solomon sat down with Gal Beckerman to discuss his new book How to Be a Dissident, different paths to resistance to authoritarianism around us, unexpected and expected Jewish heroines, and how this all might be applicable to Jews right now. Anna Solomon: I’m excited to have a chance to talk with you about How to Be a Dissident.

ROSE LIPSZYC and her aunt, Róza Finkielsztajn, two Polish Jews from Lublin, survived the Holocaust by disguising their identities. In 1942 they were given false papers identifying them as Polish Catholic sisters. They spent much of the war as forced labourers in Nazi Germany.

FOR THE FIRST time in fifty years, a new Lilith’ s new editor in chief and CEO, has come onboard this season. Reader, please join me and Lilith’ s Board of Directors, staff, supporters, and fans in welcoming this talented writer and editor. I’m thrilled to tell you that Anna will help bring Lilith into a wonderful new era. For fifty years, in this space at the front of each issue, I’ve shared my thoughts and aspirations for our work at Lilith.