Eve was not Adam's first wife. That honor belongs to Lilith, who was created as Adam's equal. When he tried to dominate her, she uttered God's secret name and flew away. Lilith is mentioned in the Talmud, elaborated on in the midrash and in the kabbalah, whispered about in stories, and passed down from mother to daughter. In this anthology, a vivid, provocative, and enlightening sampling of Jewish women's written responses to the Lilith myth are offered. The editors have provided the space for contemporary women to link themselves to a tradition and participate in a sacred activity, thereby infusing energy into Lilith and creating a new tradition.
Enid Dame is a poet, writer, and lecturer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.Lilly Rivlin, a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, is a writer and film-maker specializing in Jewish and international subjects.Henny Wenkart is the editor of the Jewish Women's Literary Annual.
What People are Saying About This
Esther Broner
The editors of this anthology, Dame, Rivlin, and Wenkart, have selected works that are wide-ranging, visionary as well as revisionist, both fierce and lyrical at the same time. Lilith circles above the pages of the volume, flies to the sea, to the desert, and invites us on this wild ride.
Phyllis Chesler
This is an amazing and wondrous work, quite equal to the task of resurrecting Lilith—one of the great female foremother archetypes, a universal vibration, and role model, if you will, one that has been buried, denied, scorned, misread, feared, by women as well as men, to our own detriment. The pieces are original, complex, very creative, poetic, filled with yearning and bravery. An deeply informative. This is a book I didn't know I needed, but now that it's here, I know she has come at the right time and in the right form. Bravo to editors Dame, Rivlin, and Wenkart. No Jewish or Women's Studies program should be without it. A must-read for theologians, ritualists, mental health professionals, Middle East experts, and, of course, for people of good will.
