Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Inspired by Lilith

POETRY: Lilith Remains A Powerful Inspiration For Jewish Feminists (Julie R. Enszer, The Forward).
So I listened and listened. Lilith and the one hundred demons she births every night filled my mind and my notebook one summer with poems. I wrote the poems in the haze of early morning insomnia then revised them and shaped the book in conversation with other Jewish poets and scholars thinking about Lilith. Plaskow’s work was crucial in my thinking and reading. So was the work of Marge Piercy and her poetic midrash. The collection, “Which Lilith?: Feminist Writers Re-Create the World’s First Woman,” edited by Enid Dame, Lilly Rivlin, and Henny Wenkart, was an invaluable compendium for me of thinking about Lilith.
For the many past PaleoJudaica posts on Lilith, see here and links.