FRANKLY FEMINIST: Short Stories by Jewish Women from LILITH Magazine Edited by Susan Weidman Schneider and Yona Zeldis McDonough

 

Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine (BrandeisUniversityPress) edited by Susan Weidman Schneider and Yona Zeldis McDonough is the the first-ever anthology from Lilith magazine. Frankly Feminist is an unique amalgam of fine writing and activism that comes right out of Jewish women’s lives today: transgressive loves, deepening connections, political turmoil, abortion, fear of loss, struggles with fertility, with body and soul, with finding community, with decoding family life. 

These fictions offer variegated cultures, contexts and points of view: Persian Jews; a Biblical matriarch; an Ethiopian mother in modern Israel; suburban American teens; Eastern European academics; a sexual questioner; a Jew by choice; a new immigrant escaping her Lower East Side sweatshop; a Black Jewish marcher for justice; a toddler’s mother hiding out in Vichy France; and more.

Some of these 44 authors are bestsellers; others are emerging talents with ages ranging from their 20s to their 80s. The characters they create reveal themselves by choices of pastimes and partners; by their causes and their passions, by what they say and what they signal. And the voices in Frankly Feminist have plenty to say about how we live now. They are neither meek nor decorous. They speak with anger and humor, tenderness and rue, self-recrimination and howls of victory. 

WE GOT THE OPPORTUNITY TO ASK THE EDITORS SOME QUESTIONS:

Please explain Lilith for those who are unaware?  Their purpose? Goals? Accomplishments?
Publishing continuously since 1976, Lilith magazine is the flagship Jewish women’s periodical. The tagline for the magazine and its lively website and blog pretty much says it all: “independent, Jewish & frankly feminist.” Lilith is known for its cutting-edge reporting, to-the-bone honest first-person essays, explorations of new rituals and celebrations. Lilith has published award-winning fiction and journalism for 45+ years, and the anthology Frankly Feminist is a selection of the magazine’s wide-ranging short stories, from writers wildly different in era and attitude. Lilith’s reported pieces break new ground: first to investigate domestic violence in the Jewish community, to foreground survivors who had been children hidden during the Holocaust, to feature the voices of trans Jews and other LGBTQ folks in the Jewish world, first to explicate the pernicious JAP stereotype, the Jewish stake in abortion rights, and so much more. The “archive” section at Lilith.org—totally accessible to every subscriber—shows via the covers and the contents of each issue over more than 45 years the power feminist voices to effect positive change in the Jewish world and the importance of hearing Jewish voices in the larger women’s movement.

What makes this anthology unique?
This is one of the few collections of short fiction that focuses exclusively on the work of Jewish women; the last one we are aware of was published in 1980. While there are anthologies of short stories by Jewish writers, none amplify the voices of Jewish women, or examine, in such careful and nuanced ways, the enormous breadth and depth of their experiences. 

Why only Jewish female writers?
See above. There was a lack in the literature, and, if not an erasure, then a muting of women’ voices; we wanted to address that by turning up the volume. Frankly Feminist says, "Here’s what Jewish women have been doing, thinking and feeling. Sit up and pay attention!"

While compiling this anthology, which of the stories surprised you?  Made you stop and think?
All of the stories surprised me in one way or another.  "Lot’s Wife," by Michal Lemberger was not surprising in terms of content—I was fully aware of the biblical tale on which it was based. But the freshness of the author’s insight, her ability to conjure the awareness and inner life of a woman from such a radically different time and place, was nothing short of astonishing.  In Rachel Hall’s "La Pousette," we are given a glimpse into the mind of a young Jewish woman during WWII, hiding out from the Nazis in the French countryside; though beautifully written, the perspective is not altogether unique. What’s new and surprising in this story is the Gentile woman’s point of view—her heart and soul exposed on the page, and the dire consequences of the wholly unexpected collision between personal and political. 

Give us an example of a great first sentence from this anthology.
Very hard to choose among these fantastic and endearing and powerful pieces of fiction.

But for me, the first line of the first story in the collection—written almost a century ago by Esther Singer Kreitman, forgotten sister of Isaac Bashevis Singer (he of “Yentl” fame)--is pretty hard to beat. Opening the book’s first section, “Transitions,” Kreitman’s story “The New World,” begins: “From the start, I didn’t like lying in my mother’s belly.”

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Susan Weidman Schneider is Lilith’s editor-in-chief and was one of the magazine’s founding mothers. She is the author of three acclaimed books, among them the groundbreaking Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today. 

Yona McDonough has been Lilith’s fiction editor for over twenty years. She is also an award-winning author of eight novels, most recently Not Our Kind, published under the pen name Kitty Zeldis, and over thirty-five books for children.