Susan Silverman

In the Ethiopian Orphanage

About to meet the baby who will become her son, her fears rise: Will I recognize him from his pictures? Am I a racist? Will he know I’m a fraud? And she moves through the holy work of adoption nonetheless.

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In Addis Ababa to adopt a brother for her two daughters, Aliza and Hallel, Rabbi Susan Silverman describes meeting for the first time the boy — birth name Daniel — she and her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, are calling Adar.

Spring 2018

#MeToo in Jewish organizations? A girl encounters her sperm-donor half-siblings. The Skokie teenager who crushed on Jesus. What can you toss after a parent dies? Repairing women’s torn bodies in Rwanda.

Winter 2017-2018

A toddler daughter becomes a Jew. Golda Meir and losing elections. That intergenerational Jewish lesbian couple. Barbra Streisand, a Catholic girl’s rabbi. Holocaust games at Jewish summer camp. Lilith’s 2017 Short Fiction Contest winners.

Fall 2017

Powerhouse sisters rage over women’s suffrage. Defying the rules for widows. Mother, daughter and mental illness. A non-Jewish wife finds her place at the table. One woman’s divine body.

Summer 2017

How to cure our time-crunch epidemic. Forgotten Jewish feminist celebrations. A ritual for breast reduction. Jews and gender in the Jim Crow South. A daughter on her abused mother.

In the Ethiopian Orphanage

About to meet the baby who will become her son, her fears rise: Will I recognize him from his pictures? Am I a racist? Will he know I’m a fraud? And she moves through the holy work of adoption nonetheless.

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