Summer 2010

D-I-Y PARENTHOOD
Doing it yourself can mean much more than selecting a sperm donor. These women are creating-and raising-wildly unconventional families.

Julie Greenberg: Confidently Breaking the Norms
by Susan Schnur
How one mother, with a series of female lovers, two rabbinic sperm donors, two adoptions, and one gay parenting partner raises five exceptional kids.

Custom-Designed Motherhood
Susan Shnur talks with Jenifer Firestone, a kind-of-single mother, who, with exceeding clarity, chooses tribal parenting.

Express Male
by Ari Levinson
This sperm donor’s story starts with a phone call and ends with a marriage.

SUMMER FICTION

Acknowledgements
a short story by Gail Labovitz
Lilith’s first-prize fiction winner for 2010.
Down Under
a short story by Lee Kofman
Raised by Jews
a short story by Naomi Seidman

Poetry
Alicia Ostriker picks “The Fifteenth of Av” by Jane Seitel as the winner of this year’s Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize—and tells us why. What’s more, she brings us the poem and the premise for each of the runners-up.

Tiles and Tribulations
by Dorothy Stern
Mah-jongg gave those 1950s Jewish women a room of their own—for as long as the game was in play. Sarah Blustain tells us why Mahj is back!

What’s in that Diary?
by Amy Stone
At the American Jewish Historical Society, Lilith invites three dozen women in white gloves to pry into formerly hidden lives.

Can a Liberal Eat Meat?
by Fran Hawthorne
Food Politics and everyday life choices: Organic? Free-range? Estrogen-laden soy? All the angst of eating, spelled out here.

Voices
What do you call an Orthodox female rabbi? * Sweden’s Jewish feminist novelist * Ezrat Nashim’s troublemakers * Eavesdropping on women rabbinical students * Noa and Mira: the hot Israeli/Palestinian duo on tour in the U.S. * And more…

Reviews
Diane M. Sharon on Lori Lefkovitz’s Jewish Sexual Identities * Faye Moskowitz on Henry Roth * Joyce Zonana on an un-sunny new novel * Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God * those Three Weissmans of Westport * Claudia Carlin on Sarah’s Key * and much more…

Happening
Compiled by Naomi Danis
The Jewish female’s guide to the wide world.

From the Editor
Susan Weidman Schneider reports back from the White House.