Frankly Feminist

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. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and lives in New York City.

Anita Diamant is a writer whose work includes fiction, journalism, essays, and guidebooks to contemporary Jewish life.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, she grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and Denver, Colorado. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in comparative literature and earned a Master’s in American literature from Binghamton University in upstate New York.

In 1975, Anita moved to Boston and contributed to local magazines and newspapers (Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, New England Monthly), reporting and commenting about everything from profiles of prominent people and stories about medical ethics, to first-person essays about everything from politics to popular culture to pet ownership. Her work also appeared in national publications, including McCalls, Ms., Parenting, Real Simple, and The Wall Street Journal.

Her first book, The New Jewish Wedding (1985) explained traditional practice and reported on contemporary practices. Five guidebooks to Jewish life and lifecycle events followed: The New Jewish Baby Book; Living a Jewish Life: Traditions, Customs and Values for Today’s Families; Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends; Saying Kaddish: How To Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead and Mourn as a Jew, and How to Raise a Jewish Child.

Her most recent book is Period. End of Sentence – A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice (2021).

Anita is best-known for The Red Tent, published in 1997. Inspired by a few lines from Genesis, the novel tells the story of an obscure and overlooked character named Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob and Leah. The Red Tent became a word-of-mouth bestseller thanks to reader recommendations, book groups, and support from independent bookstores. In 2001, the Independent Booksellers Alliance named The Red Tent as the year’s “Booksense Best Fiction.” The Red Tent has been published in more than 25 countries, including England, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Spain, and Sweden. In 2014, the book was adapted as a two-part, four-hour miniseries by Lifetime TV.

Anita Diamant is the founding president of Mayyim Hayyim, Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center in Newton Massachusetts – a reinvention of the ancient Jewish tradition of mikveh, ritual immersion in water. Visit Mayyim Hayyim for more information.

Yona Zeldis 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. She was born in Chadera, Israel, holds degrees from Vassar College and Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn.