LILITH

LILITH, non-profit independent U.S. Jewish feminist quarterly directed at a popular female audience. Founded in 1976 by a group of women led by Susan Weidman Schneider, Lilith: The Independent Jewish Women's Magazine has been concerned with fostering discussion of Jewish women's issues and with putting them on the agenda of the Jewish community. The magazine, to quote its editors, "charts Jewish women's lives with exuberance, rigor, affection, subversion and style." The magazine features award-winning investigative reports, new rituals and celebrations, contemporary and historical personal narratives, entertainment reviews, fiction and poetry, and art and photography. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A.L. Lerner, "Lilith," in: P.E. Hyman and D.D. Moore (eds.), Jewish Women in America, vol. 1 (1997), 854–56. LILLE LILLE, city in the département of the Nord, N. France. The Jewish community of Lille was formed in the 19th century. Beginning in 1872, Lille became the seat of a chief rabbinate. Its first chief rabbi was Benjamin Lippmann, formerly chief rabbi at Colmar, who had refused to remain in Alsace after it was annexed by Germany. According to the census of the Jewish population in occupied France carried out at the beginning of 1942, there were 1,259 Jews then living in Lille, only 247 of whom were born there. The Commissariat Générale aux Questions Juives (CGQJ) maintained an office in Lille. In reprisal for an underground raid the Germans executed five Jews in Lille in March–April 1942. Of the 461 French and foreign-born Jews who were deported from the region of the Nord, only 125 returned. Among those deported was Léon Berman, who was rabbi of Lille from 1936 to 1939 and who published a work titled Histoire des Juifs de France. He was arrested along with his wife and son in October 1943, interned at the camp of Drancy, and eventually transported to a death camp. In 1987 there were 2,800 Jews in Lille, which was the seat of the regional consistory. The Lille community maintained a number of institutions, including a synagogue erected in 1874, a number of small prayer halls, youth groups, a kosher butcher, and a community center. It also published a community bulletin. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer 1939–1945 (1966), index; R. Berg, Guide juif de France (1971), 240–41. (David Weinberg (2nd ed.)