In The Beginning

Advertisement

The fine interview of Susan Weidman Schneider (“A Journalistic Room of One’s Own,” June 22) gets it partly wrong in characterizing Schneider as “founding editor.”

The original notion of a Jewish feminist magazine was tossed around as early as February 1973, at the first National Jewish Feminist Conference in New York’s McAlpin Hotel. Writer and editor Aviva Cantor came up with the idea and contoured the concept with a collective of women that included (among others) Eleanor Lester, Batya Bauman, Barbara Gingold and Elie Faust-Leon. 

The actual launch of the first issue in the fall of 1976 was done by the three founding co-editors: Aviva Cantor, Susan Weidman Schneider and Amy Stone. But there is no question that the idea for Lilith came from the heart, brain and soul of Aviva Cantor.

Manhattan
 

is co-editor with Mark Silk of “The Future of Judaism in America” and the author or editor of four previous books and more than 100 articles, reviews, book-chapters and encyclopedia entries on Jewish public affairs, history, and arts and letters. Forthcoming is a book setting a historical and societal context for 100 years of Israeli theater.
Advertisement