MXMFW 6: Lilith

In this episode, Bridget speaks uninterrupted about midrashic figure Lilith for a truly shocking amount of time. Eventually Theo and Maggie weigh in on whether Lilith is a scary demon who will eat your babies, a girlboss to end all girlbosses,  or something else entirely. If you've ever wondered "was Adam's first wife a lesbian demon?" or "is Theo just thinking about Jennifer's Body every time someone brings up she-demons?" then you're going to want to give this episode a listen.

CW: Discussion of sexual violence/abuse, and miscarriage
Episode Transcript Available Here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tq0Tswoq4sW6vn0OVaCOuSmRMnyDPDCe/view?usp=sharing

Sources Cited:
James Joyce's Ulysses
Isaiah 34:14
"The Coming of Lilith" by Judith Plaskow
The Wikipedia Page for Lilith Fair
Some tik tok one of us sent into the group chat and then fact-checked

Transcript

Theo (singing): In the beginning God made three lesbians who like to talk, and they loved each other, and they loved God, but they have a few questions, and they think you might have a few questions too about religion, gay stuff, and life, so come join me, my ex, and my future wife.

Bridget: Hello, welcome to My Ex and My Future Wife, I’m Bridget. 

Theo: I’m Theo, I’m the ex

Maggie: And I’m Maggie and I’m the future wife

B: So, I apologize for how fucked up my voice is this week, I spend a lot of time speaking to elementary schoolers at high volume, but this week we are gonna be discussing Lilith, ya heard of her? Y’all know Lilith?

T: I have mixed feelings about her maybe

M: I have a lil bit of Lilith knowledge, a lil Lilith if you will

B: Honestly, I don’t feel bad about Lilith, I just think that she’s very interesting, like, there’s a lot there with Lilith

T: I think I feel bad about how some people feel about Lilith, thank you

B: Interesting

M: We’ll get into it

B: Yeah, we’ll get into it. Because we’re discussing Lilith this episode, if anyone is even remotely familiar with Lilith you will know that probably we are going to be touching on some discussion of sexual violence, we are going to be talking about, I’m sure, miscarriage and stillbirth and just babies dying in general. All of those kinds of things, so, trigger warning for all of that. So, Lilith

T: Yes

B: Earlier I was talking to you guys, and I said “Biblical figure Lilith” but Lilith is much more of a Midrashic figure than a Biblical figure. So, let’s back up and tlak about what Midrash is. There’s the canonized Hebrew Bible, kind of, and that’s basically the Tanakh, so that’s basically the Torah, the Nevi’im and Ketuvim.

M: Is that Old Testament?

B: Kind of? Essentially, but the Old Testament for you guys is a little cherry picked, so Christianity has some stories that they left out and some stories that are included in their canonized scripture that we do not include. So, for the most part, but not completely. And then we have the Talmud and the Talmud is all of these Rabbinic legal commentaries on the Tanakh.

T: Legal Commentaries?

B: Yeah cause a lot of the Torah is law

T: Right, okay

B: Like Jewish Law. So Talmud is huge and intricate and gigantic and in a bunch of different languages and also not scripture but really, really important to Jewish culture and Jewish history and Jewish tradition and a lot of our holidays and traditions and things like that come from the Talmud because it’s all of this commentary and interpretation of the Tanakh. There are so, so, so many things about basically what is Jewish Law now that are actually really just coming from the Talmud. Like a lot of Kosher law is straight out of the Talmud. The Talmud is very, very important. And then you have Midrash which is commentary on that commentary. Midrash is a lot of commentary on the Tanakh and the Talmud, lot of commentary on the Talmud, and has also been going on for a really long time and it’s also really important. I would say it’s probably where more story and less specific traditions come from, though don’t quote me on that too much. Midrash is also a little bit broader, like the Talmud is something very specific, and Midrash is very alive, and people are creating Midrash and they used to get assigned Midrash assignments for class. It’s just a lot of poetry and story and interpretation, and it’s a lot of fun, and most of what we consider Lilith’s story today is coming out of Midrash. That’s really important to know, that she’s not really in, you know, anyone’s Hebrew Bible, anyone’s Old Testament barely at all. I guess if we wanna start from the beginning, we’re going all the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia, oh Maggie you know what they’re called, I’m gonna mess this up. There’s Mesopotamia and belief about, like, little She-Demons called “Lilu”.

M: Yeah, they had like several different names

T: They’re called a lot of different stuff, I was watching that tiktok also as well, Lilu’s one of them.

M: Two L’s. Lilu, Lela, Lila-ke, like all

B: Yeah so this is not one She-Demon, this is like a class of She-Demons, and now I feel like I sound like I’m talking about DND, that’s alright.

T: DND’s inspired by a lot of different religions so it’s fine I guess.

B: In Ancient Mesopotamia, which a lot of you know ancient religious texts are very much, there was a lot of cultural exchange and people knew about things from other cultures and a lot of ideas are really similar throughout cultures, and so they knew about these little She-Demons, and a lot of times in the more, in scripture, in the actual Hebrew Bible, and some Talmud, when Lilith is mentioned, it’s like in plural, like they’re maybe talking about a category of She-Demons, and there was always this idea that these She-Demons are haunting the night and praying on women specifically, so that was pretty persistent. And then we start to, over time, all of these She-Demons are kind of being blended into one character, one figure, and then we just have the Demon Lilit, that’s pretty much who we’ve got. And even then, there’s this idea of this demon, Lilith, and she is not, like, later on we see interpretations where she’s like Adam’s first wife, or she had this whole fall from grace story, for a while she’s just a She-Demon, and there’s a lot of different portrayals of her, I know she was associated with having really long hair, she had this association with owls, and then later on, well there’s kind of this, as we see more artistic portrayals of Lilith over time, we’re getting interpretations of her 1.) as a snack and 2.) as part creature part woman. But there was for a while this idea of her as very beautiful and a lot of what I have read about Lilith is that she also was this, for a while, manifestation of this, I don’t know exactly how to phrase it, but like this male rape anxiety that men were afraid that women were going to rape them when they were asleep or vulnerable. This is like a weird thing that’s like happening that comes up a lot in ancient texts. I mean, you have like Lot and Lot’s daughters and Lot’s daughters get him really drunk and take advantage of him, there’s like a lot of times where men are like afraid that women are going to take advantage of them, which I think is really interesting because it kind of plays into this whole idea that the power that women have over men is categorically pretty sexual, and that one of men’s biggest anxieties about women is that women are going to use this sexual power over them.

T: That’s so interesting

B: It’s really fascinating, it’s kind of strange. I think that specific anxiety is really fascinating, and people talk about it sometimes, people don’t talk about it that much, but it’s strange to me because there’s also not a lot of empathy going along with it where men are like “Oh, probably are afraid that we will sexually take advantage of them too”. You know?

T: Yeah that’s not—just the fear that men have

B: I might be making weird commentary by bringing that up, that’s just something that I notice sometimes when I’m looking through old Jewish texts and I’m like, hmm that’s kind of strange, it’s an interesting one

T: Especially since it’s not a narrative we hear at all today

B: Just a lot of time there’s discussion about women’s portrayal as seductresses and things like that

T: It’s kind of like a succubus type deal

B: Exactly, yeah. I think that it’s important, it feels to me important to note that there is this portrayal of women as seductresses in a way that is demonizing women, but it’s also men writing these texts, and that is to a point, coming from some anxiety that they are having, I think it’s a big strange. Anyways, you brought up succubuses 

T: Succubae

B: Succubae? Thank you.

(Laughter)

B: That is one of the vibes of creature that Lilith is described as, so anyways. 

T: Jennifer check Lilith?

M: Succu-vibes

B: Sometimes I’m reading about Lilith in certain situations and I’m like “Oh, I’m picturing Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body”.

(Laughter)

B: Yeah so we have this creature Lilith and Lilith is also this manifestation of this cultural anxiety about miscarriage and stillbirth and there was, you know, a really high infant mortality rate in the ancient world and in the middle ages. Lilith was actually really big in the middle ages, so there were a lot of plaques and charms and amulets that had Lilith’s image on them or some kind of incantation and they were meant to repeal her, so a lot of pregnant women and midwives and people like that would have a lot of Lilith imagery going on because they’re trying to ward her off because basically there was this idea that Lilith wanted to kill and steal babies. Part of where that comes from is there’s—I don’t remember exactly which texts this comes from—but there’s one story where after Lilith leaves the Garden of Eden (and I will explain that story in just one second) and God says “if you don’t go back to the Garden of Eden, 100 of your children will have to die every day” so there’s this association with Lilith and babies dying. It’s complicated because Lilith is at once this figure that’s like infinitely fertile and the mother of all demons, and also sometimes people frame her as sort of like jealous and unable to have her own human children, and that’s why she angrily lashes out and kills everybody’s babies. So, I feel like Lilith can be both this troupe of, you know, the vengeful infertile woman, and also this like weird fertile demon queen. There’s a lot of contradictions that I find in stories about her.

T: It does seem like there’s a lot of that in all Lilith things that I see.

B: Yeah

M: The only Christian like reference to Lilith was just the Old Testament in Isaiah 34, Isiah’s talking about all the…how God will overcome the oppressors of the Jewish people, and God will bring like jackals, and vultures, and he’s gonna ruin their cities, and one of the things that’s gonna run over the oppressor’s cities is Lilith’s, evil she-demon women

B: So that is one that is plural

M: It’s plural, yeah. 

T: Okay interesting.

B: Yeah, because Liliths are this like variety of little scary little demons. So, if you’re familiar with Lilith in any kind of casual way, I would imagine that the story that you probably know is that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, when God created Adam

T: “Wife”

B: Yeah “wife”. When God created Adam, God also created Lilith from the Earth and as like Adam’s equal, basically. So they were, you know, married or whatever and then…I mean the story basically goes like Lilith wanted to be treated equally and she was like “we’re both created from the Earth, so we are equals, you’re not better than me”, and during sex she wanted to be on top and Adam was like “no, you have to be subservient, you have to be underneath me”, and she was like “fuck that”, and basically the way it goes is that she says God’s name, which you just can’t do, God’s name is like extremely forbidden and no one’s allowed to say it. She says God’s name, and then the story diverges into a million little places. So it’s either that she says God’s name and get basically catapulted out of the Garden of Eden, or just is like boom out of there, like thrown out. Or, she says God’s name and then God’s name gives her the power to grow wings and leave. So those are two separate ones (laughter). Cause you see Lilith portrayed often with wings because I think the text is like “she flew out of the garden” and it’s confusing about if she flew out of the garden as an agent or she was like flown out of the garden.

(Laughter)

B: And then she lands, either outside of the Garden of Eden or she lands in the dessert or she lands in the red sea and there’s a bunch of, you know, different ideas about where she ended up. And then there’s also some people or some beliefs, whatever, will say that then she was the snake around the tree that told Eve to get Adam to eat the apple, so there are some portrayals of Lilith as like half woman half snake whispering in Eve’s ear. And then, you have of course my personal favorite Lilith story/interpretation, which is Judith Plaskow’s The Coming of Lilith, fantastic

M: Fantastic (laughs)

B: Where Eve discovers Lilith sort of lurking outside the Garden of Eden and then they strike up a little lesbian “friendship”

T: Mmmmmmmm

B: And are like “wow, the two of us together, that’s better than Adam” you know?

(Laughter)

B: But the idea was that the reason Eve had to be created from Adam’s rib was so that there was a clearer delineation of who was from the Earth and who was subservient and blah blah blah, and Eve is the more ideal wife, you know. Listen to our Genesis episode for our take on Adam and Eve and all that. That’s the most common well-known Lilith story, and that comes from the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It’s the one that a of people are heard—are heard?—that’s the one a lot of people have heard and that’s Midrash, that’s coming from Midrash and that was written in like the 7th century CE. That was written during the Middle Ages, basically, so that is nowhere near scripture, nowhere near any kind of ancient text, but that is the first time that we’re seeing Lilith being portrayed as Adam’s wife, being portrayed as this very individual figure with this really important Biblical role, and that’s new. But Lilith kind of stayed this Demon figure who is, you know, literally her whole thing is she’s responsible for stillbirth and if babies die and blah blah blah. And James Joyce at one point called Lilith like the patron of abortion, which is one of my—okay, as someone who has done a lot of work on reproductive rights and like abortion access, I kind of love that sort of reclamation of this “Lilith is evil because of killing babies” to like you know maybe not. I think it’s kind of fun, I think it’s an interesting interpretation. Also, I don’t think that James Joyce really dug in on that one, I think it was kind of something he said in passing, in Ulysses, it was a brief reference, it wasn’t like “oh here is my a lot of commentary on Lilith”. I think he was probably writing a book and he was like “here’s something catchy, my readers will understand this”. This is something I was thinking about a lot when I was doing a little bit of research on Lilith to make sure that all my mental ducks were in a row, which is just the fact that so much of our ancient texts relied so much on their audience knowing what was going on, and when we go back and re-interpret them, like they would reference Lilith in like Isaiah and in Talmud or whatever, and they were like “well everyone knows what those are, so I don’t have to worry about anyone ever being confused about this”

T: Ever

B: That’s a big problem with Biblical scholarship is that the authors were operating from such an insanely different cultural context that they think you’re just gonna understand stuff, and sometimes things get lost in translation, and sometimes 10,000 years later—okay not 10,000 years—but sometimes thousands of years later, some person is like “You know what? I think that Lilith was Adam’s first wife” and then everyone just sort of latches onto that.

T: It’s like the John Mulaney Emily Dickinson thing

M: I think Emily Dickinson was a lesbian! 

(laughter)

M: Partial Credit!

B: Exactly, exactly like that. So, we have Ben Sira, this like Middle Ages text now saying Lilith was Adam’s first wife and she’s still evil and blah blah blah and all that. And then we fast forward into like the 1900s and suddenly it’s like the 70s and there’s a feminist movement. And everyone’s like, well you know, blah blah blah it’s the 70s, I was raised religious because it’s America in the 70s and a lot of people were raised religious back then. And everyone was like “you know what, we should do more feminist interpretations of Biblical Texts”. I don’t know why I’m clowning on feminist theology right now, I love feminist theology. 

T: Fuck women

B: That’s when we start getting things like people saying “hey, maybe Lilith was kind of cool. Hey, has anyone ever thought of that?”

M: I also want to say, speaking of like cultural context, in the Middle Ages it makes sense that with babies dying all the time that women and midwives were like, there’s gotta be a reason for this, like this sucks ass

B: WE need someone to blame!

M: We need someone to blame! Sorry I was just…

B: That’s a lot of like, would you say, demonology? Is like trying to find someone to blame and you don’t wanna be too mad at God all the time

M: Right

T: I mean, is that not why Satan exisits

M: And other big questions

T: That’s a topic for another time

(laughter)

M: It kinda makes sense that in the Middle Age they were like “Oh there are these She-Devils who like maybe in some traditions are responsible for miscarriages”.

B: It think there is sometimes the idea that Lilith is pals with Satan, that’s like a Christian thing

M: Yeah, she’s like Satan’s wife

T: Yeah, I’ve heard that too, but that’s exclusively Christian because Satan’s not real

B: Okay, but here’s the thing though, so I think—actually I’m going to say “I think” like I didn’t just google it so I could be right—Judith Plaskow who’s a feminist theologian published The Coming of Lilith in 1972, this is one of my favorite pieces of feminist theology, I’ve had to read this a million times for a million different classes, but it’s this really interesting re-interpretation of the Lilith story and also the Genesis story, and it goes like this…

T: Hey there, it’s everyone’s favorite editor Theo, I’m just popping in to say this is where Bridget reads us the entirety of the Coming of Lilith and to be honest I don’t know if we’re allowed to put that in our podcast, so I just wanted to give the context that now the three of us have all heard The Coming of Lilith, okay, back to the episode.

B: Have you heard that before, Theo?

T: I haven’t actually, but I have a lot of thoughts about it (laughs). So, okay…

B: So this is from the 70s, Judith Plaskow came out as a lesbian like 10 years later

(laughter)

T: Mmm okay what a surprise.

B: Okay, yeah, Judith Plaskow came out 12 years after the publication of The Coming of Lilith

T: So, The Coming of Lilith is very a lesbian, it seems. I also thought it was interesting how we’ve talked about this extensively on our Genesis episode, that she was like “Adam’s male and God is male” and like, ehhh I don’t know about all that, you know?

B: I think that was important for this particular story.

T: Well, yeah because it was all about Eve not feeling like she had any people like her.

B: What did you guys think of this portrayal of Lilith?

T: Well it makes me understand why she’s like a little bit misinterpreted as a Girl Boss a lot, so

B: I’m also gonna go out there on a limb and say that Girl Boss interpretations of Lilith are bad, I just think that they’re one interpretation of Lilith, you know? But, yeah, it was like, I think around the 70s when we started having those “Girl Boss” interpretations of Lilith, and then it’s in the 90s we get things like Lilith’s Fair, which is a musical festival that raises money for women who’ve been abused, and the idea is because Adam wanted to force Lilith to be subservient, that Adam was abusive in some way. And I think that interpretations where like Adam and Lilith had a relationship in which Lilith was abused or like a victim of sexual violence, they’re very complex because then you have like Adam the first man, the blueprint for all men, as this violent—sexually violent, abusive figure. I think there’s also, and again this is only if we’re interpreting this specific Ben Sira kind of story, you can interpret what was going on between them if you want to as like a compatibility issue.

(Laughter)

T: Lilith is a top and Adam is a top. 

B: Yeah. But it is really interesting because what I have seen, and Maggie I would love if you could speak on this a little, what I have seen is that in a lot of Christian circles, people are like—people will say “you don’t wanna be a wife like Lilith, you want to be a wife like Eve”. 

M: Yeah, I think like, one—I think there’s two feminist interpretations of Lilith. There’s like Lilith was a girl boss and there’s also like, this was the evilest woman that they could come up with and what does that mean, that she kills babies and goes through the night and harms men, that’s peak feminine evil. You don’t wanna be like Lilith, you don’t wanna be like Lilith not because you shouldn’t murder babies, you shouldn’t sexually assault men, that’s kind of a given. You don’t want to be like Lilith because you don’t wanna assert your own needs and you don’t wanna challenge men or God.  

T: That seems like the clear message to me

B: So, yeah, you’re totally right there’s feminist interpretation of Lilith as Lilith refused to be subservient and like “yes girl, she got out of that fucked up Garden of Eden, like go on your way Demon Queen”. 

(Laughter)

B: Which is a really, I would say, popular interpretation of Lilith, especially if we’re talking about feminist circles in the 70s through the 90s, that was really big. And now, you know, if you. I feel like we all know someone named Lilith now.

T: The Cashier at the Fred Meyer

(Laughter)

B: People love to be named Lilith now because they’re like “ahh yes, who wouldn’t want to be the original woman who said fuck you to ‘The Man’”. So that’s a really, like, interesting one, which is like Lilith as agent especially in the face of most other religious female figures as we discussed don’t have a lot of agency, they do not often have the opportunity or the power to stand up for themselves, so the fact that Lilith said “fuck you” to God and Adam is really, it’s very appealing to make her into a really exciting feminist figure, especially in the sort of two-dimensional second wave feminism perspective of what feminism should be. There’s also something really, really interesting coming out of the fact that a woman who kills children is seen as the most, like, base awful, evil, inhuman kind of woman, which is something that we see when we get—not to bring up True Crime cause y’all know I hate True Crime—but when we get news stories about women who kill their children, they are so heavily sensationalized

M: WOMEN WHO KILL, sorry to interrupt you, but that’s one example

B: Women who kill their children are treated very, very differently than men who kill their own children, and there’s this cultural idea of like, how could a WOMAN do this? Women are meant to be so maternal and the most basic and important part of being a woman is your ability to be a mother to nurture, and so it’s so insane for society—especially a society in the Middle Ages--to think of woman as anti-baby or violent towards babies and children in any way.

T: You have, like, as Maggie said, the two most evil things a woman could do, kill children and assault men.

B: Yeah, assault and say no to men

T: Well, that’s like the original thing that she did, but then the assaulting men is like the fear, the assaulting men and killing children, that’s the evilest woman they could come up with. It just shows you that the opposite of that is submitting to men or being assaulted by men you could even say, and then taking care of and having children. It is interesting.

B: It’s very clear that specific variety of evil woman is coming from the perspective of what does an evil woman look like to a man?

T: What woman would men fear the most?

B: Which is not to say that, I don’t think—I think it’s pretty evil to kill babies

T: Yeah, I don’t think you should assault men and kill babies

M: This is a anti-killing baby podcast

B: This is an anti-assault, anti-killing babies, like pro-abortion…

T: Pro-saying no to men

B: Pro saying not to men

T: Very pro saying no to men 

B: But anti….

M: Killing alive children—

T: Anti-murder and anti-rape

(Laughter)

B: We’re gonna take a strong anti-murder and anti-rape stance on My Ex and My Future Wife.

(Laughter)

B: Oh I guess I also want to say that as a Jew, I knew about Lilith growing up because I have always been fascinated by religious culture and history, so I paid attention and read a lot about a lot of things, and would talk to people all the time. I didn’t learn about Lilith at synagogue as a kid. As a Jew, Jews don’t—in like a religious Jewish context—we aren’t ever talking about her.

T: But she became a very Jewish figure because of obviously because she’s Midrashic, but also blood libel and stuff

B: You wanna talk a little bit about Blood Libel?

M: Say more right now!

B: Does everybody know what blood libel is, I’m gonna assume no.

T: I’d love for you to define it because I am not good with words

B: I can define Blood Libel, off the top of my head, I would say that Blood Libel is this idea that Jews want to kill Christian babies and drink their blood or use their blood to bake food, and a lot of the origin of that was—I think—the Middle Ages, there was all this Christian prejudice against Jews, and specifically surrounding Passover, they would say that to make a proper matza it has to be made with the blood of Christian children, so whenever Jews would celebrate Passover, and eat matza—our traditional Passover food—and just be trying to have a good time, Christians would be like “Oh my God, you’re eating the blood of our children”

T: Oh fuck there’s babies in there!

B: It’s called Blood Libel because it libelest to an entire community, but basically every fairy tale you ever heard growing up is stemming from the stereotype that Jews want to kill and eat Christian babies and drink their blood. Ever heard of Hansel and Gretel?

T: Two little German Children, a witch

B: That’s some blood libel right there

T: Red Riding Hood, the wolf is the Jews

B: Our favorite Disney movie Rapunzel—Tangled

T: Rapunzel oh my Lord, that gets really into it because you see her steal the baby from the cradle

B: Tangled has some serious blood libel stuff going on

T: Mother Gothel has, like the hair and the nose. In Rapunzel, she doesn’t eat Rapunzel, but she does steal her and use her for power, which is very

B: She like uses her to maintain her own youth

T: Which is very…

B: Very blood libel

T: Blood Libel

B: There’s just a lot of Blood Libel in a lot of fairytales, if you start to dig in. I mean, Rumpelstiltskin

T: Oh yeah, big one

B: Every fairy tale you’ve ever heard about stealing a baby or a witch trying to eat children

T: Or a witch making you promise your first born, that’s a big one

B: Those fairytales are pretty much all from Germany (laughs)

T: Oh wow, what a surprise

M: Crazy

T: We could probably do a whole episode about this

M: We probably should

B: We can do a whole separate episode about Blood Libel, just on a basic blood libel level, you see Lilith kind of playing into that troupe a little bit because she is this Jewish religious figure and she is, like, the witch who will steal and kill your babies.

T: Which, like, I just think which informed which? Early ideas of Lilith or whatever, informing the blood libel thing, or blood libel then informing later Midrash about Lilith, who knows? Could go either way. But I was just thinking about that when you were talking about Lilith stealing babies cause that’s the big blood libel thing, and also I feel like a reason why she is more of a Jewish figure, but also Christians are so scared of her and hate her mostly, and then Jews are like hate her less sometimes, so that obviously is gonna clue you into the fact that maybe antisemitism is involved in Christian perceptions of Lilith. 

B: I just don’t know how much, like obviously Jewish theologians and whatever think about Lilith, but like to a certain—there’s only so much that Jews are even thinking about her, talking about her.

T: It seems like the people who are talking about her the most are feminist theologians

B: Yeah, Maggie what was the stuff that you heard about Lilith growing up?

M: I heard very little about Lilith growing up, I did hear a lot of anti-Semitism of like how because it’s important to Jewish people that not only the original scriptures are part of the religion, that kind of shows how they’re like not actually religious and don’t actually follow God

B: God Maggie, why was there so much antisemitism in your childhood?

T: It’s interesting—it’s so bold when Christians say that when they literally stole our book to make their religion

B: And then they’re like “we’re doing your book better”, no you’re not!

M: You’re doing it worse!

T: You don’t even understand our book!

B: You don’t understand our book!

(Laugh)

M: They’re like “they interpret the scripture too much”, but like, arguably, to my Christians listening to this podcast, if you have this viewpoint, it’s antisemitic.

T: Fucking, get actually decked by me

B: Oh my god

M: Yeah, so I think that’s the main thing I heard when I heard about Lilith?

B: I think Christians are just mad that we got a head start. Well, okay, here’s my take, Chrsitians don’t like that we have all this commentary because we had a head start because it’s been our book, and they started, what, like 3,000 years after us, and they didn’t have time to write all that commentary, so they’re like “well you’re commentary’s stupid”

(Laughter)

T: It’s just another part of the Christians hate asking questions and Jews love asking questions, like dichotomy we’ve got going on. Because Christians are so afraid of you, like, doing Christianity wrong.

M: I will say what Christians love to do is they state interpretation or theology that’s very contemporary and they say “It’s from the Bible”.

B: Which is literally like…

T: False

M: Which is just not correct. So, if you say it is “In the Bible” that God punished Jesus for our sins as humans, first of all it’s not, second of all that didn’t appear until the 1800s, that’s Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory.

T: If you’re going to say “It’s in the Bible” you fucking BETTER be able to show me the verse (Laughter)

M: I think, to conclude what I said, is that part of every religious tradition is interpretation of scripture, so that is. So, Christians we do it too, end of sentence.

B: You do it too…

M: But then call it Biblical, which it’s not

B: And then you’re like “Oh it’s so stupid that Jews do interpretation of scripture”.

T: Like, shut the fuck up, just cause we’re not lying about it

M: That’s what interpretation is, that’s what a sermon is, it’s interpretation of scripture

B: Are there things about Lilith, Maggie, that people say are in the Bible that aren’t?

M: Umm, not particularly. We don’t really talk about Lilith, at least in the Christian circles I’ve been in, we just talk about how Jewish people interpret scripture and that interpretation is important to them, and how that’s silly, which is bizarre-o-world.

B: Okay, so I literally feel like Lilith was big in the Middle Ages because Demons were really big in the Middle Ages, and so she had a really whole moment then, where she was like this big intense Demon who was stealing babies, and the idea of Lilith was holding hands with the idea of blood libel

T: Yep

M: Yeah, 100%

B: Then Lilith kind of had another big moment starting in the 1970s with feminist theology and go really popular, and now we have all these weird pop culture protrayals of Lilith that are based on god knows what. Does anyone have anything that they feel like we haven’t covered about Lilith or any questions about Lilith based on what we discussed today.

T: Well I just want to say, I think it’s interesting how we all watched this tiktok, got sent in our fun little group chat that we have where somebody’s like “Oh my god, did you hear, that Lilith was actually Adam’s first wife who got kicked out of Eden for being too girl boss” and that made me think of, first of all, there’s so many different interpretations of Lilith and also how it gets lost in translation a little bit along the way. And also how people are really obsessed with the true meaning of scripture in the past, which I think is really interesting, and also specifically talking about Lilith since she’s not in scripture, she’s Midrashic, I don’t know, I think it’s really interesting when people who are non-religious—or Christian, or just like not Jewish—try to be like “did you know, in the past this is what Lilith is and this is what Lilith truly is?”, and well I don’t know if you can really say that about Lilith without examining all of her current context, you know what I mean?

B: The thing about, like, interpreting the Hebrew Bible and interpreting even Midrash is that there’s never gonna be just one interpretation and, you know, if you’re Jewish for about five minutes you pretty quickly realize that there’s not one right answer ever.

T: Literally ever, and also that Jews as a community just sit around and talk about things that we’ve talked about for literally thousands of years and we just go over it again with new ideas, and that’s just how it works, and that’s what studying scripture is about.

B: You have to be able to hold space for having, like, five different conflicting opinions that are all kind of right.

T: Yeah, which I think is great and also super dialectical (Laughs)

B: One of my favorite sayings is, you know, “if you have two Jews in a room, you have three opinions”.

T: Yeah, I love that.

B: Which is less opinions that two Jews in a room have had in my experience

T: Yeah, you probably have seven-ish, I mean you see this on this podcast

B: It’s something Jews say a lot, just to each other, and I think it’s really funny because it’s very true and it’s one of my favorite things about Jewish culture. 

T: That’s true. One of the things that makes me like Judaism more than Christianity.

B: I feel like you’re always like approaching it like a battle, Theo (laughs).

T: Well, it’s not exactly that, it’s just that when I was trying to figure out…

B: This is why Judaism stays winning.

T: Exactly, well its because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my own religion, I did a lot of comparing between the two because those were kind of my two options that I was like, I don’t know, I know a lot of the things that I’m like, okay Judaism has that one, point for Judaism on that one. And that was definitely one of them. I also wanted to mention the Lilith’s modern context in something that I think we could talk about a lot, which is modern witches. Because I think there’s this thing that happens, and I can’t speak a lot on witchcraft

B: And we’re not gonna go too deep into modern witchcraft today because I have not prepared (laughs).

T: I’m just mentioning it. But one thing that I’ve noticed about Lilith specifically, and I talk to my roommate who is also Jewish about this, is that you see witches worshiping Lilith, and that’s, I feel like, really ill-informed. I’m curious what you think about it.

B: Well, okay, I know a limited amount about, like, contemporary witchcraft, but what I do know and what I have seen a lot of it is very, very appropriative of Jewish tradition

T: Yeah, and that’s why we’ll talk about it more

B: I follow some Jewish witches who talk about this, like on the internet, and I have not invested a lot of time learning about it, but pretty much every Jew I know who has interacted with witch communities in any way is like there is a lot of appropriation here, and there is not always a lot of people being informed about history here. This is one of my qualms about people who do a lot of Tarot but are kind of casual about it. The whole fucking mess with Kabbalah with a Q.

T: Ohh, yeah there’s like a lot to talk about in terms of Jewish appropriation.

B: There’s a lot there and I’m not going to dig into any of that today, but like, Lilith is just one of the things that comes up where people, and the thing is, when you’re talking about current witches worshiping Lilith I feel like what they’re drawing on more than anything else is the 1970s/80s Girl Boss version of Lilith.

T: Exactly

B: Which is…okay that’s…I guess, if you want too, but to me maybe that’s not—doesn’t make the most sense as your sole background knowledge on Lilith.

T: Yeah, right, and that’s why I mentioned it

B: I also think that’s gonna be, if you’re not really, really well informed on like Jewish tradition and culture, and I’m sure there are people who, you know, in some capacity worship Lilith who couldn’t even tell me what Midrash is. 

T: Right

B: That’s just gonna be appropriative and it’s gonna be inappropriate

T: And that’s why I brought it up, because the people you see worshiping Lilith are not Jewish and not informed about Jewish culture and also not informed about who Lilith actually is in all of the history, which is super important, especially if you believe that you are actually worshiping Lilith because if you knew all of the other stuff, you would realize you were worshipping maybe a Demon who is going to kill your babies, you know what I mean? They are like, this is just whatever powerful woman, like, deity, which is not what she is.

B: And the thing is, that is not what Lilith ever was, like there’s kind of no, you know…You can say Lilith being portrayed as this child killing demon is just a way of demonizing powerful women whatever, that doesn’t mean that Lilith was ever any kind of deity

T: Right, it’s also super misinformed to worship her at all as a deity because she has never been that

B: And you can have a deeper analysis of Lilith without completely ignoring the history and cultural context of Lilith

T: And I think no matter what it’s kind of always gonna be appropriative of Jewish culture if you try to worship Lilith as a non-Jewish witch, and I think Jewish witches wouldn’t do it in the first place is why I…just because of what we know about Lilith as we’ve talked about in this podcast, that’s just not a thing.

B: I mean if you’re a Jewish witch and you worship Lilith, hit us up, we would love to hear your thoughts really truly.

T: But it would be very strange to me, when I was talking to Emma, we were like it would be very alarming to be worshiping a being of some kind who has a lot of history as a very bad demon.

B: Yeah, and if you want to reject the idea of Lilith as a demon, if you wanna go full Judith Plaskow Coming of Lilith, and be like “well, Adam said Lilith was a demon and the rumor spread”, but like Lilith was maybe just chilling, that’s fine, but still not an object of worship as far as I can tell.

T: I thought that was important to talk about in the modern context

B: I mean I didn’t even talk about the Cult of Lilith at all, but that’s okay.

T: What is that, wait I want to know.

B: It’s something that I don’t know a lot about, which is why we didn’t talk about it. It’s something I think that happened in Iceland and it was maybe a music thing, it’s not like a real cult.

T: Yeah, right.

B: But, you know, there’s all these little weird…

T: It seems like people who are not Jewish tend to misuse the name and figure of Lilith a lot, just from vague cultural context mostly informed by what came out of the 70s about her.

B: Yes.

T: And that seems like kind of what is the vibe, and I think Lilith Fair is also informed by that, not necessarily in a harmful way, but it’s clearly informed by the 70s interpretation of her as a powerful woman figure or a survivor of sexual abuse, rather than any of the other portrayals of her in the past. So, I think that’s interesting and important to consider.

B: Maggie do you have any closing thoughts on Lilith?

M: Thank you for teaching me so much about her!

B: Did you guys learn anything today?

M: I learned many things!

T: I listened to The Coming of Lilith for the first time, so yes.

M: That was a highlight

B: I never know how much new information I’m bringing to the table

T: No, it’s great, I love it.

B: This is all just stuff I have sitting in my brain

T: I mean everything I contributed is just in my brain

M: Nice

B: Maggie, do you have any closing thoughts?

M: I don’t know, if you’re a Jewish witch in general and want to talk to us about appropriation of Judaism in modern witchcraft

T: That would be really good actually

M: That would be really cool

T: Write us a little email.

B: You probably know more than we do, just in general.

T: Yeah (Laughter)

B: Alright, after everything we talked about today, how would you say that you personally feel about Lilith at this point

T: I mean I think I still feel complex ways, the context I had before was only basically informed by one person—my roommate—and it was very negative. Well, not necessarily negative, but you know, the whole killing children raping men thing. I think, Lilith is…I don’t know if I have any feelings about her personally, like her as a person, but I do think that discussing her in terms of Midrash and I think the contrasting stories about her are very interesting to talk about and to think about in the context of both antisemitism and misogyny. Those are my thoughts.

M: I agree, I think she’s really interesting in terms of the history of her as a religious figure, if that makes sense. Like, learning about her as a religious figure I think is super interesting.

T: Hearing what people have to say about her through the ages and how it changed

B: I don’t know, I think I hold a lot of different interpretations of Lilith all in my mind, I mean I’m always gonna be a fan of the little Judith Plaskow Coming of Lilith, like even Lilith can be friends’ kind of thing. I also love if your wife is best friends with your ex-wife, I think that rocks.

T: Topical

(Laughter)

B: I love the idea of a man being threatened by the idea of his wife and his ex-wife being friends, you know?

T: Me too

M: Being “friends”

(Laughter)

B: “Friends??”

T: I do like any narrative that gives Eve more agency, I’m a fan of that, you know what I mean?

B: I love an Eve has agency moment. I think that’s so good for her. 

M: Good for her (Laughs)

B: For a while I’ve been really really fascinated by this idea that Lilith is heavily demonized for killing babies and, you know, potentially causing miscarriage, but in a world with…through a complicated lens, in a world where women have really limited reproductive freedom, the idea that Lilith can be this convenient scapegoat, if that makes sense. For if a woman induces miscarriage or even in the smaller scale, would secretly pray to Lilith because she wouldn’t want a child.

T: That’s really interesting.

B: I think that there’s room there for interpretation of Lilith as almost, like, a merciful figure on behalf of women who are in a situation where they have an unwanted pregnancy. 

T: It kind of can be added onto with the context of her not submitting to Adam and saying no as…like she’s kind of a protector of women who’ve conceived from sexual assault and don’t want that baby anymore.

B: I’ve never read any interpretation talking about that, it’s something that I came up with at college

T: That’s so interesting, love that

B: That I enjoy sort of considering that as an interpretation of Lilith, especially the Middle Ages Lilith who was so much, like, an entrenched part of the process of pregnancy and childbirth was praying to keep Lilith away

T: I think that’s super interesting

B: It just made me wonder and think about that a lot because I was in a moment where I was doing a lot of work on reproductive rights and I was like, I think if you consider the things that Lilith is demonized for, those are sometimes things that women in general are demonized for, like women are demonized for miscarrying and for not wanting to be mothers, so I think that in a situation where women have minimal agency, like I said, Lilith can be a convenient scapegoat for why those things happen. Anyways, that’s just a little complex other interpretation that I’m gonna throw into the ring.

T: I love that we’re ending this episode about a Midrashic figure with a little bit of Midrash of our own.

B: That’s my little Bridget Lilith Midrash, so you know, play around with that in your mind. I had a professor who I would email with about that, and that’s the only person I’ve ever talked to about that idea.

T: That’s wonderful, I feel like a good conclusion is Lilith can be whoever you want her to be, just make sure you are informed about everything she has been. 

B: Yeah, Lilith as a figure I think has a lot to offer culturally and I think that there is a lot of complex and contradicting and intersecting narrative about her in a way that is really, really fascinating.

B: Thank y’all for listening to my ex and my future wife, I’m Bridget

T: I’m Theo

M: I’m Maggie

B: And until next week, be gay and question God.

T (singing): My ex and my future wife