Lilith hardly needs an introduction. Her reputation as the OG HBIC demon queen of Jewish lore precedes her: irresistible seductress! destroyer of men! menace to infants! …or perhaps instead a fierce proto-feminist icon of self-actualization.
In her beginning, God created Lilith to be Adam’s companion — the first man, and arguably the first victim of the male loneliness epidemic. But Adam, eager to assert “dominance” immediately, demanded Lilith submit to him in all things — including that they only have sex missionary style. Lilith refused. She argued that Adam wasn’t inherently superior; they were equals. His ego said otherwise.
Lilith then pronounced the Tetragrammaton, the all-powerful Name of God. And instead of hard-launching their relationship, Lilith used the power of the Name to hard-launch herself into the air, and flew out of the Garden of Eden.
At Adam’s request, God sent three angelic bounty hunters — Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof — to bring her back. They caught up with her over the Red Sea and delivered a grim ultimatum: return to Adam, or be cursed to bear one hundred children every day — only to watch them all die.
Lilith prefers exile, stating that she knows God only REALLY created her to be a villain. The monster who creeps in at night, who people will blame when their infants sicken and die. A cautionary tale to make sure future women know their place and stay in it. Otherwise they might get the wrong idea about their own independence and bodily autonomy.
Dangerous notions, in a patriarchy. In the rabbinic imagination, Lilith, the demon Night Queen, embodied forbidden desire and maternal terror — the unholy seductress, the nocturnal baby killer.
And yet, she voluntarily tells her three angel bounty hunters how mortals can protect themselves from her: by invoking their names on amulets. That’s why so many Jewish amulets feature Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof alongside the words “OUT, LILITH!”
The primary written source for Lilith’s origin story is the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira. A text considered by some to be a male reframing of earlier, and obviously much cooler, oral legends told by women for women, which praised Lilith’s assertiveness. But after Ben Sira, Lilith’s reputation only darkened: across centuries of Jewish folklore, she became a witch, a vampire, a baby-killer — the original “crazy ex-girlfriend,” the supernatural threat to men, mothers, and marriage itself.
Despite all these tales of terror, her story reads very differently in the modern era: She is a woman who knows exactly who she is, what she wants. And what she does not want. A woman embodying independence, self determination, and radical bodily autonomy. A woman so fully…herself. While the Middle Ages didn’t want those vibes, second-wave feminism absolutely did, and began the process of reclaiming her narrative (including the creation of feminist Jewish publication Lilith Magazine in 1976.)
Watch more interpretations from Miriam Anzovin.