Fiction from: Sidura Ludwig, Grace Paley, Mandy Ross, Anne Sebba and Michelene Wandor

Poetry from Lucy Abrahams and Rosalind Preston

Julia Bard on bringing up secular Jewish children
Rebecca Bender on not having children
Sally Berkovic on being a religious and feminist mother
Isobel Braidman writes to her children
Sarah Ebner welcomes her new daughter
Angela English on Jewish mothers on film
Shirly Eran – a Jewish mother in Israel
Berta Freistadt – a woman unsown
Masha Gesson on inherited bad genes
Sara Goodman debates circumcision
Michele Hanson on hearts and bowels
Ann Harris on conversion
Kitty Hart on surviving Auschwitz with her mother
Brenda Heller on a difficult birth
Rabbi Margaret Jacobi on mothers in the Talmud
Batya Jacobs as a pioneer
Ann Joseph on adoptive Jewish motherhood
Susie Kaufman on going back to her Orthodox community
Shana Mauer has some grievances from the women’s section
Rachel Montagu on mothers in the Hebrew Bible
Rabbi Marcia Plumb on creating new rituals
Ronne Randall on becoming a mother in mid-life
Mandy Ross on mothers in Islam and Christianity
Sibyl Ruth on being an undercover Jewish mother
Lisa Saffron on lesbian parenting
Ayala Ronen Samuels gives a feminist reading of biblical stories
Beatrice Sayers on mixed faith relationships
Marlene Schmool on children opting out of Judaism
Ruth Shire on modern Jewish motherhood
Elly Stanton seeks a man of worth
Anna Sullivan on letting go
Elana Maryles Sztokman between her daughter’s world and her own
Anna Sullivan on daughters becoming religious
Nadia Valman on literary representations of the Jewish mother
Karen Worth welcomes her new son
Sheva Zucker on motherhood in Yiddish poetry
Rafeket Zohar on mothers and the kibbutz

Soup: cover illustration “Making Soup” by Anita Klein (www.anitaklein.com); chicken soup recipe by Ronne Randall.

About the Author

Mandy Ross has worked as an editor for various children’s publishers and now works freelance, editing educational publications. She grew up in Manchester and now lives in Birmingham where she is a member of Birmingham Progressive Synagogue. Ronne Randall has worked in publishing for more than thirty years and in now a freelance editor and children’s writer. She was born to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in Nottingham, England.