In a message dated 2/15/01 4:12:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:

<< Interesting-- is there any link between this and the movement in feminist Jewish scholarship to rehabilitate Lilith?<<

I'm interested to hear this; I've been out of that loop for a while (12 years of Yeshiva was quite enough, thanks). But here's Barbara G. Walker's entry on the topic from her most intriguing 'Women's Encyclopedia.'

LILITH

Adam's first wife was a relic of an early rabbinical attempt to assimilate the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili, to Jewish mythology. To the Canaanites, Lilith was Baalat, the "Divine Lady." On a tablet from Ur, ca. 2000 B.C., she was addressed as Lillake.

Hebraic tradition said Adam married Lilith because he grew tired of coupling with beasts, a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declared it a sin (Deuteronomy 27:21). Adam tried to force Lilith to lie beneath him in the "missionary position" favored by male-dominant societies. Moslems were so insistent on the male-superior sexual position that they said, "Accursed be the man who maketh woman heaven and himself earth." Catholic authorities said any sexual position other than the male-superior one is sinful. But Lilith was neither a Moslem nor a Catholic. She sneered at Adam's sexual crudity, cursed him, and flew away to make her home by the Red Sea.

God sent angels to fetch Lilith back, but she cursed them too, ignored God's command, and spent her time coupling with "demons" (whose lovemaking evidently pleased her better) and giving birth to a hundred children every day. So God had to produce Eve as Lilith's more docile replacement.

//My note here: This is not the author's invention. I did hear this stuff in the detailed commentaries during my years of study in Yeshiva and Agudah camp. Most of the time, it was omitted from what was taught to younger kids of either sex for obvious reasons, much like the racy or dubious content elsewhere in the bible.//

Lilith's fecundity and sexual preferences show that she was a Great Mother of settled agricultural tribes, who resisted the invasions of nomadic herdsmen, represented by Adam. Early Hebrews disliked the Great Mother who drank the blood of Abel the herdsman, after his slaying by the elder god of agriculture and smithcraft, Cain. (Genesis 4:11).

...There may have been a connection between Lilith and the Etruscan divinity Leinth, who had no face adn who waited at the gate of the underworld along with Eita and Persipnei (Hades and Persephone) to receive the souls of the dead. The underworld gate was a yoni, and also a lily, which had "no face." Admission into the underworld was often mythologized as a sexual union. The lily or lilu (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower-yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name.

The story of Lilith disappeared from the canonical bible, but her daughters the lilium haunted men for over a thousand years. Well into the Middle Ages, the Jews were still manufacturing amulets to keep away the lilium, who were lustful she-demons given to copulating with men in their dreams, causing nocturnal emissions. Naturally, the lilium favored the position of their ancient matriarch.

Greeks adopted the lilium and called them Lamiae, Empusae (Forcers-In), or Daughters of Hecate. Christians also adopted them and called them harlots of hell, or succubae, the female counterparts of incubi. Celibate monks tried to fend them off by sleeping with their hands crossed over their genitals, clutching a crucifix. It was said that every time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. Even if a male child laughed in his sleep, people said Lilith was fondling him. To protect baby boys against her, chalk circles were drawn around cradles with the written names of the three angels God sent to fetch Lilith back to Adam--even though these angels had proved incapable of dealing witih her. Some said men and babies should not be left alone in a house or Lilith might seize them.