Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter

Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Description

An indispensable “how-to” guide for creating lasting memories and special ceremonies as you welcome your new Jewish daughter.

When a son is born, every Jewish parent knows what ceremony will welcome him into the community and signal his part in the Jewish people—the brit milah. What to do when a girl is born? How can you welcome your new daughter in a truly Jewish way, and celebrate your joy with family and friends? In the past, parents who wanted a simchat bat (celebration of a daughter) ceremony for their new daughter often had to start from scratch. Finally, this first-of-its-kind book gives families everything they need to plan the celebration.

• History & Tradition—The roots of simchat batin Jewish tradition, how it has evolved, and how the past can be used to bring today’s dynamic ceremonies to life.
• A How-to Guide—New and traditional ceremonies, complete with prayers, rituals, handouts to copy, and step-by-step instructions for creating your own unique ceremony.
• Planning the Details—What to call your daughter’s welcoming ceremony, when and where to have it, setting it up, how long it should be, how to handle the unexpected, how to prepare a program guide, and more.
• Ideas & Information—Practical guidelines for planning the event, and special suggestions and resources for families of all constellations.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Jewish history
• Jewish holiday
• Judaism
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580236591
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

To Jacqueline Ruth Nussbaum, my mother and teacher
To Aliza Shira Nussbaum Cohen, my daughter and delight of my soul
CONTENTS
Foreword by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One
An Introduction to Contemporary Jewish Welcoming Ceremonies
1 The History of This New Tradition
2 Traditional Ways of Welcoming Jewish Daughters, from Cultures around the World
3 Understanding Covenant and Dedication
Part Two
Welcoming Everyone
4 Involving Non-Jewish Loved Ones in Your Welcoming Ceremony
5 Especially for Adopted Daughters
6 Especially for Gay and Lesbian Parents
Part Three
Preparing for Your Daughter s Welcoming Ceremony
7 Planning the Event: An Orientation, What to Call Your Daughter s Ceremony, When to Have It, Where to Have It, Setting It Up, How Long It Should Be, How to Handle the Unexpected, the Program Guide
8 Sanctifying Your Surroundings
Part Four
Creating Your Daughter s Welcoming Ceremony
9 How to Use This Guide, and the Order of a Contemporary Welcoming Ceremony
Welcoming with Songs and Blessings
Welcoming the Baby
Prayers of Thanksgiving
Readings and Blessings for the Parents
Rituals to Welcome Your Daughter into the Covenant
1. Brit Nerot: Creating Light-four candle ceremonies
2. Brit Mikvah: Immersion in the Waters of Life-two mikvah ceremonies
3. Brit Rechitzah: Welcoming into the Covenant with Hand- or Footwashing
4. Brit Tallit: Enfolding Her in the Covenant
5. Brit Kehillah: Entering the Covenant by Walking through the Community
6. Brit Havdalah: Transitioning into the Covenant through Havdalah- two havdalah ceremonies
7. Brit Melach: Recalling the Covenant with Salt
Naming Your Daughter
Giving Her Gifts and Good Wishes
Psalms and Acrostics
Prayers, Poems, and Other Readings for Relatives and Honored Guests
Blessings of Gratitude
Concluding in Song and Prayer
Blessings over the Wine and Bread
10 Complete Sample Ceremonies
Traditional Sephardic Zeved Habat
A Contemporary Orthodox Ceremony
A Traditionally Oriented Contemporary Ceremony
A Modern Mikvah Ceremony
A Humanism-Based Ceremony
Notes
Resources
Glossary

About the Author
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A NOTE ON THE TRANSLITERATIONS
Just as Jewish welcoming ceremonies vary, so do transliteration systems. The prayers, blessings, and rituals in this book come from many different sources, and thus some of their transliterations vary in spelling.
FOREWORD
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, author of God s Paintbrush
A small group of rabbinical students is sitting around our friends living room welcoming our friends new daughter into the covenant of the Jewish people. It should be nothing out of the ordinary, but it is. It is 1970 and such a ceremony has never been done before. We don t think of ourselves as making history, but as making holy a moment that has long yearned for sanctification. What is more amazing than our living room ritual experiment is that some thirty years later covenantal ceremonies for daughters are being enacted in living rooms and synagogues across the country. What was once an innovation, an alternative expression of Jewish life born out of a deep yearning for inclusion, has now become tradition.
Today, as families name their daughters amidst the poetry of ritual, the embrace of community, and the joy of song, they touch the personal with the transcendent. They bless a moment in time with the sacred gifts of memory and eternity.
In the past three decades, the unwritten narratives of women s lives, newly spoken, have shaped the contours of religious renewal. To the hundreds of blessings Judaism teaches us, we have added a blessing for the birth of a daughter, holy words for her naming, sacred ritual to cradle her as she enters the covenant of her people. We celebrate her as an heir to her people s heritage, as a divine witness, and as a potential agent in the world s redemption. We wrap our daughters, as we have our sons, in the swaddling cloth of prayer, song, and symbol, that both affirms who they are and obligates them to become all that they can be in solidarity with a community of holy travelers. As parents and loved ones carry a new daughter in their arms, ritual is a reminder that this new life carries the promise and hopes not only of a single family, but of the people of Israel.
The story is told that when Picasso presented his portrait of Gertrude Stein, a critical viewer commented, But it doesn t look like Gertrude Stein, to which Picasso responded, It will. As we celebrate our daughters birth, we are Picassos creating new ritual expressions. We revitalize old forms and give affirmation to new spiritual yearnings, allowing the past to resonate with the present. To the comment that it doesn t look like tradition, we may respond, It will.
Good ritual honors both the individual and communal, tradition and change, the repetitive certainty of established acts and words and the refreshing spontaneity of improvisation. It gives expression to our innermost longings and deepest fears. It is both sacred affirmation and holy challenge. The power of the birth ritual is in its ability to call forth joy at new life, but also to evoke awe at the responsibility we have to raise our daughters to Torah, chuppah, and good deeds. Ritual works when it is able to connect us to something beyond ourselves and place us in a community and tradition to which we are accountable and for which we are responsible.
Our generation has not only created new ritual, it has transformed the ways in which we enact it and, in turn, build community. Women have taught us that religious revelation comes not only vertically, from outside and above us, but horizontally, from within and among us. Ritual is not simply handed down, it is shaped within community. It is not just acted out upon us, but we are the active participants in its drama. As one young mother commented to me after a ceremony for her new baby daughter, Thank you for letting me speak. At the naming of my last child, I was silent. Now I feel included.
Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter helps us find our voice. It reverently and gently teaches the sacred forms of Jewish ritual, and with courage allows our own breath to blow through their hallowed vessels. It enables us to imagine how the transcendent might move through our body and soul by asking us to be both descendants, honoring the tradition we inherit, and ancestors, creating the tradition for a new generation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T hank you, first of all, to the many dozens of fathers and mothers and rabbis of all religious perspectives, from all over the Jewish world, who responded to my request for your ceremonies. Thank you for sharing with me your joy, your wisdom, and your creativity by sending me the rituals you have created and conducted to welcome your daughters and the daughters of people you care about. Your work is inspiring and enlightening. It has been an honor to witness Jewish tradition as it is being transformed through your ceremonies. I hope that it feels good to see your work adapted and adopted in these pages, and put into the hands of so many more parents. If there are errors, however, they are mine alone.
For helping me to get the word out all over the print and electronically linked universe of Jews, thank you to Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, Rabbi Lori Forman, Rabbi Sue Ann Wasserman, Leonard Fein, Susan Weidman Schneider and Naomi Danis of Lilith magazine, Lisa Hostein of The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and Marlene Schwartz.
For providing information and wisdom, thank you to Rabbi Marc Angel, Rabbi Carie Carter, Rabbi Steven Dworken, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman, Rabbi Zevulun Lieberman, Rabbi Jack Moline, Rabbi Rona Shapiro, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, Mary Gendler, Sally Gottesman, Arthur Magida, Toby Fishbein Reifman, and David Rosen.
For providing inspiration and sound advice, thank you to Rabbi Debra Orenstein, Blu Greenberg, and Elisheva Urbas. The work of Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin deserves special mention. I have kept her book of prayers for the married Jewish woman , Out of the Depths I Call to You , near to me throughout my pregnancies and relied upon it often. And it was while I was thinking about her last book, Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope ( Jewish Lights, 1999), which is devoted to contemporary Jewish ritual responses to pregnancy loss and infertility, that I had the idea for this volume. She has contributed much of importance to the growing bookshelf of Jewish religious literature by women, and is an inspiration to me.
Thank you to my personal Jewish communities, at the Park Slope Jewish Center and at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School, where Jewish life is vibrant, my fellow congregants and parents are engaged and thoughtful Jews, and where everyone has been enthusiastically supportive of this project. They are places that strongly value creative spiritual exploration and growth, and where I always feel that I have found my Jewish home. Thank you especially to Joan Warner, who has championed the idea of welcoming new Jewish daughters in our shared community.
Thank you to my colleagues at The New York Jewish Week , where I am privileged to have a professional home, for being such a fun bunch to hang around with, however intermittently I make it in to the office. Thank you, too, to Jewish Week publisher Gary Rosenblatt and editor Rob Goldblum, for extending to me the scheduling flexibility I needed to finish this book.
Thank you to all those at Jewish Lights Publishing who have been so devoted to the idea of this project, and whose professionalism has been of immeasurable help in getting it where it belongs-into the hands of parents everywhere. Thank you to Sandra Korinchak, vice president of editorial and my indefatigable liaison to Jewish Lights and guide to the intricacies of publishing. Thank you to my