This Ritual Life Archive

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Here you will find out about ways to enhance your holiday experience, to celebrate or mark a meaningful life cycle event, and to deepen your experience of the everyday. Our authors are especially interested in hearing your responses to what they have written. So after reading, visit the Ritual Life discussion forum where you can join in conversation with CLAL faculty and other readers.

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Bringing Home A New Pet

Your heart has been claimed. The animal you see at a shelter, at a breeder's, in a cozy box huddled with tiny siblings on your friend's porch-says with its persuasive eyes, "Take me home! Yes, you!" providing a home for an animal is a mitzvah, a great kindness for one of God's creatures. (Children whose parents are big on Jewish values take note: Your parents may find this line of argument irresistible even if all others fail. So with all the conviction you can muster, say, "But Mom….Dad… it's a mitzvah!")

Meditation:

You have created this wonderful animal, and we are blessed to care for your creation.May we be blessed by the joy given to one creature in the company of another.

Ritual:

Before you bring home your new pet, you'll find the right space for it to live. You'll set aside a water bowl, a food dish, a sleeping place, and for a cat, a litter box. When you gently introduce your new pet to your home, it will already have a place of its own. Gentle petting, speaking kindly, providing food-your caring rituals will be a comfort both for you and for your pet.

As you brainstorm to find just the right name for your new pet, consider a Hebrew name that evokes a trait your pet seems to embody-such as joy, wonder, playfulness, freedom, peace, life, beauty…

(possible hebrew names)
sweetness - motek
beauty - yofi
simplicity - tam
clown - laytzan
bear-like - dov
my helper - ezri
happiness - simcha
strength - ko'ach
it's impossible to decide - tayku

Blessing:

(As you bring your new pet into your home for the first time)

Barukh atah hanotein ba'alei chayyim l'simchat olam.

Blessed is the one whose creatures are sources of such joy.

Teaching:

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, and all living things that crawl about upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

God formed every living thing…and brought each to the human, to see what he would call it and whatever the human called it, that became its name. (Genesis 2:19)

It is a good sign (siman tov) when ones animal eats and is satisfied, and so it says, "Righteous persons know the souls of their animals." (Yalkut Shimeoni, Ekev, to Deuteronomy 11:15)

(CLAL Faculty)

CLAL's National Jewish Resource Center develops and publishes rituals that help to bridge the gap between our contemporary lives and the ancient wisdom of the Jewish tradition.