Spirit and Story Archive

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From Menstruation to Pet Loss: A Bounty of New Jewish Rituals

By Andrew Silow-Carroll

No one ever accused Judaism of saying too little on a subject. In fact, a chief complaint among Jews trying to add a little tradition to their lives is how much stuff-words and actions-seems to be required: blessings and prayers to be said from dawn until bedtime; a seemingly never-ending cycle of holidays (not including the weekly Sabbath); and laws that guide every human activity from what you eat to what you wear to when and how you make love.

And yet in recent years, there has been a growing trend-even among the mainstream denominations-to add to the storehouse of Jewish prayers and rituals. The impulse is to find spiritual meanings in everyday events that were either overlooked or did not exist during the previous 2,000 years of rabbinic Judaism. Even a cursory survey of the emerging literature of new ritual confirms a sense that of the making of new Jewish ritual there is no end.

CLAL has been in the forefront of the effort to expand the range of Jewish practices. Each year CLAL publishes its Sacred Days engagement calendar (http://www.clal.org/sacred_days.html), a compendium of new rituals and blessings that includes contributions from rabbis and scholars from across the entire denominational and ideological spectrum of Judaism. The rituals in Sacred Days are intended to "join the contemporary needs of Jews with voices from the tradition in ways that transcend our current historical, social and cultural positions and allow us to experience a moment of the sacred, the spiritual, the holy." Recent editions of Sacred Days include rituals for Ending a Relationship, Preparing a Family Recipe, Celebrating a New Community Building, Honoring a Teacher, and Running a Marathon.

Rabbi Debra Orenstein calls these events "invisible life passages." In her book Lifecycles: Jewish Women on Life Passages & Personal Milestones (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994), Rabbi Orenstein lists such ripe-for-ritual occasions as buying your first home, retiring, reconciling with a friend or relative, and coping with the after-effects of sexual abuse and abortion.

As the title of Orenstein's book suggests, a major catalyst for the creation of new rituals was the Jewish feminist movement. In her pioneering book Miriam's Wells: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year (Biblio Press, 1990), Penina V. Adelman addressed dozens of women's lifecycle events that have little or no acknowledgement in traditional Judaism. These include blessings and rituals for pregnancy and childbirth; baby-naming ceremonies for girls to match the circumcision ceremony for boys; and prayers after a miscarriage or stillbirth.

One of the most widely adopted of these feminist-inspired rituals is the celebration of the new moon, or Rosh Hodesh, as a woman's festival. In a recent issue of Kerem: Creative Explorations in Judaism, Sherry Rosen writes about her Princeton, New Jersey Rosh Hodesh group. Members gather to celebrate engagements, weddings, births, adoptions, doctoral degrees and other milestones. Rosen describes the ceremony the group created for daughters of bat-mitzvah age, intended to "welcome a new generation's arrival at the threshold of womanhood." Over a goblet of red wine, members and their daughters shared stories of menstruation and femininity. "We hoped that the explicit talk about blood and sanctification, child-bearing and transmission of Torah, would imbue the girls with a more spiritual appreciation of the female body and the its changes and a sense of awe at its creation."

In part inspired by Jewish feminists, rabbis from the mainstream movements are devising rituals for conditions and individuals not addressed by the traditional liturgy. The Central Conference of American (Reform) Rabbis devoted an issue of its CCAR Journal (Fall 1998) to "Creative Liturgies." A "Blessing for College Parents" helps ease the pain of leave-taking by remembering Abraham and Sarah's journey from Ur to Canaan. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson describes the prayer he wrote for his autistic son, asking for "discernment, understanding and insight" to meet the challenges of the condition. There is even "A Jewish Response to Pet Loss," which includes selections from Psalm 36: "Your justice is like the great deep; man and beast You deliver, O Lord."

Orthodox Judaism has been slower to accept new rituals and liturgies than the more liberal branches. An example of Orthodoxy's ambivalence is the adoption of a "Prayer for the State of Israel." ArtScroll, the venerable Orthodox publishing house, produces two versions of its popular prayer book, one without the prayer, and another, expressly published for the Rabbinical Council of America, that includes it.

At the same time, once unheard-of bat mitzvah ceremonies for girls and prayer groups for women are becoming more common in Orthodox synagogues. JOFA Journal, the journal of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (http://www.jofa.org/newslet.htm), includes "information on innovative rituals within halakha," or Jewish law. JOFA president Blu Greenberg writes in the fall 1999 issue: "Though some rituals already exist, there ought to be more that reflect a woman's unique life experiences. We also now know that women have different cognitive ways of relating to the world, and our liturgies should reflect such."

The novelty of new rituals and prayer forms does create a degree of anxiety, among liberal Jews as well as the more conservative. Writing in a special issue of The Reconstructionist (Fall 1998) devoted to "New Midrash and New Ritual," Rabbi Elyse Goldstein acknowledges that "some of us experience moments of ambivalence around these creative, invented ceremonies that speak to the soul but seem unconnected to much of Jewish history and experience." The challenge, she writes, is to "balance the tightrope between accepted traditional rituals that give us collective context and memory (for example the [Passover] Seder), and new rituals that continue our goal of inclusivity and personal meaning."

Who determines which Jewish practices become normative and which fall away? Ultimately, the acceptance of new rituals depends upon the success of the conversation between old modes and new needs. As Vanessa L. Ochs, editor of CLAL's Sacred Days series, writes: "Our wise men and women have taught: 'Lo bashamayim hi: The decision is not made by God in heaven.' We, the living, breathing Jewish community-it is we, with our lives, who decide."

Resources:

CCAR Journal. from the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 355 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

Kerem: Creative Explorations in Judaism. Jewish Study Center Press, Inc. 3035 Porter Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.

Sacred Days. CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, 440 Park Avenue S., 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016-8012.

The Reconstructionist. Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1299 Church Road, Wyncote, PA, 19095.

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