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Endings & Beginnings

Our lives are shaped by a series of stories, each with its own narrative arc. We leave home and welcome people to our home; we enter our reproductive years and leave them; we end one piece of our life’s work and begin another. Endings and beginnings are bittersweet—we celebrate each with the awareness of the other. 

Bar Yovel: A Retirement Ritual

Complete Ceremony

A ritual to mark the transition from employment to retirement and celebrate what lies ahead [more]

Found In: Retirement, Endings & Beginnings

Tags: shehekheyanu , tzedakah

Let Your Heart Take Courage: A Ceremony for Entering a Nursing Home

By Rabbi Cary Kozberg | Complete Ceremony

Excerpts from a short ceremony to be performed on entering a nursing home [more]

Found In: Growing Older, Endings & Beginnings

Tags: mezuzah, priestly blessing

Acceptance

By Charu Colorado | Poem

A poem of release and acceptance [more]

Found In: Mourning & Bereavement, Rosh Hashanah, Endings & Beginnings

Tags: tashlikh

Closing the Apartment

By Rabbi Richard Hirsh | Article

Developing a ritual for the dissolution of a home [more]

Found In: Mourning & Bereavement, Endings & Beginnings

Blessings for a New Home

Complete Ceremony

A brief ritual to perform with a group of friends before hanging mezuzot in a new home. [more]

Found In: Endings & Beginnings

Tags: mezuzah, shehekheyanu

A Chanukat Bayit — Housewarming

By Rabbi Rona Shapiro and David Franklin | Complete Ceremony

A housewarming ceremony to be performed with friends and family on a Saturday night at the conclusion of Shabbat [more]

Found In: Endings & Beginnings

Tags: mezuzah, Rabbi Rona Shapiro, shehekheyanu

A Ritual for Endings and Beginnings

By Elaine Moise | Complete Ceremony

A ritual for leaving a job and beginning another [more]

Found In: Endings & Beginnings

Tags: Siddur Kol Haneshamah

Ceremony for Affixing the Mezuzah

By Emanuel Banks | Complete Ceremony

Responsive reading and blessing for establishing a home and the mitzvah of affixing the mezuzah [more]

Found In: Endings & Beginnings

Tags: mezuzah

Hafradah: A Jewish Leavetaking Ritual

By Jane Litwoman | Complete Ceremony

A ritual for friends or lovers who will be separated from one another, temporarily or for a long time [more]

Found In: Traveling, Endings & Beginnings

Tags: friendship

Endings and Beginnings: A Modern Psalm

By Debbie Perlman, z"l | Reading

Wishes for hope, optimism, and new possibilities [more]

Found In: Endings & Beginnings, Healing & Hard Times