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Welcoming & Raising Children

We greet each child with affection and joy. Every baby comes to us full of promise and potential. As parents, we are privileged to welcome them into our families, our communities and the embrace of the Jewish people. Raising children to adulthood, we encounter many milestones along the way. Children are weaned, lose their teeth, and start school. Some get their driver’s licenses and eventually leave home for good. Here are rituals for welcoming children and for celebrating the milestones on their paths to adulthood.

Photo by Jordan Cassway

On Bringing a Child Home for the First Time

Welcome Your New Child: A joyous prayer for first home coming [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: adoption, welcoming

On the Blessing of Children

A traditional Yiddish techine [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: tekhine

Kiddush Over Wine

Blessing over wine, said at all joyous gatherings. Included are masculine and feminine blessings and a non-gendered blessing by liturgist Marcia Falk. [more]

Found In: Blessings for Food, Welcoming & Raising Children, Shabbat

Tags: kiddush, Marcia Falk

Secular Humanist Meditation

A parents' pledge to their infant son [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Supplemental Verses to Grace After the Meal

For optional incorporation into the ceremony [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals, Blessings for Food

Tags: birkat hamazon, Sephardi

Planting a Sapling

A tradition dating from the Talmudic era [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: tree planting

Talmud Ta'anit 23a

A talmudic story about tree planting [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

With All My Heart

A mother's prayer for the health and well-being of her new baby and the wisdom to raise her [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Bring Me Good Guarantors

A reading based on a traditional text in which God withholds the Torah from the Jews until they can offer good guarantors. God rejects the ancestors and the prophets, but accepts the children as good guarantors. Can be said by grandparents. [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals