log in | create an account
GET EMAIL UPDATES

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

Talmud Berachot 17a

"May your eyes sparkle with the light of Torah and your ears hear the music of its words" — a prayer for our children based on a talmudic passage [more]

Found In: Bar / Bat Mitzvah, Covenant & Naming Rituals, Choosing & Affirming a Jewish Life

World of Your Dreams

"May you live to see your world fulfilled" [more]

Found In: Bar / Bat Mitzvah, Covenant & Naming Rituals, Graduation

Tags: Debbie Friedman, torah

Encountering the Divine Presence

The author realizes that in a religion imbued with the idea of making ordinary moments sacred through blessing, there was no blessing for the moment of her first period. She explores how that moment would have been different had it been blessed. [more]

Found In: Breastfeeding & Weaning

Tags: weaning

The Voice of a Mother

A mother's prayer, written for her son's Bar Mitzvah [more]

Found In: Bar / Bat Mitzvah, Childhood Milestones

Mother's Prayer

A mother's prayer on the occasion of her daughter becoming Bat Mitzvah [more]

Found In: Bar / Bat Mitzvah, Covenant & Naming Rituals

Birthdays, Jewishly

An article about the meaning of birthdays in Jewish tradition and how to make birthdays more meaningful, Jewishly [more]

Found In: Milestone Birthdays, Childhood Milestones

Tags: birthdays, upshirin

Placenta and Tree Planting

This ceremony marks a child's first birthday with the planting of the placenta which nourished the child in utero. [more]

Found In: Childhood Milestones, Parenting Day-to-Day

Tags: birthdays, placenta

A Prayer When Children Wear New Shoes

Turning the mundane into the profound [more]

Found In: Childhood Milestones

First Day of School

Various rituals for the first day of school, going back to school, the end of the school year, and playing hookey [more]

Found In: Childhood Milestones

First Haircut

Description of the first haircut in Jewish tradition [more]

Found In: Childhood Milestones

Tags: upshirin