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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

Tooth-Losing Ceremony

To be recited with your child at the moment of tooth loss [more]

Found In: Childhood Milestones

Tags: shehekheyanu , tzedakah

Everything Possible

A beautiful song, a lullaby, about fully accepting our children and offering them complete freedom to become themselves. [more]

Found In: Bar / Bat Mitzvah, Welcoming & Raising Children, Leaving Home, Parenting Day-to-Day, Graduation, Gender & Sexual Identity

A Weaning Ceremony

A ceremony to celebrate the weaning of a child [more]

Found In: Breastfeeding & Weaning, Parenting Day-to-Day

Tags: weaning

A Weaning Ceremony for Joshua Ruben and Eli Nathaniel and for Me

A beautiful weaning ceremony celebrated at Havdalah for twins and their mom [more]

Found In: Breastfeeding & Weaning, Parenting Day-to-Day

Tags: havdalah, shehekheyanu , weaning

A Weaning Ceremony – for a girl or boy

A ceremony marked by sweet scents [more]

Found In: Breastfeeding & Weaning, Parenting Day-to-Day

Tags: weaning

Prayer for Nursing

A prayer for a mother to say before nursing her child [more]

Found In: Breastfeeding & Weaning

Tags: breastfeeding

Pidyon ha-Bat/ ha-Ben (Redemption of the Firstborn)

Celebrated when a child is 30 days old, this traditional ceremony is reimagined for boys and girls. [more]

Found In: Redeeming First Born

Tags: tzedakah

Blood and Men

A feminist mom discusses circumcision [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: circumcision, covenant

Techine for a Brit

A techine, traditional prayer, to be said by a new mother before the bris of her son [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: circumcision, covenant, tekhine

Brit Milah for Our Son

Traditional Brit Milah with added readings and prayers [more]

Found In: Covenant & Naming Rituals

Tags: circumcision, gomel, naming, priestly blessing, shehekheyanu