Jewish Welcoming Ceremonies for Newborn Girls: The Modern Development of a Feminist Ritual

Introduction

Jews have long been prominent in the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. They have led this movement and joined its ranks since its inception. Some of these Jews, particularly in North America, began to take a hard look at the feminist ideals of women’s humanity and worth and to evaluate how they intersect with Jewish values and principles. As a result, “Jewish feminism” emerged.

Some early developments occurred in the political and intellectual realms. For example, in 1971, the Jewish feminist organization “Ezrat Nashim” was formed in the United States and, in 1972, issued a “Call for Change” at the annual convention for Conservative rabbis. Rabbi Saul Berman published his seminal article, “The Status of Women in Halakhic Judaism” in the Orthodox journal Tradition in 1973.¹ Also that year, over five hundred Jewish women met for four days at the first National Conference of Jewish Women in New York City, sponsored by the North American Students’ Network, an event that one participant described as “exploding with energy.”² This was followed in short order, in 1974, by the National Conference on Jewish Women and Men, which in turn initiated the Jewish Feminist Organization. The journal Response approached some participants to contribute to a special issue devoted to Jewish feminist topics. This issue was published in 1973, and editor Elizabeth Koltun expanded upon it to develop the ground-breaking book The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives, published in 1976.³ Also that year, the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith debuted, and another landmark book, The Jewish Woman in America by Charlotte Baum, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel, was published. While modern Jewish feminism made inroads somewhat more slowly in Israel, there was a “small but active political feminist force at work” in the late 1970s.⁴

While political and intellectual developments were beginning to swirl in the 1970s, the impact of Jewish feminist thinking was perhaps nowhere “more revisionary and revolutionary than in the areas of religious knowledge, spiritual experience, and ritual practice.”⁵ For example, the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1972, and the Reconstructionist and Conservative movements followed suit in 1974 and 1985, respectively. In 1979, Rabbi David Silber founded the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, which created unprecedented opportunities for women to study classic Jewish texts at advanced levels. The Women’s Tefillah Network, devoted to creating prayer services led by women yet within the rubric of halacha (traditional Jewish law), was founded in 1982, and the Task Force on Jewish Woman drew hundreds of women and men in 1983 to a national conference in New York City called “Women, Prayer, and Tradition.”⁶ Furthermore, Jewish feminists began creating innovative religious rituals that commemorate women’s experiences and lifecycle events and that expand upon Jewish motifs traditionally associated with women.

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the explosion of not only feminism but also other types of “identity politics,” in which people connected with their heritage or other aspects of their persona. For example, some previously unaffiliated or disenchanted American Jews experienced a renaissance of Jewish identification and expression. This engagement with Judaism often occurred within the framework of the broader “counter-culture” which prized free expression and individualism and incorporated a measure of anti-establishmentarianism. In the Jewish community, this trend manifested in the “Chavurah“ (lit. “group”) movement and so-called “Catalog Judaism.”⁷

The Chavurah movement developed from the dissatisfaction of young, well-educated American Jews with Jewish institutions, which they viewed as “sterile, impersonal, and divorced from Jewish tradition.” As a result, these Jews “sought deepened religious experience and warm personal ties in close-knit communities and less formal styles of prayer.” Chavurot typically met in private homes for prayer services. While Chavurah participants regarded Jewish tradition as their guide and its revitalization as an aim, they also introduced the new principle of egalitarianism.⁸

“Catalog Judaism” refers to the innovative Jewish trends and practices inspired by The Jewish Catalog, published in 1973, as well as the second and third volumes, published in 1976 and 1980, respectively. Edited by...