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Welcoming & Raising Children

Close-up of adult hands with rings holding a childs hand, symbolizing family and unity.

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.

Latest Rituals

A ceremony that involves adding spices to a blessing filled spice box to mark the welcoming of their third child and to mark the completion of their family

A silver spice box, a silver cup on a saucer, and a braided yellow candle in a holder.

Encouraging those in attendance of the bris to be present in feeling and accompanying the baby through his pain

parents and newborn baby

A poem for the baby naming of a girl focusing on matrilineal connection across generations

face of newborn baby

A reading for a baby naming on Hanukkah

A menorah with nine lit candles, glowing against a dark background.
A ceremony celebrating a child’s first day of kindergarten
wooden spoon full of honey

Shifting the focus away from the circumcision and toward welcoming

sleeping newborn baby

A prayer in English and Yiddish to be recited on the occasion of a son’s bris

woman holding newborn baby

Awakening a child’s senses by anointing with oil and sharing inspirational verses

closeup baby face

Prayer for Jewish parents as they name, welcome, and make first decisions about gender for their child

Children joyfully blowing bubbles outdoors near a wooden fence, surrounded by trees.

Welcoming a baby girl while marking her with the letters of “Shadai” as a sign of the covenant

baby being tapped on nose

The Reconstructionist Network

Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement

Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis

Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues

Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives

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The Reconstructionist Network