Brit and Naming Celebrations

Congregation Netivot Shalom is a wonderful place to celebrate your child’s birth or adoption and entry into the Jewish community! Our beautiful shul and community can help create the spirituality of the moment, and Rabbi Levy is proud to help you plan your family’s ceremony. Please be in touch with our office and with Rabbi Levy to begin the conversation!

A Reflection on Jewish Baby Ceremonies

Ceremonies welcoming Jewish babies initiate a lifetime of emotional journeying with a Jewish community. As Rabbi Laura Geller notes, before a brit milah / simchat bat (covenant ceremony for girls), a baby is simply the child of particular parents – even referred to only as “the baby.” After such a ceremony, she becomes herself, he becomes himself. In Geller’s words: “a Jew linked through ritual to covenant, transformed through ritual into so-and-so [the child of] particular parents within the context of the Jewish people.…The infant is transformed, named, given tribe and history, roots and purpose, baggage and wings.” The community too is changed, having once again engaged with our history and our future, and having welcomed another member into our midst.

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