Ceremonial words and scenarios based in the stories and traditions of sacred Jewish rituals, for women seeking to celebrate their lives and religious heritage. Many women have in recent years reclaimed the beloved seder ceremony of their childhoods, inspired by the groundbreaking Women's Haggadah originally pubished in Ms. Magazine. Now E.M. Broner, co-author of that Haggadah and an eloquent authority on the meaning and necessity of ritual in our lives, summons her vast experience in creating and adapting traditional Jewish ritual and ceremonial texts to create this unique spiritual sourcebook. Elegantly weaving personal memoir and community experience, poetic recitation, and practical suggestions, Bringing Home the Light offers thinking, seeking Jewish women an accessible handbook for bringing ritual and ceremony back into their lives, whether celebrating the traditional Jewish holy days or creating a sacred, empowering ritual around an important passage in their lives as women.
Anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff said that in ritual, "one takes the chaos of the world ... and pours it into a vessel that gives it shape, order and form." In Bringing Home the Light, Esther Broner describes many such "vessels," by which she and other women have crafted and adapted rituals for honoring and celebrating wisdom and triumph, change and loss, and the giving and receiving of blessings the year round.
