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Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls Into the Covenant-New and Traditional Ceremonies

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The introduction opens with, "Mazal Tov, You've Had a Baby Girl!" Everybody is familiar with a bris, or brit milah circumcision ceremony -- and in current practice, a festive celebration, for healthy baby boys on their eighth day after birth. But what do you do when you have a daughter? What are they, chopped liver? Since the early 1970's, some Jewish parents have been celebrating their daughters in original ways (Ezrat Nashim published the first ceremonies in 1977, and the havurah and renewal movements wrote about theirs starting around 1973). Debra Nussbaum Cohen, a resident of Park Slope Brooklyn, and mother who has known the joy of birth and the pain of loss, has created this essential guide to new and traditional ceremonies with which to welcome your new daughter to the world, the covenant, and the Jewish people. It will be a welcome addition to your Jewish bookshelf and your life. Consider this: what you create today will be a "tradition" for your descendants! Cohen started collecting organic Simchat Bat ceremonies when she was pregnant with her first child. For your Simchat Bat ceremony and celebration, she includes readings, poems, specialized readings for adoptions, blessings, prayers (in Hebrew, English transliterations and translations), history, songs, and rituals. It is an inclusive book that has sample ceremonies also crafted for adherents to traditional Orthodoxy, traditional Sephardic rite, contemporary rites, contemporary Orthodox, humanism, and modren mikveh rites. Part One consists of about two dozen pages that introduce you to welcoming ceremonies and Jewish tradition, including the idea of covenant, brit milah, the custom of gomel, and that of a new father being called to the Torah to recite blessings, announce the birth, and pray for his wife's recovery. Part Two consists of about four dozen pages on seriously practical considerations for your ceremony. It includes chapters on how to involve your non-Jewish loved ones or spouse, if necessary (through acknowledgement and readings); what to do in cases of adoption and cross-cultural adoption (remember, Moses was an adopted child, and Mordechai was probably an adoptive parent); and gay and lesbian parenthood. Part Three focuses on planning the event, creating programs, sanctifying the space, and deciding when to have the Simchat Bat (eighth day, 30th day, etc.). Part Four contains over 150 pages of sample ceremonies, and hundreds of readings and elements from which you can pick and choose. It includes selections for welcoming, naming, prayers of thanksgiving, parental blessings, acrostics, psalms, readings for relatives and friends, blessings for wine and bread, and rituals for brit nerot (light), brit mikvah (immersion), brit rechitzah (footwashing/handwashing), brit tallit (enfolding her into the covenant), brit kehillah (community), brit melach, and brit havdalah (transitions). The book succeeds so well, one wishes all the babies were girls (or maybe some things can be borrowed for future boys).

Finally, a book for aware Jewish families looking for a formal ceremony to welcome their daughtersinto the Jewish people. For centuries, baby boys were celebrated in Brit Milah, while girls were named quietly, in shul. Today, many families seek to honor their new daughters and our shared tradition in a baby-naming ceremony. Nussbaum Cohen's substantial contribution to the process is the wide range of resources she presents, as the reader is guided by her elegant prose through the full breadth of options. Sample ceremonies allow families to pick and choose the one that best suits their needs -- or craft their own, from the excellent 'building blocks' Nussbaum Cohen provides. Well-researched and well-written, a perfect new baby gift or addition to a family library.

This book was great for helping us plan our Bat Simcha. We purchased it even before our baby was born - before we knew the baby would be a girl. It provided many great ideas for creating either a Bat Simcha or a more personalized bris. We could not have planned such a meaningful ceremony without the help of this book.

I initially bought this book for friends with a newborn daughter. However, on the long flight home I began to read it for myself and was instantly taken in by the well-constructed and detailed case the author brings forth. The celebration of birth is a magnificent and unique experiece and should be shared by all in a special way regrdless of the child's gender. This book goes a long way to giving the reader many ideas that are delightful and inspiring without being 'new-agey'or 'preachy'. I highly recommend this read to anyone who has a baby daughter, baby boy, or no baby at all. This is an essential read for exploring modern ideas in traditional ceremony.

There are few truly essential books for new Jewish parents; if you are blessed with a daughter then Cohen's book is surely one of them. It is at its core an indispensable how-to guide for planning a beautiful Simchat Brit Bat ceremony step by step. But it is also so much more. It places the texts and rituals in their liturgical context and helps the reader to understand why each selection is relevant. Cohen has also written a wondrously inclusive book that caters to a broad spectrum of Jewish practices from traditional to progressive. My wife and I used this book and little else to plan a lovely, meaningful ceremony for our daughter. We've never owned a book that was so quickly dog-eared and full of notes than Cohen's masterpiece. It is an extraordinary work.

I have twin girls, and this book helped my husband and me create a fabulous ceremony to welcome our daughters into the covenant. This book is great for anyone who is having a baby nameing outside of a Temple. Our guests loved the ceremony so much that they actually kept copies of the service.

This is the best possible resource for parents of new baby girls who want to welcome them in a Jewish way. I found it extremely helpful. My wife and I felt somewhat confused, unsure of how to put a welcoming ceremony together for our new daughter, and this book took us through the process, step-by-step. It has an incredibly wide selection of readings, poems, blessings, prayers and songs from which to choose. Now we also give it as a baby gift to every new parent of baby girls we know.