The birth of a child is a joyful and awesome moment—one that should be observed in a unique, spiritual and, above all, Jewish way.

When our first child, Ari, was born eight years ago we welcomed him in the usual way—with a brit mila. It was stressful, joyous and unexpectedly profound. When his sister, Aliza, was born two years ago we knew one thing for sure: There was no way that we were going to welcome her into our family, our community and the Jewish people with any less of a serious religious ritual. The problem lay in figuring out what to do. Our male children have been ritually circumcised in fundamentally the same way since the Israelites were transformed from a tribe into a people. However, there has been no parallel ritual to welcome our girls. Throughout the ages Jewish communities in different parts of the world developed a variety of customs to celebrate their daughters’ births.

In India rose petals are floated in water to welcome girls home. Since before the 1492 expulsion, Jews in Spain welcomed their daughters in a ceremony called Las Fadas. A rabbi, friends and family would all gather at the home as soon as the mother had recovered from the birth, eating sweets and passing the child from one set of arms to another as they proferred her blessings.

Both genders were welcomed in Germany through a cradle ceremony called Holle Grasch or Hollekreisch. Children would surround the child’s cradle, raise it three times while asking the baby’s name. Torah passages were read and then the name was announced. In Poland, the first Saturday morning after recovering from a daughter’s birth, the wife and husband would go to synagogue.

These simple folk customs and festivities died out with Jewish dispersion, annihilation and assimilation. But even in communities where daughters were welcomed, something was lacking that we in this egalitarian age have come to value—a meaningful religious component.

The American community that comes closest, perhaps, to instilling that ideal are the Sefardim who live in places like Brooklyn, New York, and Deal, New Jersey. They greet the birth of a daughter with a zeved habat (gift of a daughter) ceremony: Psalms are recited, the child is named and blessed and there’s singing and a reception rich with gustatory delights.

The Ashkenazic custom familiar to most American Jews has for decades involved the parents (among the Orthodox, the father alone) being called before the congregation to bless the Torah, usually during Sabbath morning services. During the aliya the rabbi will announce the daughter’s Hebrew name and asks God to bless her and her parents. The parents will then recite a prayer of thanksgiving.

While that is a lovely practice, I felt it to be inadequate. My husband and I wanted Aliza (and later her sister, Elana) to have her own distinct welcome, not just a quick ritual squeezed into the middle of prayer services.

So while our goal was clear, the path to getting there wasn’t. I had a file folder full of other peoples’ welcoming ceremony programs, which I’d been collecting for several years in the hope that I would one day have a daughter of my own.

But as I leafed through them I couldn’t figure out quite how to put together one for Aliza. My rabbi referred me to a book or two, and I had some idea of what elements we wanted to incorporate, but still, I couldn’t conceptualize it.

The real stumbling block was my own sense of inadequacy. Who was I, with my very average Hebrew school education and fleeting acquaintance with Jewish liturgy, to compose something as important as this?

But with wise guidance from friends, and readings borrowed from a few Jewish books and other people’s ceremonies, I finally managed to put something together. And one Sunday morning a few weeks after she was born, we celebrated Aliza’s arrival with a joy only intensified because she had had a serious medical crisis in her first few weeks. (Several months of therapy and medical tests later, the crisis was over.)

Our living room crowded with family and friends, our dining room table groaning under the weight of bagels, smoked whitefish and a decorated cake, we welcomed Aliza with a ritual that, despite its newness, was rooted in Jewish tradition and felt at once as weighty and joyful as her brother’s brit.

That experience got me thinking about the growing availability of new religious works by Jewish women, much of it born of the need to find a place for the female voice in Jewish spiritual life. Wonderful books, articles and videos are now available on new ritual responses to infertility and pregnancy loss, on greeting old age, on interpretations of Torah as seen through the lens of women’s experiences.

The time seemed right for a book about welcoming ceremonies for Jewish girls. It had been a full generation since Michael and Sharon Strassfeld (for their daughter) and Rabbis Sandy and Dennis Sasso (for the child of friends) separately created the first ceremonies in the mid-1970’s. Since then, parents and rabbis have, essentially, been creating their own rituals. When I started researching my book, I sent a query over a few rabbinic and feminist Internet mailing lists and had it published in a few Jewish periodicals. The response from all over the Jewish world—Australia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Israel, the United States—was magnificent, nearly 250 examples of the rich, creative ferment inspired by the births of daughters.

I had assumed there would be a wide range of approaches taken to this new liturgy. And while each welcoming ceremony bore the hallmarks of the particular family’s or rabbi’s approach to Judaism, I was wrong, wonderfully wrong.

No rabbinic body had sanctioned one specific way of welcoming daughters, yet a process of organic codification was taking place. While composed by people with varied sensibilities and views of tradition, most welcoming ceremonies used a common format. It was clear that something important was emerging and is here to stay.

The usual order is a sensible one, modeled on other rituals like brit mila. However, each is individual, creative and reflects the culture and personality of the new little girl’s family.

The first page of Aliza’s welcoming ceremony, for instance, contained a few brief excerpts from writings that had inspired us. I chose something about the gift of wonder by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and a paragraph by Blu Greenberg, a Modern Orthodox feminist, about the rich, demanding juggle of being a modern woman and a traditional Jew. My husband contributed Grateful Dead lyrics about the mysteries of creation. Quirky, perhaps. But us, for sure.

For their daughter’s simhat bat (celebration of a daughter) some parents choose traditional readings from classic Jewish texts. Others weave in relevant secular poetry and prose, or a mixture of both. The event may be in English or almost completely in Hebrew. For most it is a combination.

With such an elastic ritual there is room to incorporate all that is unique about the child, even in her newness. If she has been adopted, her parents may include symbols of her birth culture, for example, red flowers and tablecloths if she is from China, where the color symbolizes good fortune. One mother whose daughter was adopted from a Colombian orphanage wore a necklace of amber and gold, with a native fertility goddess decoration.

There are ways to include non-Jewish relatives that don’t infringe on traditional Jewish practice. They can read inspiring selections from secular works, Psalms in translation or speak about the person for whom this girl has been given her English name.

The choices available to parents begin with the name of the welcoming ceremony—simhat bat, brit bat (covenant of a daughter), brit b’not Yisrael (covenant of the daughters of Israel), brit kedusha (covenant of holiness), brit hayyim (covenant of life), hag hakhnasa labrit (celebration of entry into the covenant) or, in English, a day of blessing.

Families can choose to set the occasion at different times: on the baby’s eighth day of life, as a parallel to the mandated time for a brit mila; on the thirtieth day (30 days is the period after which a Jewish child was historically counted in a census); or on the first convenient Sunday morning.

The ways in which families induct their daughter into the covenant—or, if they are more traditional and do not believe that girls must be brought into it as boys must, the ways in which they acknowledge her membership in the covenant and Jewish people—also vary widely.

Some people light candles—two (parallel to the Sabbath candle lighting) or seven (to symbolize the days of creation)—to represent transition and creation. Some wash the newborn’s feet as a symbol of welcome, as Abraham did when he greeted his guests. Others choose to reclaim water from its Christian associations and use a basin as a mini-mikve in which they immerse their daughter.

Today’s daughters are welcomed with Jewish rites and rituals that are solemn but still sweet and festive. This burgeoning interest and creativity for girls reflect that we, as parents, are publicly proclaiming our intention to raise our daughters, as well as our sons, as engaged, educated, joyful members of the Jewish people.

Menu for a Joyful Welcome
Families take creative control in contemporary welcoming ceremonies—there is not set custom or liturgy—nevertheless, there are a number of common elements:

• Songs. Singing is a powerful way to open and close a ceremony and create a sense of holy space. Choices range from niggunim, Jewish traditional wordless tunes, to contemporary songs, either Jewish or secular.
  
  
• Opening speech from the baby’s parents.
  
  
• A Hebrew welcome, Brukha Ha’ba’a, Welcome in the name of the Creator, recited by the person leading the ceremony or by all the assembled guests as the infant is carried into the room by the kvatterin, godmother, or kvatter, godfather.
  
  
• A variety of blessings, most recited by the parents, are said throughout. They include blessings of thanksgiving and gratitude and readings related to parenting and the baby. The Sheheheyanu is recited when something good for the individual or immediate family has happened (some say this at the moment of their daughter’s birth). The prayer hatov v’hameitiv is said when something good for the larger community has transpired. Closing prayers like the Shema or additional blessings may be said as well.
  
  
• Ritual welcoming or acknowledging the infant’s membership in the covenant and the Jewish people. Many have chosen to incorporate candles, dipping the child in water (mikve) or wrapping her in a talit.
  
  
• Explanation of the baby’s name(s), followed by naming blessings.
  
• Presentation of meaningful Jewish baby gifts, like a charity box, Kiddush cup or candlesticks.
  
  
• Recitation of an acrostic of the baby’s name using psalms or lines of Jewish text.
  
  
• Readings of prayers, poems and other expressions of thanks.
  
  
• The festive meal, starting with blessings over the wine and bread. Bread can be dipped in honey to set apart the sweet day.