Living Jewish Life Cycle: How to Create Meaningful Jewish Rites of Passage at Every Stage of Life

by Goldie Milgram

Overview

The spiritual tools you can use to infuse Jewish life cycle ceremonies with meaning, integrity and joy.

Discover the spiritual meaning in Judaism’s major life cycle moments. Understand, create and enter wholeheartedly into Jewish life cycle ceremonies, preparatory practice, and celebrations.

More than just how-to, Rabbi Goldie Milgram guides you in making your Jewish rites come alive with meaning, beauty and with lasting impact on you, your friends and family. She takes you beyond rote rites—beyond just surviving—and directly into accessing Jewish rites of passage as a force for thriving. With careful attention to both traditional and emerging practices across the full spectrum of Jewish life, Rabbi Milgram examines:

• Jewish Weddings, Traditional and Inclusive Rites
• Welcoming a New Baby and Raising a Healthy Jewish Child
• Meaningful, Memorable Adolescent and Adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah
• Ritual Support for Many Stages of Adulthood
• Jewish Rituals for When Relationships End
• Jewish Approaches to Dying, Death, Burial, Mourning and Remembering

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580233354
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	01/01/2009
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rabbi Goldie Milgram is founder and executive director of ReclaimingJudaism.org, offering seminars and Web-based resources on the application of Jewish spiritual practice for spiritual seekers and teachers. Passionate about bringing spirituality back into Jewish life, she is well known for over thirty years of innovations in Jewish life—in contexts as diverse as Esalen, Elat Chayyim, Princeton Universityand Bard College, the United Jewish Communities, Hadassah Foundation, and in the training of rabbis and cantors for almost seven years as dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City. She is also author of Living Jewish Life Cycle: How to Create Meaningful Jewish Rites of Passage at Every Stage of Life; Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice: Holy Days and Shabbat; Meaning and Mitzvah: Daily Practices for Reclaiming Judaism through Prayer, God, Torah, Hebrew, Mitzvot and Peoplehood (both Jewish Lights); and Make Your Own Bar/Bat Mitzvah: A Personal Approach to Creating a Meaningful Rite of Passage.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 Tradition and Transition: The Evolution and Jewish Rites of Passage 1

2 Helping Holiness Happen: Jewish Weddings of Almost Every Kind 18

3 Loving and Leaving: Jewish Rituals and Practices for When Relationships End 68

4 Babies: Longing, Breathing, Loss, Birth, and/or Adoption and Options 77

5 Belonging and Becoming: Ceremonies of Welcome, Naming, Covenant, and Blessing 106

6 Creating a Meaningful and Memorable Adult or Adolescent Bar/Bat Mitzvah 157

7 Expanding Jewish Ritual Support for the Many Stages of Adulthood 190

8 Leaving Life: Dying, Death, Burial, Mourning, and Memorial 207

Appendix 1 The Legacy of Your Footprint: Caring for the Environment on Your Special Day 251

Glossary 254

Suggestions for Further Reading and Learning 262

Acknowledgments 273

Index 277