Chapter 2 - Birth Ceremonies and Life Beginnings

A: BACKGROUND

1. INTRODUCTION

We continue our expedition through the Jewish life cycle by starting with the individual's journey through life. Having dealt with the attitudes of Jews and Judaism to questions of life, we will explore the practical questions of concrete living.

This section will examine the very earliest period of life, and confront questions of actual ceremonies for the first time we will now. Although these concrete ceremonies root us in the real practicalities of Judaism, they will raise many questions of fundamental importance about values and issues central to the Jewish experience. These are issues that we will explore below. This section will not go beyond the first few weeks of a child's life, but those weeks will be filled with issues and questions directly connected to the ceremonial. Once again, after the general introduction to the various aspects of the subject, we will go on to suggest a number of educational activities that allow us to explore those issues in the educational setting.