Context: Ritual Objects

General Ideas:

• Create a mechanism by which congregants can buy the ritual objects and Judaica items for their life cycle event from a select list of Israeli artists (wimple for Bris, tallit/kippot for bnai mitzvah, ketubah/chuppah for Wedding, kippot for Funerals.)
• Connect the value of tsedakah to ritual objects.  Develop a relationship with an organization that lends couples and families ritual objects for their LC event.

• For example, Bnai Jeshurun in NYC has an Ethiopian chuppah that they offer to congregants.  If couples use that chuppah, they make a donation to SAEJ.

Bar/Bat Mitzvah

Encourage mitzvah projects to connect with Israel.  Consider what ritual object could be associated with the Bnai Mitzvah’s mitzvah project (e.g. if the project has to do with emergency food relief, use a soup ladle from a soup kitchen in Israel and consider that a new kind of ritual object to showcase at the Bnai Mitzvah service.)

Stage 2 (cont): Ceremony Itself

Context: Spoken Word

 In addition the traditional liturgy of a life cycle event, there are many opportunities to personalize the ceremony based on the nature, interests and needs of the couple or family.  Poetry and music can give voice to emotions that a couple or family cannot articulate on their own and can deepen how they experience the ceremony.

In the following section you will find a selection of poems and songs by Israeli artists which, in addition to connecting the couple or family to universal themes of love, loss, coming of age, or the awe of becoming a new parent, can also connect them the particular music, language, rhythms and Jewish resonances of Israeli artists and fellow Jews.

NOTE: Many of these poems or songs become more meaningful if clergy introduces them during the preparatory sessions with congregants and then incorporates them into the ceremony itself.

Sources for Hebrew Music:

• Hebrewsongs.com – lists translations and transliterations of Hebrew songs

Shiron.net – lists original Hebrew lyrics