My wife, Sharon, and I were blessed in 1974 with the birth of our first—of four— daughters. Two weeks later, among family and friends, we celebrated Micole’s birth with a simhat bat ceremony.
My article describing our simhat bat (“An Orthodox Simchat Bat”) appeared in Sh’ma magazine and was subsequently reprinted in a booklet compiled by Ezrat Nashim titled Blessing the Birth of a Daughter: Jewish Naming Ceremonies for Girls. It was also translated into Spanish and appeared in the periodical Maj’Shavot, published by the World Council of Synagogues of Latin America. As far as I know, it was the first article on simhat bat from an Orthodox perspective that appeared in English—or Spanish.
As I wrote then, in addition to the great joy we felt upon the birth of our first child, that our firstborn was a daughter was of special personal and religious significance, as it gave us the opportunity to express our joy and thanks in a religious ceremony of our own choosing and design. As Orthodox Jews committed to halakha, we believed that we could create a simhat bat ceremony that would be within halakhic mandates, while still giving expression to our own deeply felt emotions, thoughts, and desires; and that we could introduce our daughter into the covenant between God and the Jewish people in a way that would have religious significance to us, to our family and friends, and to her as she grew older.
And so we did, not only for Micole, but, over a sixteen-year period, both in Manhattan and Teaneck, for Daniele, Raquel, and Gabrielle as well. A description of our simhat bat ceremony, adapted from my original article, appears as a sidebar on the next page.
Shortly after our second daughter was born, an article appeared in Sh’ma, “Birth Rituals and Jewish Daughters,” by Daniel Leifer, which discussed “new birth initiation and dedication rituals for Jewish daughters which have been created,” including our ceremony. The article analyzed each ceremony and criticized certain aspects of ours. Sharon and I responded to those criticisms with another Sh’ma article, “Innovation within Halakha for Daughters,” in which we argued, on the one hand, for freedom and innovation with respect to the general form and timing of the ceremony, and, on the other hand, for adherence to tradition as, for example, in our decision not to create new brakhot. As we wrote then, although “somewhat schizophrenic,… that type of attitude perhaps best defines what Modern Orthodox Jews…go through in their quest for tradition in today’s world.”
And here we are, thirty-seven years later. More to the point, where are we thirty-seven years later? I am not a sociologist and have not conducted any surveys, but I have informally tried to discover what is happening in the Modern Orthodox community today to celebrate the birth of a daughter. My personal observations, as well as discussions with a number of younger friends and family members, indicate that there is a wide range of responses to the arrival of a daughter, similar in some ways to the diversity of practice that has developed with respect to bat mitzvah.
There are those—thankfully, a small minority—who still do nothing more than send out an e-mail with the news of the birth and the baby’s name. But most in the Modern Orthodox community do something to mark the occasion, ranging from sponsoring a shul kiddush, to having family and friends over for a simple, or lavish, Friday night shalom bat, Saturday night melaveh malka, or Sunday morning brunch, perhaps accompanied by a repetition of the Mi sheberakh naming their daughter and usually including speeches (often about the choice of name). Some have called this “a brit without blood and brakhot.” Yet others create a celebration that, like ours, attempts to transform a festive party into a ceremonial gathering by incorporating religious and ritual elements.
I believe that parents who use ceremonies like ours are still fairly rare. Yet even here there are signs of change. In the latest version of the Koren siddur, which is quite popular in Modern Orthodox shuls, the “Cycles of Life” section contains liturgy for twelve life-cycle events, including a two-page zeved habat daughter naming service. Thus, unlike the case when my wife and I had our daughters and, of necessity, created a simhat bat ceremony yesh me’ayin (ex nihilo), parents today simply have to open a siddur to find an established ceremony to use.
Indeed, that is what my daughter and her husband recently did, as they celebrated the birth of my first granddaughter with a combination of my daughter’s reciting the birkat hagomel and a prayer on the birth of a child during shaharit, and then performing a zeved habat following davening. Not only did the canonization of this liturgy in the siddur ease the way for the rabbi to allow these prayers and ceremony in his shul, but two of my daughter’s friends who were present liked it so much that they decided to use the zeved habat ceremony when they named their daughters later that week.
My feelings regarding this turn of events are mixed. Putting aside my youthful flight of fancy that our simhat bat ceremony would serve as a template for more such ceremonies throughout the Modern Orthodox community, I am disappointed that so few young couples take the opportunity—a rare one within Orthodoxy— to be at once religiously creative and loyal to tradition and halakha. I thought that more would have realized the importance of utilizing a ceremony that allows for the increased participation of women in ritual events, especially when compared with the usual lack of any female participation—including that of the mother—in a brit.
However, I am still hopeful for the future because of the significant progress made over the past few decades. I grew up in a Modern Orthodox world in which absolutely nothing was done to commemorate two major rites of passage for females—birth and bat mitzvah. Indeed, in my family’s Modern Orthodox shul and our day school, the refusal to recognize the existence of bat mitzvah was such that neither my parents nor sister received even a simple mazal tov from either of these institutions when she reached gil mitzvot (the age of mitzvot). And although brides were, of course, present at weddings, neither they, nor any other female, played any active participatory role in the religious aspect of that important and joyous day. Thus, I am gratified to see our community move to viewing some type of birth celebration (with the zeved habat liturgy becoming canonized), bat mitzvah, and Shabbat kallah as the norm. Perhaps the Modern Orthodox community that my grandchildren will one day inhabit will more closely match what I had hoped to see in my and my children’s worlds.