Inventing Jewish Ritual

by Vanessa L. Ochs, Riv-Ellen Prell

Overview

Vanessa Ochs invites her readers to explore how Jewish practice can be more meaningful through renewing, reshaping, and even creating new rituals, such as naming ceremonies for welcoming baby girls, healing services, Miriam’s cup, mitzvah days, egalitarian wedding practices, and commitment ceremonies. We think of rituals—the patterned ways of doing things that have shared and often multiple meanings— as being steeped in tradition and therefore unalterable. But rituals have always been reinvented. When we perform ancient rituals in a particular place and time they are no longer quite the same rituals they once were. Each is a debut, an innovation: this Sabbath meal, this Passover seder, this wedding—firsts in their own unique ways. In the last 30 years there has been a surge of interest in reinventing ritual, in what is called minhag America. Ochs describes the range and diversity of interest in this Jewish American experience and examines how it reflects tradition as it revives Jewish culture and faith. And she shows us how to create our own ritual objects, sacred spaces, ceremonies, and liturgies that can be paths to greater personal connection with history and with holiness: baby-naming ceremonies for girls, divorce rituals, Shabbat practices, homemade haggadahs, ritual baths, healing services. Through these and more, we see that American Judaism is a dynamic cultural process very much open to change and a source of great personal and communal meaning.

The ceramic “Tree of Life” spice container that appears on the cover of Inventing Jewish Ritual is by Susan Garson of Garson and Pakele Studios, www.garsonpakele.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780827608344
Publisher:	The Jewish Publication Society
Publication date:	06/01/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     IX
Foreword     XI
Introduction: Becoming a Ritual Innovator     1
Democracy, Open Access, and Jewish Feminism     39
The Narrative Approach     57
Material Culture: New Rituals and Ritual Objects     87
Stretched by Innovation     112
Change: Resisting and Acclimating     138
Case Study 1: Miriam's Tambourine     166
Case Study 2: The Holocaust Torah     187
Case Study 3: The Wedding Booklet     214
Epilogue: Inheriting Invented Traditions     250
Record, Take It Down, Collect     258
Index     271

What People are Saying About This

Caryn Aviv

... richly ethnographic accounts of how people imagine new possibilities for living creative and inspired Jewish lives... To witness the ferment and innovation of the contemporary Jewish cultural landscape, as Vanessa Ochs describes it, is to see a cup that indeed overflows.

Editorial Reviews

"Inventing Jewish Ritual by Vanessa Ochs is a wonderful read, especially if one is an egalitarian Jew. Her passionate feminism comes through clearly, as does her pride in being Jewish. The two play together brilliantly."—Edgar Bronfman

Edgar Bronfman

"Reading Inventing Jewish Ritual did precisely what any good ritual should . . . it enchanted, delighted, destabilized, anchored, challenged and charmed . . . a must read for anyone who wants to know how ritual works to make us wiser and more compassionate and wants to reimagine life as the most profound ritual of all."—Rabbi Irwin Kula

Rabbi Irwin Kula

"A compelling case for creating new ritual in Jewish life - new ways to observe holidays and mark life-cycle events - while reminding that it is the doing that makes ritual come alive and the practice real."—Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

"Ochs is a gentle guide to the world of new Jewish ritual, both for newcomers to the concept and for those who are already immersed within it."—Haaretz

Haaretz

"Explores how traditional communities can move beyond skepticism to turn invented rituals into sanctioned, even beloved, traditions."—Nextbook

Nextbook

Many of the new and provocative rituals Ochs began gathering a decade ago are now seamlessly woven into Jewish practice: naming ceremonies for baby girls, Rosh Hodesh groups, women's seders, healing services. "What is utterly novel today," she concludes, "may be the 'traditional' Judaism of tomorrow." Ochs, author (Sarah Laughed; Words on Fire) and professor of religious studies, is herself a ritual innovator, crafting ceremonies for teenagers who receive their driver's licenses and office-warmings with "interactive mezuzot." Ritual innovation, she says, remains based in texts, actions, objects and understandings about God, spurred by a "democratic" search for spirituality and Jewish feminism. Her explorations of the origins and context of rituals, from red threads to chocolate Seder plates and prayers for September 11, are eye-opening. Three larger case studies focus on Miriam's tambourine, Holocaust Torahs and wedding booklets, and lists of resources, books and Web sites abound. Ochs doesn't gloss over questions of authenticity, endurance and discomfort, but offers a clear, informative discussion of a dynamic process that will continue to change the face of American Judaism. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

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