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I was just leafing through a book entitled Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue and found in it in the back, in the section labelled "personal vignettes" a suggestion for a ceremony to be carried out at shul, presumably during the torah service since there's a mi sheberakh as part of it, for the affirmation and acceptance of a pregnancy. It's by Tikva Fryer-Kemsky, which does explain a bit, she tends towards to radical a bit. But it seems to contradict the traditional practice of not telling unnecessary people until after the first trimester (or later, possibly- is it maybe 4th month? I'm not sure, it's not an area I know much about), and also just to feel contradictory to the nature of synagogue prayer in some sense. It might be a lovely thing to do with one's spouse/life-partner/co-parent, or even with immediate family around, but the length (a few pages, mostly in English, and I really did just skim it) and the nature, much of which is in the language of vow-taking, seem to be a bit too private for official synagogue life.
This ritual does seem to embody much of what I find both fascinating and very uncomfortable about creative ritual. It's all a bit too out-front and loud and unambiguous. One of the things that I love about ritual is that it does carry more than one meaning and more than one possible intention. Perhaps it is simply that age allows for greater freedom of interpretation since the words are slightly removed from the colloquial, or that for a ritual to have lasted this long, it has to have tapped into some level of symbolism below the obvious. But creative ritual is often the sort of thing that is very powerful for the individual in the right place for it, but doesn't speak to most people, or because it doesn't have the weight of tradition behind it, takes a larger effort to get to speak to you. It also tends to be much more specific, and while that can be beneficial, it can also detract from the power of the ritual/text. Many of the creative rituals that I've read about/read the text of/seen seem to be too specific to the culture and to the time. But I'm not sure how to get around that besides allowing a ritual to sink or swim and see if it catches on, and what changes happen to it along the way.
I also see a problem, personally, with rituals that publically announce bodily changes terribly publically. The body is so intensely personal and unique that centering rituals around it, especially in our culture, can be as much a curse for some people as a blessing. There is, as something I read pointed out, a reason why the bar mitzvah was standardized to the age of 13 rather than the original time when a boy was considered obligated for himself in the commandments- the growth of two pubic hairs. Rituals that center around body-changes can be threatening and unpleasant- either for the person undergoing the change, or the people around. A young person dreading puberty may not necessarily be best helped by a ritual for that change- some may, some may not. On the other hand, someone longing for that change is going to be hurt by attending the ritual celebrating it for someone else. (Admittedly, by this reason we shouldn't celebrate marriages in public. But that's another story.) And while I hold very strongly to the rabbinic concept of the body being an integral part of the self and holy, there is an aspect of holiness that is traditionally kept as a private sort of holiness, and I think most things related to the body in these ways fall into that category. I am intensely fond of ritual, and I tend to find it very personally effective- but in distancing the "official/public" side of Judaism from these aspects of the life-cycle, I think the tradition was rather wise.
I think some people like these concepts because they see it as a way of creating authentically female-centered Jewish experiences to correspond to traditionally male ones. But in this way I think they are, to some extent, missing the point- the traditional male Jewish experiences are not body-focused, and I think that if one is going to create female-specific spiritual experiences, focusing them on the body is cheating women of something. I think it is also cheating men of something spiritual, and of the equal possession of that creative religious energy.
This ritual does seem to embody much of what I find both fascinating and very uncomfortable about creative ritual. It's all a bit too out-front and loud and unambiguous. One of the things that I love about ritual is that it does carry more than one meaning and more than one possible intention. Perhaps it is simply that age allows for greater freedom of interpretation since the words are slightly removed from the colloquial, or that for a ritual to have lasted this long, it has to have tapped into some level of symbolism below the obvious. But creative ritual is often the sort of thing that is very powerful for the individual in the right place for it, but doesn't speak to most people, or because it doesn't have the weight of tradition behind it, takes a larger effort to get to speak to you. It also tends to be much more specific, and while that can be beneficial, it can also detract from the power of the ritual/text. Many of the creative rituals that I've read about/read the text of/seen seem to be too specific to the culture and to the time. But I'm not sure how to get around that besides allowing a ritual to sink or swim and see if it catches on, and what changes happen to it along the way.
I also see a problem, personally, with rituals that publically announce bodily changes terribly publically. The body is so intensely personal and unique that centering rituals around it, especially in our culture, can be as much a curse for some people as a blessing. There is, as something I read pointed out, a reason why the bar mitzvah was standardized to the age of 13 rather than the original time when a boy was considered obligated for himself in the commandments- the growth of two pubic hairs. Rituals that center around body-changes can be threatening and unpleasant- either for the person undergoing the change, or the people around. A young person dreading puberty may not necessarily be best helped by a ritual for that change- some may, some may not. On the other hand, someone longing for that change is going to be hurt by attending the ritual celebrating it for someone else. (Admittedly, by this reason we shouldn't celebrate marriages in public. But that's another story.) And while I hold very strongly to the rabbinic concept of the body being an integral part of the self and holy, there is an aspect of holiness that is traditionally kept as a private sort of holiness, and I think most things related to the body in these ways fall into that category. I am intensely fond of ritual, and I tend to find it very personally effective- but in distancing the "official/public" side of Judaism from these aspects of the life-cycle, I think the tradition was rather wise.
I think some people like these concepts because they see it as a way of creating authentically female-centered Jewish experiences to correspond to traditionally male ones. But in this way I think they are, to some extent, missing the point- the traditional male Jewish experiences are not body-focused, and I think that if one is going to create female-specific spiritual experiences, focusing them on the body is cheating women of something. I think it is also cheating men of something spiritual, and of the equal possession of that creative religious energy.