Inventing Jewish Ritual

by Vanessa L. Ochs

Book 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0827608349
• ISBN13: 9780827608344
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Accessible and lively!

Vanessa Ochs has done scholars, ritual innovators, and activists a wonderful favor. Not only does she write analytically and ethnographically in clear, jargon-free prose about the movements, ritual transformations and people that have reshaped American Jewish life. She has also provided useful road maps and ideas for people seeking relevance and meaning in Jewish life. I am definitely assigning this in my sociology of American Jewish culture courses!

Sara Harwin, Judaica artist

Ochs' view from standing in the stream of Jewish time is one of observer and enthusiastic participant. The new rituals she describes come from the full range of Jewish practices-from Orthodoxy through Jewish renewal. Her "boxed" explanations of how to perform the new/evolving rituals are great directions for trying something new.