Previous ritual books provide an anthropological overview or a manual. Rabbi Orenstein noted that there was less literature about emotion, the feelings and the opinions surrounding the event. In moving essays and vivid poetry, the contributors convey the range of emotions which engulf women as they cope with, and consider their religious and ritual response to, a major event in their lives. The innovative and new rituals have their roots in traditional Judaism and may offer a lot of women who consider themselves feminists a way back into religion, Rabbi Orenstein says. They draw on traditional language and themes.
People have do a lot of preparation and study, making the rituals are extremely meaningful.
By crafting a Jewish response to an event otherwise perceived as secular, Jewish women find new relevance in their religion. What a new ritual lacks in tradition it makes up for in the promise for future generations. Even if a woman performs a ritual that her mother and grandmother never practiced, the fact that her daughter will do it is equally moving. As Rabbi Orenstein explains, it is a different trajectory, but part of the beauty is the change. Rituals don t only go backwards but forwards as well.