In the
Name Daughter
of the
W hat my tiny daughter lacked in
pounds and ounces, she more than
made up for in syllables.

Th e name I bestowed on my di-
minutive newborn was Zelda Zorina
Ognianova Danailova — a substantial moniker in-
deed. Obviously, I like the letter Z; Ognianova, in her
father’s Bulgarian culture, is the patronymic, meaning
“daughter of Ognian.” And Danailova is the feminine
form of our Slavic family name.

But it became apparent that those 14 syllables
were not enough. Zelda would also need a Hebrew
name, my mother decreed, and she should receive it
the way I had received my own — in a Jewish naming
ceremony. “We all stood around the living room with friends
and family,” my mother recalled, “and your father
and I talked about our hopes and wishes for you, and
how we felt about having a child, and the symbolism
and meaning of the names we chose.”
Hopes? Meanings? Th e prospect of talking about
my feelings at all, much less in front of other people,
makes me want to crawl under a sofa and hide.

But more than that, it was the nebulousness of
feminine ritual that left me confused. I yearned for
a script to follow — an advantage enjoyed by parents
of boys; everyone knows you perform a bris on the
eighth day of life, at which point the baby receives his
Hebrew name in exchange for his foreskin. Because
there is no similar halachic prescription for welcom-
ing a girl, and because the entire ritual — commonly
referred to as simchat bat or brit bat — is a relatively
recent practice, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by op-
tions. As I talked to parents and clergy, however, it be-
came clear that many view those options as a plus. “It
aff ords us a lot of creativity,” said Rabbi Eric Yanoff of
Adath Israel, a Conser-
vative synagogue
in Merion
6 APRIL 9, 2015
The brit bat offers a myriad of ways
to celebrate a Jewish baby girl’s birth.

By Hilary Danailova
Station. “Th ere is a huge treasure trove of meaningful
traditions developed by people over time. So let’s as-
sume the tradition has something to off er, and not be
afraid to innovate.”
I learned that American girl-naming ceremonies
fall into two categories. One is roughly what my par-
ents did — a private gathering of friends and family,
often at home but sometimes in a synagogue event
space, wherein the new parents speak about the
meaning of the baby’s name. Generally, an offi ciant
— a rabbi or layperson — recites Hebrew naming
blessings, followed by toasts and a reception.

Th e more traditional approach, which is stan-
dard in Orthodox communities, involves the parents
bringing the baby to synagogue for the fi rst Torah
reading day following her birth; during the service,
the rabbi announces the baby’s arrival and Hebrew
name and invites the father — or in egalitarian rites,
both parents — for an aliyah. Afterward, it is com-
mon for the family to sponsor a Kiddush, when the
entire community joins in celebration of its newest
member. Two schools of thought also compete on the
timing of a brit bat. Some parents are happy to take
advantage of the fl exibility aff orded by not having
to adhere to the eighth-day edict, and baby girls are
commonly named anytime during their fi rst year
— or even beyond. But other Jewish parents feel
strongly about honoring their daughters in a way
that mirrors, as closely as possible, the welcome
given to a son.

“What was most important was egalitarianism in
this part of the life cycle,” Rabbi Michael Ramberg of
Philadelphia, who is now the campus rabbi at Ursi-
nus College, recalled of his daughter Pina’s cer-
emony. “Th e fact that such a big deal is made
of naming for boys made us want to do
that for our daughter.”
At the time of her naming, Ram-
berg was still at rabbinical
SIMCHAS college, so he was exposed to plenty of potential nam-
ing rites — some of which, he told me, were “physi-
cally intrusive” in ways intended to reference male cir-
cumcision. “You hear some wacky ideas in rabbinical
school,” Ramberg acknowledged.

I explored some of the less-wacky ideas at the Re-
constructionist website Ritualwell.org, which Ram-
berg and several others recommended for inspiration.

(Another popular reference is Anita Diamant’s Th e
New Jewish Baby Book.) Refl ecting on rituals that
ranged from the touchy-feely to the gender-neutral
to the specifi cally feminine, I realized I wanted a cer-
emony that emphasized Zelda’s role as the newest in a
matriarchal line of Jewish women — I am Jewish on
my mother’s side — rather than an approximation of
the male rite.

But such impulses are deeply personal. In the end,
Ramberg gathered some 30 family members, friends
and rabbis-in-training for a Sunday service in a small
sanctuary at Mishkan Shalom, a Philadelphia Re-
constructionist synagogue. Th e congregation’s rabbi
performed a ceremony that incorporated candlesticks
used by Pina’s great-grandmother Hasha, whose
name Pina received as a Hebrew appellation.

Th e core of Pina’s ceremony was a ritual foot-
washing. “Th ere’s a symbolic meaning to water, and
references to foot-washing from the Torah, to enter
the covenant,” Ramberg explained.

Foot-washing is one of several rituals adopted by
parents seeking physical gestures that feel meaningful,
timeless — and allusive, in some way, to the corporeal-
spiritual connection implicit in circumcision, which
represents human covenant
with the Divine.

Yanoff de-
scribed how he
holds the baby
girl up to the
Torah and
touches her
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



foot to the scrolls, saying something
like, “You are touching the Torah;
may it touch you and inform you
all the days of your life.” Th e young
rabbi has thought hard about phys-
ical acts that provide that kind of
indelible spectacle for witnesses: “I
try for ritual moments.”
One he also likes involves swad-
dling the baby in a tallit that may
have belonged to a beloved family
member. “Th ey are literally wrap-
ping the baby in the tallit of some-
one meaningful,” he said. “It’s a
30-second moment, but it’s that
visual impact.”
Another popular ritual involves
handing the baby a mezuzah, per-
haps the one destined for the baby’s
nursery door. Babies, especially
older ones, will inevitably put it in
their mouths, providing the image
of the baby “kissing” the mezuzah.

“You don’t have to just take
out,” Yanoff noted, referring to the
unassailable rite at the center of
male naming, which is obviously
not possible for girls. “You can also
put things in.”
Or as Rabbi Jill Maderer ob-
served, in an unconscious double
entendre: “Obviously there’s a big
missing piece to the girls’ experi-
ence. But other than that, the
prayers are the same, the experience
is the same.”
For Maderer, who is a rabbi at
Congregation Rodeph Sholom,
egalitarianism was the driving prin-
ciple behind her daughter’s eighth-
day brit bat, which was led by her
sister. “I decided that if I was in a
huge rush for my son, I wanted to
do the same thing for my daugh-
ter,” she explained.

Maderer opted to have the rite
at home, with only immediate
family, for the same reason many
people either keep it simple or wait
awhile: “I wasn’t feeling up to en-
tertaining a large group just a week
after giving birth,” she said.

A more personal ritual also
proved satisfying for Heather
Stecker of Bryn Mawr, whose
second daughter, Leila Morgan,
was named in a private ceremony
conducted by Yanoff . Whereas
her fi rst daughter, Belle Rose, had
been named during a Saturday ser-
vice, for Leila’s naming the Steckers
gathered about 20 people in a small
room at Adath Israel, wrapping the
baby in a tallit that had belonged to
her grandfather.

In addition to discussing their
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM naming choices, Stecker and her
husband talked about praying for
their babies’ arrivals — an allusion
to the fertility challenges they had
overcome. “It was very moving and
very intimate,” Stecker explained,
“and not something you can do in
a sanctuary with 100 people. We
wanted the focus to be on our fam-
ily, not on whoever was being Bar
Mitzvahed that day.”
For Ilana Ehrlich, a Philadel-
phia lawyer, egalitarianism was so
important that — hewing to the
tradition for male children — she
and her husband, Adam, declined
to share their daughters’ names
before their synagogue rituals,
which occurred within days of the
respective births. “As a mother of
girls, in some ways that’s the clos-
est you’re going to get to a bris,”
explained Ehrlich. Also, given
their preferred timing, the syna-
gogue service was “a very simple
way to do a naming.”
While the Shabbat service can
strike some parents as a less-per-
sonal setting, for families like the
Ehrlichs — who are involved with
Minyan Tikvah in Center City —
it may be the most haimish way to
celebrate. “We wanted to give ev-
eryone in our community a chance
to know at the same time what we
were naming, and why,” Ehrlich
said. Th e Ehrlichs named their sec-
ond daughter at Ilana Ehrlich’s
parents’ shul, Germantown Jewish
Centre, “so I got to celebrate it with
people who watched me grow up,
which was a lovely way to welcome
a child into a community,” Ehrlich
said. Th e Ehrlichs made the deliber-
ate choice to give their children one
set of names for English and He-
brew use. I had always wondered
about the logic of our myriad un-
used monikers; nobody has used
my own Hebrew name, Sara Tzvia,
since my Bat Mitzvah in 1989. So
the idea that little Gabriela Yael
and Noa Reva Ehrlich would feel
a meaningful connection to the
names they hear in shul seemed
profoundly refreshing.

I discovered that in choosing
Hebrew names, Jewish parents
are increasingly venturing beyond
classics like Yitzhak and Chaya to
modern choices like Netanya and
Ayelet — and even to Yiddish bor-
rowings. But meaning remains im-
portant. According to every parent
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