This Baby Naming Won't Be the Same

Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Week.

When my older daughter, Ellie, was about a month old, I took her to a meeting with Rabbi Josh Simon to plan her naming ceremony.

In the rabbi's crowded, tiny office at the Actors Temple in Manhattan, I carefully unpacked Ellie from the Baby Bjorn carrier, and just as I was showing her off, she let forth one of those noisy, explosive bowel movements that infants do on a fairly regular basis.

Rabbi Josh was amused.

"Perhaps this is her first commentary on Judaism and rabbinic authority," he suggested, smiling at the challenges this rebellious future congregant might pose. A career changer who had originally been a journalist and rock musician, Rabbi Josh was fond of rebels, questioners and those on the fringes, and it was one of the many things I liked about him.

I'd met the rabbi a few months earlier while working on an article, and I'd taken an instant shine to him. With an earring in one ear, black hipster glasses and a colorful Bukharan yarmulke, he didn't look like your typical rabbi. He was friendly and there was something refreshingly genuine about him; he lacked the political smoothness so many rabbis possess, particularly when they speak to the media.

Like many rabbis I'd interviewed, Rabbi Josh urged me to come for services and to consider joining his congregation. Usually I politely declined such invitations, but this time I agreed, even though the temple wasn't particularly convenient to my Queens apartment.

I felt like Rabbi Josh was a kindred spirit somehow. Was it because we were both somewhat moody journalists? Was it because he seemed, like me, to be attracted to Judaism, yet wasn't entirely convinced it had all the answers? During one conversation with my husband Joe and me, he referred to the deity as "God, or whoever."

I also liked that Rabbi Josh felt strongly about including intermarried and gay couples, and that he genuinely welcomed children. He didn't mind when kids made noise or ran around the sanctuary. At Shabbat services he always passed out colorful plush toy Torahs, baskets of maracas and other noisemakers for children to shake.

When Rabbi Josh and I began planning Ellie's naming ceremony--part of a Shabbat morning service that would be held the following spring--I assumed that she would grow up knowing Rabbi Josh, and it pleased me to think of my daughter enjoying a comfortable relationship from birth with a rabbi and a synagogue.

Ellie's naming ceremony was one of the Jewish high points of my life and certainly the most meaningful Shabbat service I have ever attended. Rabbi Josh sang and played the electric guitar, and our Jewish and non-Jewish friends and family filled the sanctuary. When I had an aliyah, joined by my husband and baby daughter, I felt for the first time like I belonged up on the bima.

I like to think that Shabbat morning was a high point for Rabbi Josh as well. A few weeks earlier, he'd learned that after years of trying, his wife was finally pregnant. The sanctuary, rarely anywhere near full on Shabbat morning, was bustling, with toddlers in the aisles and babies crawling on the steps of the bima.

My second daughter, Sophie is now the same age Ellie was when she first met Rabbi Josh, and I'm sad that, not only will there be no meeting with the rabbi about a naming ceremony, there will be no meeting with him at all. This month actually marks the first anniversary of Rabbi Josh's death from a brain tumor.

Diagnosed shortly after Ellie's naming ceremony, Rabbi Josh battled the cancer for almost a year and a half. During that time, his twin sons Dylan and Marley were born and he underwent an exhausting schedule of chemotherapy. For awhile, it looked like he would survive, and I'm ashamed to say that when it did, I took him and his services for granted. Assuming there would always be another Shabbat, that there would always be another time to be active in the synagogue or to get to know Rabbi Josh, I didn't show up for services very often. Day-to-day life and laziness got in the way, as did my reluctance to engage in shul politics.

When Rabbi Josh died in a hospice last August, he left behind a wife, infant sons and countless friends and admirers. My family's loss is trivial compared to the loss suffered by his loved ones, particularly the twins who will never know their father. Nonetheless, I will always be grateful to him for Ellie's beautiful naming ceremony, and I will also always regret that my family and I did not become better acquainted with him--and Judaism--when he was alive.

A year later, we are no longer members of the Actors Temple, and I'm still trying to figure out whether we're ready to pay dues and commit to attending services regularly somewhere else. I have organized occasional children's services and Jewish holiday parties in my local community, Jackson Heights, and am hoping that will eventually grow into something more established.

So Sophie's naming ceremony will be very different from Ellie's. Without a synagogue or a rabbi, the service will have more of a do-it-yourself feel, and in some ways that will be a good thing. Designing and facilitating my own ceremony feels a bit daunting, but will force me to learn more and feel more empowered--something I think Rabbi Josh would have approved of.

And maybe God, or whoever, would as well.

Special to The Jewish Week

Julie Wiener's column on intermarried life appears the third week of the month in The Jewish Week. She can be reached at julie.inthemix@gmail.com.