Included in the price of your Parents’ Gift, Home Blessing, or Baby Blessing is customization of any of the following texts. We are also happy to work with you to create your own original text.
Option I (Jewish Parents’ Gift)
On our wedding day, we are overwhelmed with gratitude. As we build a life together, we will strive to follow your example, creating a life where the Jewish traditions of our families and ancestors are honored and celebrated. May our home be filled with love and learning, joy and laughter, comfort and compassion. Thank you for giving us the blessings of confidence, trust, and joy, and the ability to share our love. All our love, [name] and [name].
"Blessed are You, ruler of the universe, who illuminates the world with happiness and joy, love and companionship, peace and friendship, bridegroom and bride."
Option II (Secular Parents’ Gift)
On our wedding day, we are overwhelmed with gratitude. As we build a life together, we will strive to follow your example, creating a home where the traditions of our families are honored and celebrated. May our union, like yours, be filled with love, respect, intimacy, and honesty. Thank you for giving us the blessings of confidence, trust, and joy, and the ability to share our love. All our love, [name] and [name].
“With my beloved by my side, every day is good to awaken to, and every moment is a gift.”
Option III (Home Blessing)
May this be a home that emanates warmth, generosity, and love, and may it be filled with the joyful voices of our family and friends. May our lives be blessed with harmony, health, and happiness. May those who live here and those who visit know blessings and peace.
Option IV (Traditional Birkat HaBayit Home Blessing)
Let no sadness come through this gate.
Let no trouble come to this dwelling.
Let no fear come through this door.
Let no conflict be in this place.
Let this home be filled with blessings and peace.
Option V (Baby Ketubah by Rabbi Elyssa Cherney)
Our Covenant with Our Daughter/Son
“Our Rabbis taught: A father has the following obligations towards his son — to circumcise him, to redeem him, if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a craft or a trade. And there are some who say that he must also teach him how to swim.” Talmud: Kiddushin 29a
As parents we feel obligated towards our daughter/son to welcome her/him to the Jewish community, to acknowledge that she/he is a gift from God, to teach her/him Torah, to support her/him in finding loving relationships, and to teach her/him how to navigate this beautiful and complicated world. We hope to learn more about life from each discovery she/he makes. -Rabbi Elyssa Cherney
Option VI (The Priestly Blessing for Children)
May God Bless you and guard you.
May the light of God shine upon you, and may God be gracious to you.
May the presence of God be with you and give you peace.
Option VII
There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.
— Elie Wiesel
Option VIII
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, that children understand; their stories and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the water of their lives.
—Paulo Coelho
Option IX
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.
—Rumi
Option X
Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.
—Maya Angelou