By Judy Slome Cohain

Consider the many symbolic Jewish rituals that accompany death: a week of shiva, the shloshim, the visits to the cemetery, the classes held in honor of the person who passed away, the phone calls and informal visits. What I have learned is this: People know how to act around death. The closest relatives are allowed to be very emotional, the larger circle of relatives must keep their emotions somewhat under control, while still connecting to the death. You can see in their eyes that they are thinking about the one who passed away, connecting to their memories of the loved one. They are feeling the loss. Later, they will think about their own mortality.

But the same is not true for birth. Only a handful of couples connect to what has taken place after a baby is born. Most people ask how much the baby weighs. Weight is actually only a small part of the newborn evaluation. The most important criterion pertains to the baby’s breathing, heartbeat, color and reflexes. People are culturally conditioned to think that birth is something like a head-on collision. They breathe deeply when it is over, and ask the baby’s weight.

It is said in the rabbinic writings that birth is a greater miracle than bringing the dead back to life. When you raise the dead, you are bringing back what once was. But when you create new life, the rabbis reasoned, you are creating something from nothing. If you can learn to connect to death, it is only fair that you learn to connect to birth.

Connecting to birth generally means connecting to the baby and connecting to the miracle. Connecting to the baby means really looking at the baby, like an artist studying her masterpiece, intensely looking at who this baby is. Connecting to the miracle means celebrating the miracle and how ones life will completely change. Just as we reflects on our past year of life on Yom Kippur, on the day of birth one prays to Hashem.

Sometimes a doctor tells someone their loved one has three months to live. But when the person actually dies three months later, it is often still a shock. One minute they were breathing and holding your hand, the next minute, nothing. All the warning that death was coming usually does not lessen the grief when it comes. The same should hold true for the feelings surrounding birth. You hoped there really is a baby in there, but still, when it actually comes out, BREATHING AND ALIVE, it is nothing short of miraculous! Sound the shofar! Scream high to the heavens! You have given me the thing I most desired, the most special gift anyone can receive. If this gift were ever taken away, I would shriek with horror and pain. So where are the shrieks now that the gift is given and here to stay? Shout loudly: I promise to give this gift everything I can! I am on my knees with gratitude!

There is a lot of room for variation. Just as everyone cries a little differently in grief, everyone connects to joy differently. Create and share a new ritual that will grow and be copied by others so that one day, a new young generation will face birth with the same knowledge as they face death. And even if the newspapers continue to cover only head-on collisions and death, that doesn’t mean that you cannot celebrate life. Of the deepest most ecstatic miracles, birth is it. Demand not to miss it. Let it be the dream that you go to sleep with forever.

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