For the first ritual cutting at his brit mila, our son’s senses were blurred. He was not at an age of great discernment, and he had been plied with sweet wine. For his second cut — the first time scissors touched his hair — he was alert and attuned to the moment, holding court among family and friends as he lead a song about the aleph bet.
We celebrated our son’s third birthday with a neo-traditional upsherin (“to shear off,” in German), a ritual that would recognize his first encounters with Torah learning and would express our own and our community’s aspirations that his learning be characterized by joy and empowerment and engender the pursuit of tzedek, justice, and responsibility. The day also marked our child’s developmental changes — an increased sophistication in his use of language and greater independence.
We made the first snip of hair at the spot where, one day, our son will place his tefillin, (tefillah shel rosh) on his head. He had already shown great enthusiasm for learning; we blessed him that he would grow to see the world with eyes shaped by Torah, that he would embrace his teachers, and that he would always have a great appetite for learning.
A person is like a tree
Jewish sages have connected the practice of waiting three years before the first cutting of a child’s hair with the Torah’s requirement that a newly planted fruit tree must grow unharvested for three years. After three years, one brings the fruit in gratitude to Jerusalem. People are compared to trees several times in the Bible:
A person is like the tree of a field… (Deut. 20:19)
For as the days of a tree, shall be the days of my people.(Isaiah 65:22)
He will be like a tree planted near water… (Jeremiah 17:8)
And the practice of bringing first fruits to Jerusalem inspired us to incorporate community-building and tzedek values into our three-year-old son’s upsherin.
Sweetness of Torah
A verse from Ezekiel inspired our aspiration that Torah learning be sweet for our son: “And he said to me, ‘human child, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.’ Then I ate it: and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.” Ezekiel 3:3 So we made aleph bet cookies, and later, during the upsherin, sweetened them with additional honey before sharing and eating them. We also served cake onto which had been printed a photograph of our son holding a book of Talmud against a background of colorful Hebrew letters.
Learning leads to action
We believe that Torah study should lead to deeper engagement with practice so we introduced our son to the mitzvah of tzitzit — a mitzvah meant to remind us of all the mitzvot. To personalize this for him— and present him with something given to him by the loving community surrounding him — we encouraged guests to use colored sharpie markers to write blessings and messages, draw pictures, and sign their names on a tallit katan. We also presented him with a new kippah — crocheted by his father — to be worn after the haircut.
As a family, we chose two organizations that embodied the values of the day’s ceremony to receive tzedakah from our gathering: The Greater Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy, and Locks of Love. Finally, no simcha would be complete without music, so we invited friends to take out their musical instruments. The accordion and fiddle music inspired spontaneous circle dancing and, when our son was lifted up in his plastic Superman chair, he giggled with delight and great joy.
email print