by Catherine Grossman

A Quiet Ritual for Burying the Baby’s Placenta

If this isn't prayer, what is?

The ground was hard and my progress was slow. The metal edge of my shovel only chipped away at the cold clay. I worked harder, and my breathing grew heavy. A wedge shaped piece came loose and I set it next to the hole. My placenta wasn’t that large, but I wanted a hole at least two feet deep.

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Prayer

The articles in this special section:

Bound for Glory: Females in Phylacteries

by Ruth Horowitz

How an otherwise non-religious woman finds herself transformed by tefillin 

A Quiet Ritual for Burying the Baby’s Placenta

by Catherine Grossman

When the time feels just right, Grossman goes modestly out into the chill evening air and says a prayer to honor the tissues which sustained her baby daughter in the womb.

Nursing in Shul

by Aurora Mendelsohn

Mendelsohn gives us traditional Jewish texts we’ve never really considered before, all about breasts and their natural uses. Plus…Rabbi Susan Schnur in conversation with Susan Weidman Schneider on God-the-Breast and more.