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New Jewish Rituals Offer Comfort to Women Who Have Had Abortions ‘Not being able to process it religiously makes it a very hard experience. We thought it’s important to give it a voice.’ By Josie Glausiusz|August 13, 2013 12:00 AM ...Mayyim Hayyim is not the first institution to offer a Jewish ritual for abortion: In 1998, Conservative Rabbi Amy Eilberg published a post-abortion ritual in Moreh Derekh, the Rabbinical Assembly’s “Rabbi’s Manual” that serves as the Conservative community’s guide to Jewish life-cycle events. Eilberg, who is now on the faculty of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in Brighton, Minn., says she wrote the “grieving ritual following termination of pregnancy” out of “a general Jewish feminist awareness that the tradition was created substantially by men . . . who didn’t necessarily know what women, if they had agency, would want to have included in the tradition.” Eilberg recalls that in her work as a hospital chaplain in the early 1990s, she met many women who had experienced a pregnancy loss or termination. “Whether it was because of an abnormality, whether it was because conception was unintended, and the mother discerned that she was not going to be able to take care of this baby, or God forbid it was a rape, whatever the circumstances, I frequently encountered grief and sometimes significant ambivalence of ‘am I doing the right thing?’ ” These women often sought reassurance from their loved ones or community, she said, “that there is some way to sanctify the decision that I’ve made.”