Welcome to the World Ayelet Blum!

Welcome aboard!  Welcome to a new country, a new school, a new house, even a new millennium.  Quite often, we bless a new person, in a new place with good luck, success, happiness and health.  Many times we extend our warm wishes to a newcomer, voicing our wishes that his absorption into the new environment will be easy.  That the adjustments he or she must make will not be too difficult.  That he or she will be successful in whatever new thing they chose to do.  That the transition is smooth.  It’s mostly a statement suggesting that we will help in making his or her new experiences easier, happier.  In welcoming a person, we extend a helping hand, sometimes a shoulder, an advice.  We promise to smooth things up, to remove obstacles.  In welcoming a person we state that we are on their side.

Sometimes the person we welcome is a brand new one.  Sometimes the environment is our world.  They know nothing, they trust everything.  They assume, and they are correct, that they will be fed, clothed, changed and cared for.  They are right.  Welcoming a new baby to this world takes a completely different meaning.  When I see a baby, my own or someone else’s, something in me, must be genetic, wants to hold, to comfort, to feed, to burp, to change, to tell stories, to put to sleep and in general to remove all obstacles, real or imaginary.

Ayelet Blum, you have a great name, wonderful parents, really cool uncles and aunts.  Not to mention grandparents.  And while we can’t promise you a great world, we can promise you that we will do the best we can to make it better for you…

Welcome to the world, Ayelet Blum.  Have a great journey!