Brit Photography in Jerusalem
The first time the whole family meets around this child.
A brit lasts twenty minutes, and most of it happens at once. There is no second take. So I arrive before it starts — I learn the room, find the light, and decide where I will stand before there is anything to look at.
I photograph the ceremony, but not only the ceremony. The grandmother waiting off to one side, the older siblings who do not quite understand what is happening, the table the parents laid out last night. Those are the photographs people look at ten years later.
Many of the families I photographed at a brit came back for the chalaka, the bar mitzvah, and later the chuppah. It starts here.