נוטה שמים כיריעה

I am just beginning work on a tallit for Y. I know her parents from before they got married. Y’s grandmother died just a few months ago. Y was close to her grandmother. We may incorporate some textiles that had belonged to Y’s grandmother into the tallit.

Y is quiet and thoughtful. She’s one of those kids who needs time to think things over. because she needs time to process ideas and to think about what it is that she really wants , we divided our design session into two parts.

Y is a small kid. Probably, like her mother she will reach her full height once she is in her early 20’s. At this moment Y deals with both the gifts and difficulties of being much smaller than most of her contemporaries. On the one hand, strangers tend to think that she is brilliant. On the difficult side of the scale she looks far younger than her peers.

Y chose the verse

“( God) stretches out the heavens like a curtain”

from the Psalm we recite when we put on the tallit for her atara/neckband. She wanted the stripes look like sky with pomegranates and leaves strewn about. Yesterday, I began establishing the sky.

Y chose silk tussah for her tallit. I cut it to be as large as it could possibly be and fit her now. the plan is to add two stripes to expand the tallit when Y reaches her full height.

Today I painted pomegranates. First I painted the basic shape.

Then I began shading the fruits.

I then added some leaves.

Then a bit more shading and some gold highlights.

The colors have to cure for a bit and then I will press them to make them permanent.

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

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sarah in nyc

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