A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Ish by Ish Robyro
One day, when was walking my daughter the mile home from preschool she turned to me and asked me, "Mama, what does, 'ishbyish robyro' mean?"
I was confused. I had never heard of the word robyro. I asked her to use it in a sentence and she began to sing...
Like many parents who children mispronounce things as little ones there are some favorites of those childhood malaprops. And some of them just become the right way to express something.
Each stripes in Miles' tallit is built up ish by ish, robyro.
These three ribbons a wide and a narrow in two shades of blue and the blue and gold military braidgot stacked and stitched, row by row .
Below you see a wedgewood blue diamond embroidered over the navy blue center bit of the military braid and two navy blue sets of scallops on either side.
I then added a stitch in a bronze metallic super fine thread to stitch down the darker and narrower ribbon.
The stark lines of the military braid gets broken up by the machine embroidery.
Each stripe on the tallit has been built up "ishbyish rowbyro". It takes a while.
But you end up with something that is visually rich. As I stitched away last night
I kept thinking about the Renaissance era churches we visited in Italy. They were covered in layers of frescoes mosaics and painted decoration. The total effect was stunning. I loved getting up close and seeing that each of those seemingly perfect surfaces was filled with slight variations, slips of the hand and things not quite perfect. The slight imperfections invite your eye to engage with the surface a bit more. I am getting close to done with the stripe portion of this tallit.
Since this is Friday, and since you asked so nicely,we are having another round of limoo chicken tonight.
I soaked the limoo(dried limes) in hot water for a few minutes so I could crack them open and do a better job of leaching their incredible flavor into the cooking juices.
I also added a few large black cardamom pods to the pan and some black pepper. I turned all of the open limoo edged down so more flavor could be released into the chicken juice.
My house smells so good right now that I could change admission for folks to come by and take a good whiff.
I still haven't made salad or a grain. I am warming up some soup that has been waiting in the freezer for just this moment.
And to let you know just how cold it is today....
The water tower across Broadway has a slight leak.
Shabbat Shalom! Feeling anxious as we head into this Shabbat of another return of hostages..
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...
I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...
My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...
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