keeper of the textiles part 1

As promised, here are some photographs of some of the textiles that have been entrusted to my care. I will keep adding to this exhibit in the next several months.

My father's first pulpit was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The kilt pictured above is made out of Nova Scotia tartan wool. My oldest sister was born in Halifax and received a baby sized pleated skirt with straps when she was born.

My parents stayed close to several of their Halifax friends. When they would visit us, in Quincy, they would often bring a skirt. We all went to Halifax when I was 12. We all got kilts. My friennd Shauna who grew up in Halifax tells me that these treasured kilts are in the eyes of Haligonians, not the treasures we assumed them to be, but the Haligonian equivalent of an I heart NY t-shirt.

Never the less, my daugher has worn some of these skirts over the years. One is with her in China and will be worn against the chilly winds of Harbin.

As this is being written, I am hand washing two of the skirts.The wool has gotten brittle and a wash and a rinse in hair conditioner seems to be doing the trick and making the wool wearable again.

This is my parents' Chuppah. Uncle Sol owned a fabric store on the Lower East Side. He had this brocade chuppah made for my parents. My father married many couples under this chuppah over the years.

When I was 16, one of my father's congregants remarried after being widowed for a long time. She was probably in her 70's. I was one of the chuppah pole holders in the ceremony that was performed in her condo. For years after she used to love to tell people that I held the chuppah at her wedding.

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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!!!

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...

A Passover loss

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 ...

sarah in nyc

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