More work on Hannah's atara

Sometimes a bit of obsessiveness is a good thing. I had decided yesterday that just having the verbs from the paragraph that is the biblicalsource for the commandment of Tzitzit/ritual fringes wasn't enough. so I added vines to the center square .

Then I fused fleece to more of the same blue/purple silk shantung, stitched the squares, richt sides tugether, and turned them right side out. Yes they looked cute. But they could look cuter. I quilted around both the perimeter and around the inside border of the letters. I realised that the whole thing would be yet cuter, if I just stitched the squares in the middle so the squares would be somewhat free floating.

Further cuteness could be achieved if I stiched the center with a beaded flower. It's good my daughter is in China so she couldn't come home and say, " Too much time on your hands, Mama???". It isn't an issue of that at all, but rather more of a case of one idea leading to the next. That and the fact that the more i like a client, the more good stuff I think of throwing in.

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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...

Revisiting a beloved piece

About thirty years ago I was asked to make an atara to be a gift for Jerry. Jerry was one of the founders of an alternative Hebrew school in our neighborhood. Jerry was also one of the people who forged an alliance between the older mostly German members of our synagogue and the young counter culture former ( and still hippies) that were the new lifeblood of our congregation nearly fifty years ago. At that point, it wasn't the easiest marriage between the old guard and the new guard but Jerry helped to break down the barriers between the suit wearing older folks and the ripped up jeans wearing younger folks. Jerry has prepared thousands of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. He is a frequent and excellent Torah reader and for many years he organized Morning Minyan. Jerry had often said that his favorite biblical text is the following: (יא) כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ (יב) לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑...

sarah in nyc

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