Natalee's tallit- tying the tzitzit

I know that most adults act like twelve and thirteen year old kids ought to be locked up for a few years and let out once the hormones reach an even keel again. I love working with that age kid. That's probably a good thing, because most of my clients are exactly that age. I love how they, like cartoon characters, are in the process of walking off that cliff that is childhood, and into thin air.

I really love how when I get it right, with one of my bar- mitzvah kids, whatever their prickly relationship might be with their parents, they are so completely happy when they pick up their tallit and realize that they have actually been listened to.

All this by introduction to Natalee's giant ear to ear grin when she picked up her tallit today. Natalee, her mom, and our mutual buddy Lorraine, who purchased the tallit as Natalee's bat- mitzvah gift came by to tie the tzitzit. Lorraine is an accomplished knitter. Natalee, like every kid who has gone to camp in the last twenty years has made dozens of friendship bracelets. Natalee's mom was a little nervous about her ability to do a good job tying the tzitzit.

A couple of years ago, I did a tallit making class for kids. There are two main ways to tie tzitzit, the regular wrap way, and the far lovlier way with a half hitch knot. All of the boys had spent some some working with an occupational therapist. All of the boys has small motor skills issues. Nevertheless, I got each of them to tie the tzitzit the extra lovely way. I figure that if I can get a class of eleven year old boys to do it, then a nervous adult can do it as well if you break down the task into easy to do segments.

So Natalee's mom did just fine, despite her worries,

I wanted the tallit to nod to Natalee's Chinese heritage. I didn't want the tallit to look like "Mulan's tallit". I think that I was sucessful in doing just that. Natalee is a pretty quiet kid. But she had a great big goofy grin on her face the whole time she was here.

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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