A Problem of Iconography

The atara/neckband of Joshua's tallit is to be made out of the central part of a belt that was made out of units of Hmong work. I have seen lots of this work which is made by the Hmong of Cambodia. Their traditional handwork is a combination of reverse applique and embroidery. I have never seen the work done on such a refined scale. It's a really beautiful piece.

The central panel and the two outer ones presented something of an iconographic problem. The geometric design is one of crosses. If I were making something for Josh's home I would have no problem with having something that wasn't meant as a religious cross, but was simply a geometric design that resembled a cross .

I had brought the issue up to both Joshua and his mom. They were fine with the crosses. I was ok with the crosses in theory. But the closer the tallit comes to completion, the more it looks like a religious garment, but not one for Josh's religion. My husband took one look and said, "Wow!! that looks like a preist's garment !". He was right. It looked like a stole for a priest serving the Hmong community. If that were what I was making, that would be fine, but this is a tallit. I didn't want the people who sit behind Joshua in synagoue to say to themselves, "Why is Joshua wearing a Catholic preist's garment at services?"

I needed to do something that preserved the integrity of the beautiful Hmong work, but allowed the tallit to be a fully Jewish religious article. My first thought was to create a diamond of gold embroidery to break up the grid of crosses.

. The gold was too light . It just didn't work. My youngest nixed the fix. So I undid my work last night, something I just detest doing, and tried again. This time I satin stitched a back diamond that bisected all of the crosses on the diagonal. I then outlined the black with gold straight stitching, it relates to the orange stitching that is in the center of each of the black crosses.

I added a foil lined yellow glass bead to the center. The crosses seem less cross-like but the center seems too weak against the neighboring red panels.

The red bead did the trick.

I hope that Joshua and his mom understand why I made the decision I did. I wouldn't normally tamper with old hand work, especially work as lovely as this is. A tallit is a religious garment incorporating the central religious iconography of another religion into a tallit is just not the way to go.

Now, it's time to sew it all together.

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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