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.