Banging my head against a problem over and over.

Diane is a bible scholar and a good friend. I have made at least three tallitot for her. The year my father was dying, Diane came up with another idea for a tallit. My husband couldn’t understand why Diane would want yet another tallit, let alone, another made by me. Diane’s mother came from the Syrian Jewish community. Diane wanted the tallit to honor her past. She hoped that I could make the tallit in the form of a Moroccan star. Something like this.

( Image source http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/image/160311/moroccan_star )

I loved the idea. Then it got a little complicated. Diane wanted the tallit made out of one layer of pieced silks, no lining. She wanted the tallit made out of crayon- bright colors. My other problem is figuring out how to do the geometry in my math challenged brain. Diane was kind enough to realize that while my father was dying, I simply didn’t have enough brain power left to figure out how to make the tallit. Diane was kind enough to allow the project to sit on the shelf until I did have enough brain power to figure it out.

We did however, go fabric shopping. We went to Rosen & Chadick and bought a selection of eye searing silks. I made one attempt to piece the silks. It was a complete ( and expensive and dispiriting ) disaster. I put the bag of colorful silk away for many months. I kept thinking about how to create this pieced tallit in one layer and not have me kill myself. Another complication, I know my work is pretty, but precision is not my natural way to do things. I kept trying to figure out how to make this tallit in my head. Mostly, thinking about this tallit made my head hurt. I would get my head partially around a solution and then it would slip away. It felt like I was doing calculus.

After a very long time, I had an epiphany. I decided to pieced the tallit onto a base of silk organza. The organza is stiff. Creating a Moroccan star is easy if you fold paper into squares and then on the diagonals. I pressed the organza to help create the shapes I needed and then marked the shapes I wanted with a Sharpee.

So, after a long long time for mulling, the center motif is done. Once all of the silk is pieced, I will cut away the organza and cover all of the joins with black ribbon.

I’m so relieved that I finally got my pea brain to figure this out.

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

Search This Blog