Further adventures on Mimi's tallit

Earlier this week, or perhaps it was last week, I had cut stencils for the lettering on Mimi’s tallit. I applied the letters using oil paint sticks in a mix of copper, gold and blue. The letters didn’t quite stand out enough from the deep blue o the silk so I then painted the outlines with a fine brush. it’s better, but still not quite right.

So now, it’s onto the next step. I underlined the silk with cotton flannel, and am satin stitching around the letters with the dark bronze metallic thread. the thread is not really a sewing thread but a lurex thread meant to be used in a knitting machine. The thread is persnickety but the results are worth the additional effort. I now have four letters completed , but you can see how much better the letters look with the metallic stitching.
When I work, I often have music or the radio going in the background. It keeps me on track. I often find that the music threads through my work. This is especially true be cause I often listen to Chassidic music as I sew.
I felt that connection especially poignantly today as I was working. Earlier today I read this beautiful essay On being an unofficial mourner, by the lovely Anya Manning about the death of her future brother in law. Anya’s in laws are very dear friends of ours. The friendship goes back decades. As I read Anya’s essay, and as I was working and thinking about her essay, I was listening to a Bobov recording that included an especially haunting version of the melody that is traditionally sung during the veiling of the bride at Jewish wedding.

It brought me back to Anya’s wedding where all of us were filled with both deep joy and fathomless sadness. I have never heard that melody sung with as much intensity or with as many tears. Some of that intensity of feeling is being sewn into Mimi’s tallit.

Shavuot begins right after Shabbat. If you want to make blintzes I posted this Anarchist blintzes recipe previously. The recipe comes from an almost relative ( my aunt's best friend who married a cousin) who came from a family of anarchists. It's nice to have such illustrious relatives.

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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