sarah in nyc

One normally does not think of cooking as an upper body strengthening activity, but this morning it certainly was. After I did my weights work out. I put up the challah dough.  I don’t use a bread machine.  You need to position your body  so all of your weight flows from  your feet to your hips through your arms to knead the dough.  I usually do the first kneading until I have a slight burn in my upper arms.  Here is that dough all smooth and ready to rise. Then I got to work on the noodle dough. I used semolina flour.  The had kneading is hard. The dough is much stiffer than the challah dough. Again I knead the dough until it is as smooth as the proverbial baby’s tushie.   The semolina flour makes kneading the challah feel like it’s no work at all.   By time time I’m done with  kneading the noodles  I feel like Wonder Woman. I left the ball of dough to rest underneath a bowl, let the challah dough do it’s rise and ...

My mother’s family was famed for it’s singing.  My mother’s great grandfather lived in a town in Podolia, in the Ukraine called Frampol.  Apparently, Zalman Paysakh used to sing in his sleep. He had quite a sweet voice, and I guess there wasn't all that much in the way of nightlife in Frampol. So people used to gather outside of Zalman Paysakh’s window to hear him sing in his sleep. My grandfather inherited his father’s sweet voice. Singing z’mirot,   the Shabbat table songs was an important part of my mother’s family life. Z’mirot   were an important part of my own Shabbat experience growing up.  Some of the melodies we used were relatively new. Some of the Chassidic melodies were set to marches or to waltzes, others were more Middle Eastern in flavor. Every Friday night we began singing z’mirot   with Kol Mikadesh sh’viii  All who sanctify the seventh day.   the melody wasn't exactly a melody, more a very old world chan...

Last night, the phone rang at about 4:00 a.m. It was our door-man, telling me very slowly that the super was on his way to our apartment.   I greatly admire our doorman for figuring out that one speak really slowly and clearly to people when you call them at 4:00 a.m. Apparently, a pipe on the 8th floor had burst. It was raining heavily in the closet in my kids’ room.   Last night this closet was completely full.  My husband had the brains to empty the closet.  I did not have that level of cognition. All I wanted to do was lie down. Let that be a lesson to you, don’t ask me to do any complicated problem solving in the middle of the night   My husband completely emptied the closet as my boys slept. Today I have been doing laundry. My kids’ hamper lives in that closet. The sleeping bags live in that closet. All of our luggage and tote bags lives there too. .   This is the floor of my kids’ room. It looked worse earlier today.   ...

When my mother was young she used to embroider. She used to embroider challah covers. It used to be possible to buy embroidery designs printed on linen, like the one pictured above, in Jewish book stores. The design is a standard one. You have all of the symbols for Shabbat, candles, challah, wine cup and decanter. the text reads “ In honor of Shabbat and Holidays”. If I remember correctly, my mother started this challah cover while she was in college and living with her older sister in Brooklyn.  I guess life got in the way of finishing this challah cover and it got put away.  My mother taught my older sister how to embroider when she was about 12. My sister  started out working from kits and then progressed to do some really elaborate work. At some point during her embroidery career she put some work into this challah cover. The Passover when I was 7, my mother gave me a Jewish embroidery set as an afikoman present. The kit came with a challah cover and a matza ...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. My family, including my mother and sister went out to Brooklyn to join family there. Unfortunately I had a bad cold. I stayed home and dozed on the couch while watching Netflix and blowing my nose. My big take-away from the experience is that I think Celebrity Rehab must be written for the addicted. I have never seen  a show that assumes that the viewer has zero memory of what took place five minutes ago. I am probably one of the only people in America who didn’t overeat yesterday. Given that I’m not particularly fond of turkey skipping a day of it is fine in my book. It would have been nice though to spend time with extended family. But like every week, Thursday is followed by Friday and I needed to put together Shabbat dinner.  I’m slightly less sick so my cooking is not endangering my family. I made meatballs with lots of ground up veggies.  I also made this kale salad out of shredded kale, roasted clementine sections dried cranberries a...

I know I tend to make clothing quickly. Recently though I have rediscovered a cut of dress that I used to wear in my early 20’s.   The wedge shaped dresses of the early 1980’s were made for my body. While I am a whole lot heavier than I was in those days, my body is more or less the same shape. I have noticed both on other sewing blogs as well as on the fashion blogs that those simple dress shapes have returned.  Last year I had gone to an exhibit at FIT about Japanese fashion and those simple shapes popularized by the Japanese designers in the early 1980’s suddenly looked both fresh and grown up.   I also realize that while I crave screaming bright colors in the summer, the colder months have me craving grey. Grey! It’s so cheerful! It’s my cold weather happy color. Much of my colder weather wardrobe has been worn to death. It was time to make cold weather clothing.   This space dyed knit, made out of a mystery fiber, was my first experiment in a wed...

Today I got a thoughtful reply from My Rabbi. Sorry that it has taken me a little time to think this through. I agree with you that this really is most ugly, and enraging. I mean, the Jews for Jesus who make this for themselves ... what can you do? This is the least of the things we would argue with them about. But to give this to practicing Jews is surely meant to deceive and to weasel their ways into the normative Jewish community. Halakhically, we tend mostly to focus on the tzitzit themselves, and less the garment to which they are attached. So it is the tzitzit strings -- not the garment that bears them -- that must be from wool spun specifically for the purpose of tzitzit, and tied by someone themselves commanded to follow this mitzvah (male or female, even according  to  the Shulhan Arukh). Arguably, if you removed all the decorative pinot and the atara, and removed the tzitzit that are there now, and threw all those things away or burned them, I think you could ...

We are used to small Manhattan supermarkets. The massive supermarkets that most of America tends to shop in often makes my family silly. One of our favorite things to do when we go on vacation is to go to the supermarket. This summer our youngest became obsessed with the giant jars of cheese balls. He kept lobbying for us to buy a jar.   At one point he went on a riff about how he wanted  a jar so when it was emptied he could turn it into a space helmet.   This weekend, we attended the bar- mitzvah of the son of a dear friend . Sunday morning we helped sort through the left overs from the many events. Most of a jar of cheese balls was left over. Yes, we brought it home.   My son was delighted. Last night he joked that he would love for me to make him a cheese-ball sandwich for lunch. I did. It’s made out of cheese balls and melted cheddar cheese on home made challah.  When my son comes home from school I will find out of the reality matched hi...

Yesterday was my synagogue art show. I was delighted to meet one of the readers of this blog ( and her husband) who came from Brooklyn—and biked most of the way to see the show and say hello. It always sorts of amazes me that I have readers that just found this blog and are loyal readers.    The show was better attended than I had expected, but my expectations were really low. I always wonder after the effort of getting my work together, schlepping my stuff, setting up and being there if such a show is really worth the enormous physical effort. I don’t like sounding like a sore head, but when I think about  the financial payback for all of the effort it’s just depressing.   At the show my friend Ruth brought me  the object pictured below.   What do you think it is? Actually, at first glance it looks an awful lot like a tallit.  but looking at it a bit more closely, it may not be a tallit at all.   This object was a gift from a...

My older son had issues with auditory processing.  One of the nice side effects  is that he inadvertently renames many aspects of every day life. When he was little, beef became “beep”.   We LOVE beep.  This is a beep Shabbat.  I coated the roasts with ground coriander, cinnamon, ginger, paprika and coffee.  I will make a barbecue –type sauce to put over the meat  when I heat it up for Shabbat dinner. I will be puttin ght meat in the oven at 4:25 because that’s when Shabbat starts, but we won’t be eating dinner until 8:00.   We are also eating chicken soup which I began last night. I will strain my youngest’s serving in a tea strainer. The rest of us will eat the soup unstrained. In the parlance of our house, soup is either served with or without stuff.   We are also eating… Not yet pictured, is the cabbage salad that isn’t yet made.

Jews are usually described as “ The People of the Book”.  Words, and lots of them, are central to Jewish worship.  Some of my fondest memories  growing up was doing the call and response of High Holiday piyutim / liturgical poems. My father in his role as rabbi would call out those tooth breaking lines, and we, my mother and sisters and I, would lob those verses right back at him from the front row. Yes, there were another 300 people in the room but reciting piyutim always felt as intimate as a father playing catch in the back yard with a child. My parents also believed strongly in the value of having a nice handwriting.  One of my mother’s teachers was either Sol or Tzvi Sharfstein, who standardized Hebrew cursive writing in America. So when I learned how to read Hebrew, my mother also sat and taught me how to write Hebrew, folding each machberet / notebook page into four columns and having me practice writing each letter ( from the top down, so they would be...

We are all familiar with the old adage of “six degrees of separation”. However, it the Jewish world it often seems like  three or even two degrees of separation is  more the norm. Maybe fifteen years ago, my friend Doris  brought some friends to my house. They asked me to design a presentation gift for a member of their community.  ( I am not going to  tell the long and charming story of how the woman who was being honored was the daughter of the man who convinced my father to become a rabbi.) One of the women who was part of that small group became one of my favorite clients.  Over the years I have made lots of pieces to mark special events in Rena’s large extended family.   For the past several years, each time one of Rena’s nieces or nephews become engaged I have made a challah cover and a havdalah bag for the couple. Each one is made to suit who that couple is. My niece has been going out with a nice young man since her freshman year of colle...

  For the past couple of nights I have been so cold when I got into bed that I put a sweater on over my pj’s. As I put on the sweater, I thought about the folks in the Rockaways, and Coney island and Atlantic City who have no power and are REALLY cold as they go to sleep. So if life isn’t bad enough for the people just starting to get out from under Sandy, I looked out the window and saw ----snow.   This isn’t the pretty fluffy stuff kids dream of. This is the wet soggy snow that makes even the young feel arthritic and old.   It’s even starting to stick. Most years, I react like a five year old to the first snow.  It usually feels like a party.  This year, as I think about my fellow New Yorkers who live by the sea, I really don’t feel like celebrating the first snow of the season.   My older son though, hasn’t seen snow in three years. he’s delighted,  even by this flying slop.

Like many of my neighbors, and many of my fellow Americans I went to vote today. I always  vote, even when I know nearly nothing about the candidates. But it’s my civic duty to vote, so I do. Usually, it takes nearly no time to vote at PS 163 around the corner from my house. At some of the smaller more local elections I may be one of only a handful of voters in the gym of 163.  National elections always bring out a bigger crowd. This is the line I stood on today at about noon. Yes, the line was long, but in 2008 it went all the way to Columbus Avenue and doubled back to Amsterdam Avenue. This is what I saw once I got up to the top of the school steps. Some people were spreading the false rumor that if you knew your election district you didn’t have to wait on line. Every few minutes a parade of people would walk in the school and announce that they knew their election district and demand to go in. Those poor people had to go to the back of the line. Each person I spo...