A blast from my past…

I had made this atara/tallit neckband several years ago for the father of a client.

My client's father was a Cohen . I chose a text from the blessings we recite before the recitation of the Priestly blessing in synagogue.

for You alone we worship in awe

In the center of the atara I created a stylized priestly breastplate. We don’t really know the stones used in the breastplate (despite the certainty of fundamentalists). I chose to represent the stones with twelve mirrors.

Each mirror was embroidered using a different stitch pattern.

The person sitting behind the wearer of the tallit sees their own face in the atara. You can create your own bit of exegesis here. I like how this piece involves both the wearer and his fellow worshipers.

In the next couple of days I will find out if I am to make another of these atarot. I hope I do.

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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...

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

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sarah in nyc

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