Freedom and reality

B and I attended the same Jewish day school. B was two years ahead of me. We had never spoken. Given how small the school was, ( there were 28 in my graduating class) we certainly knew who one another was.
B, now lives around he corner from my husband’s closest friend. A couple of years ago, while visiting my husband's friend B. and I went for a long walk and had a long heart to heart about our school experiences. Despite never having spoken during our school years, we really knew one another quite well.

A few weeks ago B. and her family hosted us for the weekend. Just before we left, B. handed me her tallit. she loved the tallit but hated the atara/neckband pictured here. I suggested that the new atara serve as B’s gateway into prayer and that she should think about a verse that would be that gateway.

A week or so ago, B called . She had chosen the verse

“ And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the water”

Many of you may recognize that verse from the beginning of the Genesis.

I love B’s choice. I asked B if she wanted to discuss the design with me. She said something that is both very freeing and completely terrifying. She said that she completely trusted me as an artist. despite the freedom that B. gave me, the atara had to fit with the existing tallit.

I thought that I wouild have the text hovering between the sky and the water. The hard part for me was making the atara work with the existing pink stripes.

I decided that rather than making a blue sky, I would show a rosy sunrise/sunset sky. I dyed a length of heavy, heavy silk satin.

Here is the silk I dyed next to the pink dyed by the artist who made the tallit.

I then began to add text.

So far it reads “ And the spirit of God hovers”.

I then had to build the water. Such a grand statement needs not a river but an ocean to stand for the water. I fused some blue charmeuse to interfacing and cut it into waves. I sealed the edges with acrylic paint and painted more watery movement on the waves. I plan to layer the waves . I still have to sew everything down.

I have lots of decisions to make as I work, but I’m happy about how this is shaping up.

So far the hardest thing about working on this atara was removing the old atara. The stitching was teeny and worst of all was white on white. To complicate matters a bit more the tallit itself is not the sturdiest of silks. I didn't curse all that much while pulling out the stitches. But, yes, one could go blind doing this sort of work all of the time.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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