Skip to main content

Farteiched und Fabessered

In the heyday of  Yiddish theatre Shakespeare's plays were regularly advertised as being “ farteiched und fabessered”, translated and improved.  That wonderful expression is used to describe anything that is slightly improved.

So I would like to show you two pieces that have been farteiched und farbessered by me.

I had completed this challah cover earlier this summer. The text comes from the Shabbat Z’mirot, the liturgical poems that are sung sung the Shabbat meals.  This text reads “ This day for Israel is light and joy.”

yom zehyom zeh (1)

My friend wanted to purchase it for her niece's bat mitzvah. The niece loves pink and baby blue. I told my friend that I would over paint the challah cover so it would read as pinker.

yom zeh (6)yom zeh (3)yom zeh (2)yom zeh (1)

I think that the pink actually improves the piece. I never would have thought to add it on my own. This is why I love working with clients. Their requests and needs usually push me to do better work.

 

This matzah cover was also pert of that same order and also needed a bit of improvement.

matza cover b'chol

I had made it several years ago, before I could draft my own letters. the cover is supposed to re-create the experience of walking through the parted seas. The text reads ‘ In every generation…” I hope that the rest of the verse ‘” each person is supposed to see themselves as if they themselves left Egypt”.

So, this is what I did…

This is before…

b'chol (1)

and after

b'chol (2)

b'chol

b'chol (2)

b'chol (3)

b'chol (4)

Labels:

Comments

  1. marolshSeptember 14, 2013 at 11:09 PM

    Sarah, I love what you did with the purple and white ribbon! It's wonderfully evocative of rushing water, and adds the element that makes the story real and immediate.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more