A T’fillin bag for Zachary

Zachary is my neighbor. He’s a really delightful kid. We met before his bar mitzvah to learn a bit about tallit. Zachary wore his deceased grandfather’s tallit at his bar mitzvah.

Zachary and I discussed what I could make for him as a gift. He needed a bag for his t’fillin. I suggested a text,that is recited while wrapping the straps of the t’fillin.

I will betroth you to me forever

I will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice and with mercy.

I will betroth you to me with faithfulness

Hosea 2-21-22

I painted the text onto heavy weight black satin in gold paint. I just used the words “ I will betroth” once.

I shadow quilted the borders. For you non schmatta geeks, that means decorative stitching in the same color as the face fabric with a heavy filling beneath the face fabric. the heavy filer in this case was an old heavy weight wool skirt.

This is the back of the bag.

I painted the gold vines and then did diamond quilting with gold metallic thread. I didn’t measure the lines but simply eyeballed the placement of the stitches. I would not suggest that you measure the spacing with a ruler, but visually it reads as regular and that’s good enough for me.

Doing that sort of decorative stitching always seems like a great idea before I begin. Usually about half way through I realize that I must have been crazy to come up with an idea that is both time consuming and incredibly boring. This time I didn’t get cranky. I think allowing myself the freedom to eyeball the stitches meant that more of my brain was engaged in the process. I’m happy to report that I wasn’t ready to commit murder by the time I was done. Instead I had entered a happy little Zen zone.

Zachary had requested that his t’fillin bag be yellow and black. I couldn’t quite figure out how to do that and have the bag stay on this side of tasteful. I did the lettering and all of the other decorations in a yellow gold, but I knew I had to include some actual yellow in the bag.

I lined the bag in this wonderful yellow striped tie silk. The sharp eyed among you can see the teeny dots of hand stitching near the zipper.

I gave Zachary his t’fillin bag last night. He was genuinely pleased. I love how enthusiastic he was about the verse. His mother loved the obsessive stitching. The yellow silk lining was the icing on the cake.

I have the feeling that most kids don’t expect to see their desires listened to and made into an actual object.

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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