Work completed and work in progress

On the work completed front, Jane came to pick up her tallit.

I was delighted to see how pleased she was with the finished piece. Like with all my clients, I showed Jane how to tie her tzitzit. Most people find it a bit of a struggle at first. After all, it is a new skill. Sometimes I have to be a bit more hands on as the tzitzit were being tiedif people are struggling. Jane's hands were just so deft. All I had to do was watch her tie the knots.

When Jane was about half way through tying her tzitzit she commented how the work she was putting in made her realize how much time and work I had put into the tallit. I had put in lots of time. Each step raised questions about the best way of solving the problems presented. Some of the problems had me puzzling out the solutions for a couple of weeks before I could continue. However, I could not be happier with how it all came together in the end.

I love how this piece honors Jane's grandmother and great grandmother who had first owned the special linens. This tallit also honors the women who made the lace and spun and wove the linen.

The work in progress is the work I have been doing on family history and genealogy. For several years I have been working on this project of uncovering the past with my cousin Oren in Israel who I know since he was a baby. Oren is now the father of children and an actual adult.

Delving into family history has put me in contact with Jeff. Jeff's grandmother and my grandfather are cousins who came from the same town, Frampol, in the Ukraine. Jeff and I have not exactly sorted out how we are related but a less than usual last name from a tiny town and too many names in each of our family tree repeating has convinced both of us that we are mishpoche/family.

It was at Jeff's urging that I went to the court house in Brooklyn and found my grandfather's Declaration of Intention, which was I guess the first step in applying for citizenship.

I had known that my grandfather was born in Frampol. I didn't know that his last place of residence before he came to New York was the place he lists as Zorno Ostrow. Today it is known as Cherny Ostrov. It's about thirty miles from Frampol.

Jeff was kind enough to send me photos of Cherny Ostrov taken by another geneologist Bobby Furst. I share them with you here.

My mother once asked her father what life was like in his town in Europe. My grandfather replied, " It was blotte. Nothing but blotte.". Blotte, is Yiddish for mud. As I looked through Bobby Furst's photos and saw the marshy landscape I realized that it must have been

a particularly muddy place.

When I showed these photos to my cousin Bonnie she recalled that my grandfather went away from home to attend Yeshivah. Perhaps it was here in Cherni Ostrov.

My mother would have loved seeing these pictures. She would have been tickled to see that her father's description of his home town was right on the money.

Lastly, tomorrow morning, My husband and I are leaving for a few weeks in California. We are looking forward to spending time with his sister and her husband. I will try to post about our adventures, on the road

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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...

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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