sarah in nyc

Yesterday morning I attended the funeral of the father of one of my elementary school classmates. In the afternoon I visited the apartment of a friend who has fairly recently moved to Riverside Drive.  Amazon.com Widgets My friend moved to an amazing building. This is what you see before you get into the lobby. One of my daughter's friends from preschool lived here. I haven't been in the building since 1993. My friend lives in an apartment that in real estate parlance has inside views, as opposed to river views.  I think I have become enough of a New Yorker that I completely fell in love with the views. I will share the pictures that I took. But rather than writing about the views, I am going to write about something that has been weighing heavily on me over the past several days. My grandfather, my mother's father arrived to New York using the visa of a relative who had died. My grandfather was an illegal immigrant. He wasn't able to become a citizen. M...

We are celebrating my husband's birthday, as we so often do in our family with a big dinner the Shabbat before the actual birthday. There is a massive quantity of meat. Amazon.com Widgets   There will be various other foods that make my husband happy that are not in usual circulation around here.  People we love will be around the table. There will be desserts. And as a Shabbat bonus, my cousin's joke video sent me down a rabbit hole. I found this amazing recording. Enjoy! Goldie Malavsky

I attended Orthodox day school. My secular studies teachers were all American born. Many, if not most, of my religious studies teachers were European born. None of my elementary school teachers talked about their experiences during the war. My high school teachers used to sometimes share their stories of survival.  My first Talmud teacher was Rabbi Isiah Wohlgemuth. His 7th and 8th class was a pretty good introduction to the vocabulary, the structure and the world of the Talmud. Where rabbi Wohlgemuth really shone was as a teacher of liturgy. Starting in eight grade and continuing through graduating from high school all students in our school took the once a week class, Biur HaT'filla ,  Explanation of the Prayers known as B"H.  The title doesn't really do justice to the curriculum. The class covered the structure of the prayer book and of each service and how our current prayer book evolved historically over time going from spontaneous expression at set times of the...

A while back I got an email from Gavi. She had found me through my blog and wondered if I could turn the lace from her wedding dress into the edging for her tallit. Gavi is tall. Her elegant wedding dress had a tulle split over-skirt all edged in lace. It was a lot of lace. Amazon.com Widgets My first problem was figuring out how to price such a task. My wise friends from my online sewing discussion group suggested that set a timer, unpick a foot a foot of lace, stitch it to a piece of silk and then see how long that took and then multiply that by the number of linear feet in the tallit. I'm glad that I have wise friends because otherwise I would have charged far too little for the task. On my own, I would have charged so little that workers in China would have refused to take the job for so little money for so much time. Luckily I have friends smarter than I am. For the last few days I have been slowly doing all of the hand embroidery for Charlie's tallit. My hand  a...

Thursday I received an email from my synagogue informing the community that  a friend had died, completely unexpectedly. Our friend was fit and strong a nice, nice man who has been a central part of my synagogue community. Amazon.com Widgets Our synagogue provides meals for mourners. In some synagogues that means a one size fits all deli tray is delivered to the Shiva house. My synagogue enlists members to provide meals. If you home is kosher you cook, if your home isn't kosher you either purchase the food at one of the local kosher markets or cook at the home of a friend who keeps kosher. I had volunteered to make a lasagna. I bought the cheeses on the way home from my friend's funeral. I got home and made the pasta for the lasagna.  As I rolled out the noodles I thought about my friend. My friend was a psychotherapist. He often passed on encouraging words to me when I was in the thick of caring for little kids. I thought about how despite being a man whose work...

Today I needed to buy a specific piece of fabric for a tallit. I needed white silk double georgette. For those of you who are not shchmatta geeks, georgette  is a thicker version of chiffon. A double georgette is translucent, rather than transparent and has a lovely soft drape.  Georgette was a staple for dresses in the 1920's and 30's. It isn't an easy fabric to find these days, particularly in silk but it is exactly what I need to make my next tallit. Amazon.com Widgets I called my pals at Rosen and Chadick to see if they had any in stock. They did. I took the subway, went to their new digs and purchased what I needed. I have been buying from Rosen& Chadick for a long time. I used to buy from the grumpy fathers of the current owners. The current owners, unlike their fathers treat each customer with warmth and respect. I have been shopping there for so long that each visit includes some catching up on each of our children. They do have a  website ...

I suppose that if I were smart I would have embroidered the letters for Charlie's atara/ neckband by machine. I was thinking about what a great kid Charlie is. I was thinking about the great dynamic between Charlie and his parents and his little brother. I was also thinking about how much I love Charlie's great aunt and uncle... So I decided to hand embroider all of the letters. This is not a rational decision. It is an interesting mental exercise following the outlines of the letters from the underside of the atara and then forming the stitches on the front of the piece. There is something sort of zen-like about doing the work. Embroidering the outline of the letters takes a great deal of focus, filling the letters in takes much less focus. I play mental games with myself to keep working. I work on random bits of the letters all over the piece. It allows me to pretend that this isn't quite as much work. Each stitch catches the light. the end re...

My husband will sometimes  ask me if it makes sense that the focus of my blog is so unfocused. Shouldn't I write exclusively about my work rather than all of those detours about cooking or walking down Broadway or living with my family? Amazon.com Widgets I realize though that all of the elements of my life sort of bleed into one another and all of that stew of my life goes into my work. My youngest has been home for winter break and returns to college tomorrow. While he has been home I have mended several pairs of his pants. While mending I have been thinking a whole lot about how mending fuses layers of fabric and thread and restores broken fabric. It's a task that is related to weaving and to felting. Usually it is a task that is completely utilitarian. It is possible though to use the same techniques in a decorative way. I had pieced this for the atara /neckband of Charlie's tallit. This was attractive but I had some worries about the ability of the silk to ta...

There are many things that are wonderful about living with adult children as opposed to living with toddlers.  Today I was grateful that I could wake up, put together the challah dough and then go back to sleep. Amazon.com Widgets My older son took care of the rest of the meal. He made chicken, roasted root vegetables and made okra. My son shaped the challot. I glazed them and baked them. This meant that I had time to edge Charlie's tallit, and bake dessert, lemon squares that will be cut into squares once the pan is cool. Shabbat Shalom!

After I met with Charlie and his family just after Thanksgiving, we each had a copy of this sketch, a basic diagram for his tallit with reminders for me about size and the design. We had decided on a wool/rayon blend for the main body of the tallit and a soft wool and Lurex blend for the stripe. Charlie also chose a beautiful black, metallic gold and white wide gros-grain ribbon to border the stripes.  Charlie wanted the colors in the atara/ neckband to refer to the colors in the tabernacle( blue, turquoise, purple and red). Very soon after we met  I started piecing silk for the atara. The time had come to actually assemble the tallit.  I cut all of the wool to size.  I suppose that if I had an assistant I would have given my assistant the task. However, I do every bit of work involved in making all of my pieces.   I have found that my doing each of the tasks required in putting a tallit together I often makes design decisions exactl...

Between having a week and a half of house-guests followed by a killer cold that seem to have stopped up most of my brain cells, I wasn't doing a whole lot of sewing for a couple of weeks. I just didn't trust my ability to sew for clients when my brain was in a complete fog. Amazon.com Widgets I wasn't idle, despite my state of semi-stupor. I washed my son's tallit. My son looks a whole lot like my late father. My son also smells like my father.   The scent was getting a little strong so it was time to wash the tallit.  I did lots of cooking including making this massive lasagna made with three huge but ever so thin home made noodles.  After I washed my son's tallit, I did some repairs, retied  the tzitzit on two of the corners and ironed the tallit. And now for something completely different. My parents arrived at their pulpit in Halifax, NS just a few weeks after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. One of my parents congregants gave my parents ...