starting some challah covers, and thinking about 1921

The time has come to start another batch of challah covers. I started yesterday and

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continued working today.

Three of them have Most of this liturgical poem calligraphed onto them. the poem was written as an introduction to one of the Shabbat morning prayers but has migrated and is often sung as an after Shabbat dinner table song.
Here is one setting of the poem. it's lovely, but not the melody was thinking of as I carefully painted each word.

The chorus of the poem, my soul thirsts for the living God is a quote from Psalms. Each verse is packed with references to Biblical quotes that rhyme internally. Everly verse ends with the word chai, lives.
This another lovely setting, but also not the one I was singing as I painted.

The text shimmers on the silk. It isn't visible at every angle or in every light.

The meaning of the text is a little obscure as well. I like how the way I painted the text feels like the experience of singing the poem.

I also have another thought I want to share with you about my reading of the magazine The American Hebrew. There were people who were named over and over again issue after issue. One of them was Louis Marshall. The Jewish Theological Seminary has a big annual dinner named for him. I noticed in reading TheAmerican Hebrew that he seemed to be a busy man. He was involved with what seemed like an awful lot of good work. I looked him up and was blown away. Louis Marshall fought for immigrant rights, was a chairman of the NAACP, was one of the founders of JTS and fought for the environment.That man was a hero.

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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...

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sarah in nyc

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