Lots of thoughts in my head

My dear friend Marcia (known in our family as Tanta Marcia) invited me to go to a lecture yesterday about Ludwig Wolpert given by a Ph.D. candidate at Bard who was writing her dissertation about Wolpert's work during his New York years. Well, going to such a lecture is high up on my idea of fun.

Amazon.com Widgets

I finally learned the name of Wolpert's first metalsmithing teacher, Christian Dell. Clearly there was a strong dell influence in Wolpert's work.

You can see how the use of actual text used during the ritual when the cup is used rather than Dell's glyphs created a more powerful, more meaningful piece.

I loved the lecture, loved seeing deeply familiar and beloved work by Mr. Wolpert. I went home feeling very happy.

I knew that something special would be awaiting me.

My father's father was born in Konin, Poland and arrived in New York before WW1. My father's mother was born here, but both of her parents were born there too. Our name in Poland was Jakubowitz.We had learned by reading this book

that there was a Jakubowitz from Konin, Mike, who had survived Auschwitz although most of his family had perished. My father and Mike spoke to one another enjoyed the conversation but had no idea if they were actually related.

One of my sisters did 23 and Me, and we discovered that we are indeed related. My new cousin Deborah figured out that our great-grandfathers were brothers. yesterday Deborah's brother Mark came by for a visit.

We shared old photo albums. We talked and talked. I kept looking at Mark's face and despite only meeting him yesterday, it is a face that I know.

So, with thought's of Wolpert in my head and of this new branch of my family, I got to work on my future son-in-law's tallit.

I had sworn up and down that I would not make fringe for his tallit. Pulling threads to make fringe is tedious boring work. I was telling my future son-in-law how I probably would not make fringe because it is a task I hate. A friend was part of the conversation and told me how much her children play with the fringe on the ends of her tallit. My friend continued with my daughter and her fiancee laughing telling me that I needed to make fringe for my future grandchildren. I caved.

There are 90 inches of fringe.

This is the reverse of the tallit.

There is more work left to go

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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