sarah in nyc

Wednesday my future son-in-law converted to Judaism. Tomorrow he is being called to the Torah for the first time. The tallit and the bag needed to be completed so he could tie the tzitzit before Shabbat. The passive voice is misleading here, I needed to finish the bag and the tallit. Several weeks ago my future son-in-law admired a skirt I was wearing. The fabric was made out of felted strands of orange and yellow yarn fused onto a black gauze. I had fallen in love with the fabric when I had seen it in a fabric store. It was selling for $100/yard. I was in fabric lust, but I do have some self-control, even though it was a fabric so wonderful it showed up in my dreams repeatedly. A couple of years later my favorite internet fabric store was selling 5-yard bundles of the fabric for truly reasonable prices. I bought the orange and yellow fabric and another bundle in purple and brown.   My daughter suggested I make the tallit bag out of the purple fabric...

No, not the wedding but a different big day. Today was the day that my future son-in-law became Jewish. We all trooped down to the mikvah  for his mid-afternoon conversion. He met privately with the three rabbis who made up his bet-din/ religious court. And then it was time for him to immerse in the mikvah . Soon, although it felt like a lifetime to me, he emerged, Jewish. Amazon.com Widgets My daughter and her intended have eaten many Shabbat and holiday dinners with us over the years. When I realized that this relationship was a serious thing I began giving my daughter's beloved the same antique Russian silver cup to use for Kiddush week after week. A couple of years ago my daughter and I were setting the table for a holiday meal and I said: " When he converts, the cup is his." Today, I polished up that cup and brought it with me to the mikvah . There it is in the striped bag that he is holding as he reads the conversion certificate. There are m...

I know I haven't posted in a while. The house has been full of houseguests and I have been kind of under the weather, but I have been working. Amazon.com Widgets I have been working away on my future son-in-law's tallit. Working on this tallit has been a really nice time to work closely with the man who will be sharing my daughter's life. I really appreciate how he puts so much thought into his decision making. He has chosen the Hebrew name, Gideon Ezekiel. Gideon because his late mother was named Deborah, and Gideon is the next prophet. Ezekiel is a family name. We hadn't quite settled on a text to use on the tallit before my husband and I left for our Texas adventure. My future son-in-law said that he wanted the text to somehow convey that he was converting. he had hoped that the text would be connected to either Deborah or Ezekiel. We each had the assignment to go through biblical text in order to find the right verses for his tallit. While I was in shu...

I had been hoping for the past few days to be able to write about this beautiful batch of ribbons my friend Pearl had dropped off for me. This is about half of the generous haul. Pearl's mother who died a year or so ago died at well over 100. She was a sewer for all of her life. Pearl's dad was in the children's trimming business. Pearl has been clearing out her mother's apartment. the beautiful lace cloth under the stack of ribbons comes from Pearl's mother. These ribbons are quite old. the ribbon spools are interleaved with paper to protect the silk. A few have brand labels. Most of the ribbons are silk taffeta in white or pastel pink or blue. Quite a few of the spools have never been opened. I love how the ribbons are pinned to show how they look both flat and gathered. I don't know if you can see the tiny flat headed pins holding that ribbon twist in place. While spooling the ribbons and the paper onto the wooden spoons would have been...