Starting an atara

For the past few days, I have been designing an atara with a client by email. This isn't the ideal way to go about designing a piece. I prefer the instantaneous feedback you get with a face to face meeting. I am a brainstorming kind of a girl and my favorite client meetings have me and my client tossing and rejecting ideas until we together hit on the right idea to pursue.

My client and I had decided on the text last year but I was just given the go-ahead to begin this assignment.

This is the text:

ח בְּהִתְעַטֵּף עָלַי נַפְשִׁי, אֶת-יְהוָה

It is a verse fragment of verse 8 Chapter 2 of the book of Jonah. Here a the translation of the complete verse:

When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thy holy temple.

The word that is translated as 'fainted' has an additional meaning in Hebrew it also means wrapped up and is the verb used to describe donning a tallit. This is a text I love to use on an atara, because it seems to me to be the perfect verse to think about as you put on your tallit.

My client mentioned to me last summer that he would love to use this verse on his atara. He seemed surprised that I think of it as my go-to atara verse.

Our email discussions have been about design. After a few back and forths, I understood what my client wanted, something fairly simple white on white.

The tricky thing is how to transfer the text that is to be embroidered in white onto white silk. I calligraphed the text onto tracing paper flipped it over, glued it to the back of the atara and stitched the outlines of the letters from the back.

The spray on adhesive I used blobbed the ink a bit. My plan is to remove the paper guide as soon as possible to avoid any leakage on the face fabric.

You can see that had made some progress outlining the letters. you can see that my outlines are not perfect. That's fine, they are guidelines for me and will not be visible when I am done.

If you have sharp eyes you will see that I underlined this atara with silk shantung. The face fabric is a heavy silk satin. I had bought it as a remnant about 15 years ago. The regular price for this silk was about $80 per yard. I did not pay $80 per yard, I probably paid about a tenth of that price. It is beautiful to work with.

I ripped away the paper.

Then I began chain stitching the letters.

As I type this post I am about halfway done with the embroidery.

Put on your seatbelts, I am about to change topics. ( My husband finds that my tendency to switch topics without warning to be a bit disconcerting, so that was your warning.)

Earlier this week we met dear friends of my husband's for dinner. One of the really delightful surprised about city life are the subway stations that exit into office buildings.

When I got out of the subway at 28th and Park I exited through this.

It is such a glorious way to emerge from underground.

We then waiting for our friends on this corner and went for an excellent kosher Indian dinner. It was at Pongal, since you asked. Yes, it is worth a visit.

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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