Getting Back to Work

All of our Passover stuff got put away. All of our during the year stuff is back more or less in its place. This could not have been done without the gracious good spirited help of my kids. We had a slight blip when none of us could remember where we had put our dairy silverware. I was at that point so tired that I couldn't even remember what the silverware looked like. My husband found the giant tote bag. And if you were wondering what our dairy silverware looks like it is a mix of silverplate from as early as the 1920s and as recent as the 1950s.

Yesterday our older son baked our first loaf of bread.

While I really hadn't missed bread during Passover, eating my first slice of home-baked bread in a few weeks, I was reminded about what a truly wonderful thing bread is.

With the holiday over, it was time to get back to work.

I spent a long time yesterday typesetting text for an atara. My client wants a selection of prayers that are meaningful for him on the atara. I plan to print all of the prayers onto treated silk. Getting them all set up properly with appropriate typefaces sized and spaced properly is persnickety work. I currently have all of the text set up, but in the incorrect order and with some funky space issues but I have figured out the hardest piece of the job which was to get the computer to lay out what I have envisioned. So I would say I am more than halfway done with the computer piece of THAT job.

Technology has come in handy with my next job. I have been asked to make a pillowcase to be used at a brit milah. One thing technology has done is to let the parents know what gender baby they are having. Technology has also come into play in my work with the client. This piece has been designed with my clients entirely by text message. This for me is a first.

We decided on this text

which comes from the brit milah ceremony. While this text was in my prayerbook, it was not available online so I copied it out for my client and took a photo which I sent to her. It asks that this child have a heart wide open to the learning of Torah and that he want to learn and to teach and to keep the mitzvot. It further asks that this child have length of days and years, a life filled with fear of sin, a life filled with wealth and honor and a life in which the desires of his heart get fulfilled.

My client had shown me a piece with blessings set against a cosmic sky that she had loved so I could get an idea of what she was thinking about.

I sent this sketch.

There will be more heavenly bodies in the finished piece.

Today I began dyeing the cotton for the pillowcase. The dyes are still damp and they will be lighter when they dry.

In real life, the fabric reads as bluer than my camera can capture.

In a few more layers of dye this will look like the cosmos.

The other day I saw this sign which at times could serve as the front door to our apartment.

I am ending this post with one last photo from my walk in the park. Today was actually kind of cold and nasty but with the help of a bit of technology, we can pretend otherwise.

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...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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