sarah in nyc

A coupe of words of warning before you read this post. I realize that this post may be of zero interest to anyone but me. It is about the truly annoying process I have been going through to figure out how to do what ought to be a simple task. The finished piece will be wonderful. This particular journey has been an exercise in frustration. I guess I am writing about it because a finished piece usually doesn't show the many stumbles in the road to getting there. I am showing you all of those stumbles, but please feel free to skip this post. I promise my feelings won't be hurt. I am making an atara ( the neckband for a tallit) with a nice kid in my synagogue who is having his bar-mitzvah next month. He came up with a pretty brilliant concept for the atara- he wanted several texts from the morning prayers on his atara. We talked about what this ought to look like. We agreed that it should look kind of like an old fashioned prayer book. Many old prayer books are typeset in a ...

One of the lovely things about Shabbat is the parallelism between the ceremonies we use to use to usher them in and out.  Both kiddush and havdalah have wine and candlelight. Another central element of havdalah is the smell of sweet spices. I think about that parallelism as I bake my challah. My challot are fragrant. What looks like a bowl of yuck is the start of today's challot. In addition to the water and the yeast you see a tablespoon of flour (to feed the yeast) and freshly ground up cinnamon, cardamon, coriander, allspice and ginger. There is also a healthy splash of vanilla in there. My goal is that after people take their first bite of challah after the blessing, that their mouths become filled with fragrance. Usually after people take that first bite I can see them just relax into the knowledge that it is now Shabbat. Usually we all silently chew for a couple of moments and transform into our Shabbat selves. The rest of our meal is either heating up of cooling ...

My husband and I spent last weekend visiting at the home of an old friend. Our friend does hostessing in a generous and gracious way and built her home so that having eight guests spending the weekend just felt like a wonderful opportunity to spend time with dear friends. We did Kabbalat Shabbat together in the living room. The next morning we studied Torah together rather than going to shul. As Shabbat drew to a close we ate Seudat Shlishit the third Shabbat meal. The songs sung at that time of day are often poignant. One of our friends began to sing  Here is a different version with words ( Yes, the audio quality isn't great but it gives you the sense of what it is like to sing this among friends) This song often leads into this song. As we can sometimes express what is hardest not in our own words but in sacred words and music, we sang of love and of loss of pain and of joy as best we could. We then sang  There was something so pro...

Sunday, we went to a family wedding. I used to be the kind of woman who didn't own an evening bag. Becoming an actual adult meant that such an object really did need to be a part of my life. Needing to carry an epi-pen and antihistamines at all times has made relying on my husband's suit pockets to hold my tissues and lipstick at events no longer a viable option. There is a limit to how much one can ask a husband to stash in his suit. A couple of years ago, my friend Vivian gave me a shoe box filled with an array of small leather bags that had been made in her grandfather's factory in Austria during the 1920's and 30's.  Some of them were so teeny they had enough room for a small hankie and a little bit of change. One was large enough to hold not just a hankie and phone money but also a metro card, a cellphone and a comb along with the epi-pen and a film canister filled with antihistamines. It is made out of a heavy velvet like suede. I used it a...

I recently signed up for 23 and Me. This week a new to me cousin was in touch and I shared photos. Both the conversation with my cousin and the process of sorting through old photos got me sentimental so a visit to the summer time Way-Back machine is in order. These are the oldest photos I have from my family.  This is my great Grandfather Zalman Paysach. We aren't sure of his last name but we do sing some of his niggunim.. Below are my grandmother's parents, Brana and Chaim. They both came from fancy families. you can see it in their regal bearing.  My oldest sister wearing pants with a belt and pockets. She looks like she is playing Katherine Hepburn as a child. This photo was taken on Passover of 1960. My sisters are wearing winter jackets and wool hats. It must have been warm because they are wearing capris and no gloves. My hardy cousins are not wearing coats. Every one in this photo is now a grandparent. The two following photos...

Over the past few years there have been lots of discussions in various corners of the world about cultural appropriation. This is an issue I think about often as someone who lives in a multicultural city. I often use textiles that are associated with particular cultures in my work. I use bits of old saris in challah covers.  I love the strong graphic look of African mud cloth and it too gets used in my work along with waxed cotton prints commonly used for garment making in Africa. Several days ago one of the sewing lists  belong to shared a note from a sewing pattern company. Apparently they  changed the name of a garment from "kimono" to something else because it was deemed culturally insensitive to use that word.  I totally get that if I dressed up pretending I were from Ghana or spoke in a fake Rastafarian accent that would be creepy and cultural appropriation. There are other example of these sorts of creepy appropriations. This video crosses over the...

Well, we are now plugged in at the San Francisco airport waiting for the next leg of our trip.  So far saying  t'fillat haDerekh seems to be working. (Our flight didn't have internet so this post was begun during our travels and finished today.) Earlier today, we went for a walk. We started down the street where my husband's sister and brother-in-law's home. I just love this front yard. This visit to Santa Barbara had me besotted by  flowers. I took tons of photos of individual blooms. People in Santa Barbara put lots of thought into their gardens. One yard was filled with tons of jasmine. You could smell the garden a few houses away. We turned down what looked like a driveway and our walk began in earnest. I don't know what these tiny yellow blooms are, but we saw tons of them. We walked down the steep slope and then into an extraordinary landscape. My brother-in-law mentioned that this bit of Santa...