A tallit, a dress, and a visit to Ellis Island

Creating a piece for a client is always about balancing various sets of needs. Often my client is a twelve year old kid with their own strong opinions. Sometimes the parents have strong opinions. Clearly, (and anyone who knows me for more than five minutes can tell you) I am a person with opinions on things, particularly Jewish ritual objects.

This has been especially true in the making of Alice's tallit. A big part of my job has been taking what she has felt strongly about and making it work in the context of a tallit. Alice loves orange and red. neither would be my first, or even tenth choice on a tallit. Never the less, it is important that she be heard.

There are lots of tallit makers that combine lovely ready made ribbon to make a tallit. I use a mix of embroidery stitches and utility stitches ( the sorts of stitches you might use to mend torn trousers or to install elastic into a pair of underpants) to embellish the ribbon and the stripes into a composition of color and texture.

I am a chunk of the way through creating the stripes on Alice's tallit.

Red and orange tend not to play together well-- kind of like two toddlers in daycare both with massive personalities and short tempers. I really like making things that ought not to work together become visually pleasing.

With enough texture and color things that ought to look out of key can sing in harmony.

I also completed the dress I am wearing to my nephew's wedding . My first attempt at making the sequin dress failed. Or put more honestly, I made a series of errors that built on one another and ended in failure.

The fabric I had ordered was no longer available. There was a different sequin fabric available...and it was on sale for half of what I had paid. I spent $4 per yard for $40 per yard fabric.

I ended up with this.

The hemline swings longer and wider in the back.

All of the raw edges have been finished with silk binding

The embroidered netting I had planned to use as an overlay (here it is over the silver sequined fabric)

looked crazy over the two toned sequins so I just didn't do it. That fabric will have to wait for another dress.

Earlier this week we visited Ellis Island with cousins from out of town. I loved the exhibit on things people brought with them. It included lots of needlework.

My husband and I were struck by how beautiful the building is.

This is the Hebrew one needed to be able to read to pass the literacy test instituted in the 1920's. It's really hard Hebrew

The texts people had to read in other languages were also Biblical verses but were far more familiar than these obscure lines from Proverbs

This is what people got to eat during their time on Ellis Island.

These were the marks chalked on the coats of immigrants so they could be inspected further by medical staff.

My grandfather arrived at Ellis Island with his cousins. My grandfather came on his cousin Pinchas Freider's ticket. My grandfather Yankle was not listed on the ship's manifest. He needed to have a hearing to decide if he would be allowed to enter New York. That hearing took place in this room.

Luckily, the judgement was in favor of my grandfather.

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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