Building a concept of a tallit

 It isn't often that I can trace all of the threads of ideas going into a tallit but in the case of Linda's birthday tallit I can. At the moment, Linda's tallit exists only in my head. But I want to take you through how we have come up with our design for this tallit.

This tallit is a birthday gift from Linda's husband.  The gift was announced with this certificate.

I loved that it sort of mimicked the look of old Hebrew School certificates from the 1940s and 50s.

Then came the work of figuring out what sort of tallit Linda wanted. Linda is a rabbi and has a wardrobe of tallitot. Linda wanted this tallit to be white. She also wanted it to be relatively lighter weight than some of her other tallitot. 

The inspiration behind this tallit is the pandemic. One prayer that has been especially resonant for Linda during this era of Covid -19 when so many have died struggling to breathe is this one.

אֱלֹהַי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַֽתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא אַתָּה בְרָאתָהּ אַתָּה יְצַרְתָּהּ אַתָּה נְפַחְתָּהּ בִּי וְאַתָּה מְשַׁמְּ֒רָהּ בְּקִרְבִּי וְאַתָּה עָתִיד לִטְּ֒לָהּ מִמֶּֽנִּי וּלְהַחֲזִירָהּ בִּי לֶעָתִיד לָבֹא, כָּל זְמַן שֶׁהַנְּ֒שָׁמָה בְקִרְבִּי מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהַי וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתַי רִבּוֹן כָּל הַמַּעֲשִׂים אֲדוֹן כָּל הַנְּ֒שָׁמוֹת: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה הַמַּחֲזִיר נְשָׁמוֹת לִפְגָרִים מֵתִים:

My God! the soul which You bestowed in me is pure; You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me and You preserve it within me. You will eventually take it from me, and restore it in me in the time to come.⁵This statement refers to the time when the dead will be resurrected. So long as the soul is within me I give thanks to You, Adonoy my God,⁶Thus it is said, “I will praise Adonoy with my life, I will sing to my God with my being” (Psalms 146:2). and God of my fathers, Lord of all creatures, Master of all souls. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Who restores souls to dead bodies.⁷

 ^{This text will be written on the stripes. (No, there isn't a workshop where I will be sending out this work. I will be carefully calligraphing the text in textile paint onto black silk.) We have had several correspondences back and forth about the possibilities of adding additional texts that relate to breath, breathing, or souls.} 

^{Linda wanted the following verse on the atara/neckband.}

אֲדֹנָי שְׂפָתַי תִּפְתָּח וּפִי יַגִּיד תְּהִלָּתֶֽךָ:

My God, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.

In our latest Zoom meeting to get all of the details of the tallit nailed down before I actually start work, Linda mentioned that she wanted the atara to serve as her gateway to prayer.

I quickly sketched and held up my sketch to the camera.

"You mean like this?" I asked. Yes. Linda did want the words in an arch. I then doodled something sort of like a Moorish arch.

I figured that I would find the right inspiration on Google.

Later, thinking about the right visual inspiration I decided to look for images of Berlin synagogues. Linda is the daughter of my dear Berlin-born friend Herta.  

I was enchanted by  The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse. 

I loved the texture of the brickwork. I adored the arches on the windows.

 

The building looked like a textile. it was perfect as a design inspiration.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the synagogue that Herta attended. Herta attended this synagogue. 

   

This is the Rykestrasse Synagogue. The exterior is less charming than the Orienburgerstrasse Synagogue pictured above. Well, frankly, it is a little bit grim.

The interior though is gorgeous.

It looks oddly similar to 

Ansche Chesed where Herta was an essential member until her death. 

Herta's synagogue was clearly fancier than ours.

I read this article about the synagogue in Wikipedia. I had always assumed that participating in an egalitarian synagogue like ours was something of a stretch for Herta. Reading the article, I learned that despite being Orthodox, Herta's synagogue had mixed seating, with men and women sitting together during services. Astonishingly to me, women served as Gabbaim. This was both a position of administrative and religious leadership. Women didn't fulfill every religious task of the job but nearly all of them.  The religious practices at Ansche Chesed weren't as big a leap for Herta as I had imagined. 

All of this research will inform what the tallit will look like. I have loved getting this glimpse into Linda's mother's Jewish world before she and her family escaped from Berlin.

Of course, I shared all of this with Linda. Yes, using these synagogues as my visual inspiration does work for Linda. I look forward to sharing progress on this tallit as it goes from being a collection of ideas in my head into a completed tallit.