Since I last posted

I finished the other black strip of text.. I discovered that I had unfortunately used a paint with a low proportion of pigment --the letters were too transparent. I purchased a bottle of titanium white and another of zinc white both with more pigment. I carefully retouched all of the letters.

Earlier today I did the lettering for one of the white strips.

As I carefully calligraph out the text,

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. So long as the soul is within me I give thanks to You, Adonoy my God.

I think about the meaning of each and every word. I think about Linda's choice of this text during the year of Covid when so many many people are dying because they are unable to breathe.

I also think back to learning this text for the first time when I was in second grade. We did an abridged version of the morning prayers in Mr. Cohen's class. The prayers were led one paragraph at a time by the students in the class starting from the front right corner of the classroom up each row and down the next. We didn't sing. We chanted in the rhythmic chant that Mr. Cohen had taught us. It is similar to the rhythms of jump rope chants or counting out chants. We all moved back and forth to the rhythms that paid no heed to the meaning of the words.

I remember my parents being amused by the method I was taught to learn the prayerbook. Oddly enough though, that chant got all of those many many words engraved onto my brain. When I need to recall a prayer I no longer say all of the time I begin the chant and all of the words come marching out of my mouth.

Now you can see both the black and the white panels of text.

I did use a smaller brush with the black dye. That way I could get a bit more of the prayer onto the tallit stripe.

The complicated part of making this tallit is nearly done. soon I can get to the construction.

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Connecting with the past

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sarah in nyc

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