שַׁחַר אֲבַקֶּשְׁךָ צוּרִי וּמִשְׂגַּבִּי At dawn I seek You

 This beautiful photo was sent to me this morning. Even if you didn't know that this photo was taken in Israel or who the young woman in the photo is or who made the tallit it would still be a photo that would make you stop for a moment to admire all of the glowing beauty in the image.

I met the young woman in the photo soon after she moved to New York as a little girl.  There are some children who emerge from the womb with their personalities the same from the moment they are born until they die. Other kids are still as moldable as plasticine needing life to help form them.  I saw Ella for the first time during High Holiday services when she was rushing up the aisle with some friends wearing a hat, carrying a messenger bag, and wearing sturdy shoes. She was a girl on a mission. She was stunningly completely her adult self inside the body of a child.

By the time it was time for Ella to get ready for her bat-mitzvah she and her parents and I were already friends. We met to design her tallit.

Together we came up with this

as the design for Ella's tallit. If you want, you can read the post describing our tallit designing meeting here.

 While I make a tallit ( or anything else for that matter) my client and their various sets of needs both spoken and unspoken live with me during the weeks and months that I work on their project.

Once the tallit leaves my house it completely belongs to my client. I suppose that some of the bar and bat mitzvah kids I have worked with wear their tallitot once and then it gets shoved into the back of a drawer. Other kids wear their tallitot just on High Holidays. I have an intense relationship with my client while I am working for them and then the thing I have made goes off into the world.

I saw Ella nearly every Shabbat in our synagogue. She finished high school . She went on a gap-year program in Israel. Ella joined the Israeli army and had a fancy army job that included direct dealings with foreign diplomats. Ella would come home to visit her parents and come to synagogue and wear her tallit. Ella finished her army service and is now off on other adventures.

So here is a photo of as the Irish would charmingly say "our Ella" davening at sunrise in Israel wrapped in the tallit I had made for her---as completely herself as she was the first time I set eyes on her. I am moved nearly to tears that this tallit has accompanied her on her adult adventures.

 

Shabbat Shalom!