וכל העם רואים את הקולות

 

וכל העם רואים את הקולות

and all of the nation sees the sounds

 If you asked me to depict this particular biblical verse as an image I probably would have shown you something like this.

I also would have assumed that my particular visual imagining of the verse was probably universal.  

This was my assumption before I met with Liat. Liat understood the 'seeing the sounds" as the strips she painted below.

Once I understood what her understanding of those words was I could get to work.

I painted three wide strips of silk. The dyes had to sit to cure for a couple of days to keep the color as intense as possible. Then, I heat set the colors first by ironing the strips with as high a heat as my iron put out and a high steam setting. Then I steamed the strips using a steamer.

Only after the heat and steam could I rinse each strip to get rid of any excess dye and after the strips dried I could iron them and then cut them to size. So for about a week, I was working away at the colored strips but they looked exactly as they did in the photo above.

When Liat saw the photo above she was concerned because she had imagined the strips being narrower. Actually so did I. It is easier to cut a wide strip to size than try to match the dye on many narrow strips.

So as of yesterday, the three wide strips are now--

twelve narrower and edged strips of silk.

I am looking forward to beginning construction.

Last night we lit for the fifth night of Chanukah. I have liked how Zoom has allowed our kids to drop by for just a couple of minutes to join us as their schedules allow.

This week was a challah baking week.

These challot are stuffed with a mixture of date paste, cocoa, pomegranate molasses, and a couple of drops of rose water. The date paste is kind of one note on its own. The cocoa darkens the flavor and the pomegranate and rosewater just balance it all out into something fruity but dark.

Most of tonight's dinner is leftovers from Thanksgiving that I am pulling out of the freezer.

The fruit peddler down the street was selling beautiful cabbages that were heavy enough to use as instruments of war and beautiful leeks. I am braising about a third of the cabbage and the leeks and some mushrooms with smoked paprika, fig molasses, and caraway. I didn't know I was lusting for such a dish until I saw the vegetables at the pushcart.

I am really looking forward to lighting candles tonight.

The oil Chanukiya you see below is an antique Polish one my parents found in an antique store in Quincy in one of those adventures that make antique collectors giddy with the joy of buying something wonderful for a song because the dealer had no idea what it was. 

You can see that it has two shamashim. I know that some people speculate that for poor Jews you could get one object and use it for both Shabbat and Chanukah.

I don't know if that is true. What I can tell you is that there is something so elegant about the act of lighting this object, reciting the blessings for Chanukah, and then reaching over, lighting the other candle and then reciting the blessings for Shabbat. 

The laws about lighting Chanukah candles are in Tractate Shabbat, the volume of the Talmud that deals with the laws of Shabbat. So I have always intellectually known the connection between the candles of Shabbat and the candles of Chanukah.  Nothing makes that connection more clear and more satisfying than the movement my arm will make tonight to switch from lighting one set of candles, to a different set, from performing one mitzvah to performing a different mitzvah.

I look forward tonight to my body teaching my brain about the connection between the lights of one mitzvah and another.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!