Dear Friends and Serendipity

My grandparents didn't know their exact birthdays. My grandfather knew that he was born in the year of the "groisse shturm", or 1888. As we keep living through the pandemic my own sense of time has gotten a little wobbly. My feisty friend Yocheved died early in the last crop of deaths that claimed five friends in about four weeks.

Yocheved's nieces now have the awesomely difficult job of emptying out Yocheved's apartment which was filled with books and more books, giant African sculptures, pottery from the Middle East, Judaica, books, textiles, tons of needlework made by Yocheved and books.

Earlier this week I had lunch with my dear friend Esther. We usually end our visits with a look around the thrift store. While I was waiting to pay for my purchase, there was Yocheved's niece Martha asking after her lost glasses. I greeted Martha and she asked if I wanted to choose things to take from Yocheved's apartment. Yocheved's wish was that anything that hadn't been promised to family and dearest friends should be just given to the people who loved Yocheved.

A little while later my husband and I walked into the familiar apartment. Another niece, Laura was there working on packing things up. She asked me if there was anything I would be interested in and of course, I answered textiles. Laura said that she wanted to show me something. She said, " I love this and I'm not giving this to you but I want you to see it." She handed me the tallit bag that I was commissioned to make Yocheved for I think her 70th birthday.

Laura had no idea that I had made it. Yocheved was 95 when she died and the bag has had hard wear.

The silk lining has shredded. I asked if I could take the bag home and repair it using some of the textiles that Yocheved collected.

The tallit bag was a gift from a group of friends. It was a surprise for Yocheved. I had known Yocheved long enough to know exactly the colors and the look for the bag I made for her.

You can see the bag nestled among some of Yocheved's textiles. The needlepoint was made by Yocheved.

The red piece at the bottom of the photo is the bodice of an Arab dress. The greenish piece in the center was probably once black but the dyes were unstable. I plan to reinforce the bag with pieces of this work.

A closeup of the greenish piece.

I love the color combinations on this piece. The base of the embroidery is made up of two layers. A loosely woven even-weave cotton serves as the lop layer, easy for counting to establish the pattern.

You can see that it is backed with a sturdier plaid woven cotton.

Here is the dress bodice.

I took close-ups so you can see how the embroidery was done.

It is a tightly packed cross stitch. Usually, a main line of the design is counted off and stitched then the details are added in.

I believe that the white twisted couched work is wool.

When I went to Israel in 1970 one commonly saw Arab women wearing dresses embellished with this kind of embroidery Although traditional Arab women in Israel still wear long dresses, these days they are more commonly made out of synthetic knits in dark colors.

When I made the bag it expressed something about my friend Yocheved. Now that Yocheved is no longer alive I hope to repair the bag so Laura can carry memories of her beloved aunt with her for many years as she used this tallit bag.

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...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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