sarah in nyc

 Many years ago my wise friend Sharon told me that every time she closed a real-estate deal she would buy herself a piece of jewelry. I loved the idea of rewarding yourself after completing a piece of hard work.  I had been working and kind of a crazy pace since before Passover. It was time to reward myself. Many of us who grew up in tune with the Jewish calendar know that it is traditional to have a new garment for the Jewish New Year.  I wanted to make myself a new dress. I have lots of lovely yardage comfortably ageing in my closet. I had purchased a length of black and white vertically striped lace a while back from  Fabric Mart . (What do you get for clicking on the link? great deals on fabric. What do I get? No kickbacks, just the happy knowledge that you too can get excellent fabric for a great price) I had an idea for a dress, lay the fabric out on my floor and cut. Attempt #1 was a failure. Attempt #2 was not. It's a simple dress made out of complicated...

 When I was a kid, Rosh Hashanah was all about looking forward to the new year. Maybe it is just that I am older, but between the timelessness created by the pandemic and the fact that I have lost so many friends this year my head is definitely in the past as I prepare for the holiday. When I used to go through my parents' wedding album with my father when I was little my father inevitably used to point at people in the photos and say "Dead, dead, dead." I have been going through my address books sending high holiday greetings to friends and I was struck by how many of my friends have died this year. There was the terrible three week period early in the winter when five friends died, but the most of the deaths were spread out between last Rosh  Hashanah and this one. I prepared the tzimmes and the stuffed cabbage that was my parents' love note to their first pulpit in Halifax and the people who helped my very young parents to become adults.  I have also made the merin...

 This post is mostly about food. It is about the food I have been making for Rosh Hashanah and the food I have been making for us to eat until then. Earlier in the week I baked bagels. That was a simple mid-week bake. I only used half the dough for bagels. The rest was pulled pulled out of the oven in the form of a cute heart shaped loaf. Yesterday was challah baking day. My husband discovered apple butter this summer and suggested that it would make a yummy and appropriate Rosh Hashanah  stuffing for our challot.  I remembered that I had actually filled challot with apple butter a couple of years ago and it was a bit too wet. so I microwaved some apple butter with tapioca starch (and probably some spices-- I was working too quickly to account for every ingredient in the challah ) to thicken it up. Above is the thickened apple butter and below you see it in use before being rolled up. How many challot did I make? I have no idea. I made several of them small. Three will en...

This morning Arianna came over to tie her tzitzit. I like to have my clients tie tzitzit in the manner of Rabbeinu Tam. this image comes from https://www.tekhelet.com/tekhelet-tying-tools/tying-tzitzit/  Lots of rabbis put time and effort into variously lovely and meaningful methods of tying tzitzit. I use the tying method on the very left. I like the spiraling ridge that goes around the tzitzit. Many kids of a certain age know this particular knot from making friendship bracelets. It is known in the of friendship bracelet making universe as Chinese staircase. Yes, the use of the word Chinese to indicate something that is not usual isn't really polite but i knew that if I used the term it was a short-hand way for Arianna to know exactly what I expected her to do. Not surprisingly, Arianna knew exactly what i was talking about and she was an expert practitioner. Arianna tied the first corner with one strand of her grandfather's tzitzit that I had dyed blue a long time ago. Yes,...

 Last night my youngest and I went to see the delayed by Covid, New York City live-in-person premier of a wonderful poignant funny film made by my friend Judith Helfand.  You can watch the trailer above or watch the entire movie by clicking on this link  Love & Stuff  (well, only until November of this year). Watching this movie that deals so much with the objects in our lives that carry the memories of people who are no longer with us was so right for me this week.  I have spent two days this week making what for my family, for me are the touchstone foods of the High Holiday season. I made a big pot of tzimmis earlier this week. I more or less followed the recipe I extracted from my mother during a very long digressive conversation more than thirty years ago. I wrote out more explicit directions  here . I am my mother's child so the directions are a bit digressive but it is hard to get tzimmis wrong as long as you have lots of meat and root vegeta...

 Wednesday, Esther and Frank came by to pick up the pieces I had completed for them. My task was to somehow turn a collection or fitted early 1960s Ikat dyed silk blouses and a length of beautiful inky black heavy silk shantung into two wall-hangings that somehow memorialized Frank's mother's life.  My work tends to be centered on words, on Jewish texts. This assignment was something of a challenge. The two wall hangings was to be made for Frank and his brother so the pieces needed to be similar but not identical. The two needed to be somehow of equal value so that neither brother would feel like he had gotten the short end of the stick. As I worked  I loved what I was doing---but I wasn't sure if I had created two pieces that were deeply pleasing to me and to no-one else. The work proceeded slowly because each piece needed to be in balance both with itself and with it's mate. The red hand quilting added a percussive beat to the pieces.  I was nervous about what Esth...