Three topics in one post

As I start writing this blogpost I am hoping that I can make it about three different topics and still have it hang together in a reasonable way. Let's see how I do?

A couple of weeks ago I had gotten an email from someone who used to make tallitot but had gone on to other pursuits. A tallit she had made several years ago had needed some repairs. She wondered if I would be willing to do them. I was.

Below is the tear.

After carefully inspecting the tallit I found a matching spot that was about to tear on the other side of the tallit

I mended both the actual tear and the about to tear bits with what is essentially a fabric bandage.

Some of the identical silk fused over the break. This stabilizes the rip. We also decided to cover the area with gold braid. The braid acts as camouflage but also strengthens the weakened area.

We then decided to line the tallit. This is another trick that provides strength and an extra bit of pretty to the tallit. We had ordered two different drapery silks but ultimately chose the silk on the right to line the tallit. The striped silk in some ways looked better except it would change the intention of the work of the original artist too much.

I lined the tallit with the new silk and made new eyelets for the tzitzit.

You can see the lining peeking out

Today was tzitzit tying day.

First the tallit needed to be tried on.

I am so pleased with how the new fabric works with the existing tallit. Actually we were both feeling pretty pleased but then it was time to tie those tzitzit.

After not very long, the task was complete.

I am so happy that the repairs don't look sad-- this doesn't look like the tallit was mended. The repairs just oomph up the original tallit a little bit while still respecting the work of the original artist. There are times when my job is to be the lead singer-- this time my job was to be the back up singer.

So, now on to the next topic. Any of you who are regular readers know that there are certain images I photograph over and over again. I love shadows. The shadows thrown by fire escapes draw my eye over and over. Of course the view outside my window is worth capturing over and over again.

I now have a new visual obsession. A couple of weeks ago we went to see our son play in his band in essentially a backyard in Brooklyn. I was planning to take photos of my son and his band.

I got distracted by the light falling against the foliage in the dark.

I was enchanted by how otherworldly the leaves looked in the dark.

I am ashamed to admit that my battery died and I wasn't able to take many pictures of the band.

Today I ran some errands and it was dark by the time I went home. I realized that the magic of foliage photographed at night by artificial light isn't limited to a backyard in Brooklyn but can take place right in my own neighborhood.

So below I treat you to some foliage at night illuminated by streetlight.

Within the next couple of weeks the leaves will all have fallen off of the trees so you may be spared a daily dose of trees photographed at night.

This brings me to the last topic of this post. One of the Facebook groups that I am a member of is about old photos of the neighborhood. The group is administered by photographer Ruben Iglesias. He recently posted some photos by the photographer Paul Fusco a staff photographer for Look magazine who used to live in my building. I have fallen in love with his work. You can too by looking at the Instagram page set up by his estate. If you live locally you will recognize specific trees in Riverside Park, one or another of the playgrounds before they were renovated. There are some people who are familiar because they are famous and others because they were neighbors of mine. It's wonderful work even if you don't live exactly where I do.

So that's it. Three topics in one post.

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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