ברוך דין האמת

This has been a week tinged by sadness. Those of you who are regular readers here may remember the posts tagged "Vivian treasures".

Vivian was a member of our synagogue community. When I first moved to New York and became a part of the synagogue, the demographics of the synagogue were probably 80% exactly my husband's age, about a dozen years older than I was. Vivian was one of the first people I met who was roughly my age.

Vivian was vivacious and funny. She loved accessories. She worked at the jewelry counter of a wonderful vintage store about ten blocks south . This was before her long career in the city's department of urban planning.

Many of us in those days---who were in our 20s were someplace between being students and starting on our real lives. For many of us there were marriages, children and careers that took place between then and now.

Vivian for a constellation of reasons stayed in that suspended space between adolescence and adulthood. Vivian was in many ways wonderful but was also completely exhausting.

Vivian died alone in her apartment a week ago.

Her funeral was Tuesday. Over the last few years, Vivian, who used to wear all color, began to wear turquoise nearly all the time. She loved turquoise so much that she wore a heavy line of turquoise eyeliner on her eyelids nearly every day.

Normally at funerals people wear sober colored clothing. At Vivian's funeral so many of the attendees wore turquoise. I wore a turquoise lace skirt. My husband wore a turquoise kippah. So many women wore earrings or necklaces or pins in the color that Vivian liked best. No one had suggested that we do it, but we all knew that it was the right thing to do.

That evening there was an evening of Shiva at our synagogue. A dear friend from those early years in New York was there. I think of my friend as being my roommate-in law because she married one of my housemates from the giant group apartment I live in just before I got married. My friend brought an envelope of photos from her Sheva Brachot thirty five years ago. I was heavily pregnant with my first and completely moon-faced. My husband looked so young. And there was Vivian, dancing of course, looking so young and so beautiful.

After Vivian's parents died Vivian had the difficult task of cleaning out her parents' apartment. She gave me bags and bags of old textiles because she knew that I would love them. So many of these treasures have become a part of my life.

I have learned so much from these bits of textile history, each one with with it's own personal history of mends and repairs.

While there are many bits of truly spectacular bits of handwork in my giant stash of Vivian treasures there is one small piece that I am particularly fond of.

It is a little tray liner. It was probably made by someone, perhaps a child, learning how to embroider. It is so very pretty and yet every single thing about it is just a bit off kilter . The piece isn't exactly round. the design itself is off center and every carefully stitched eyelet is a different size.

In the past when I used this piece I used to think of the child who made it struggling to get things right. Now this piece will remind me of Vivian, so beautiful, so vibrant and trying so hard.

ברוך דין האמת

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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