ואני תפילתי

As many of you know, I am a self taught sewer. Well, let me clarify that. I learned how to sew from obsessive reading of Threads Magazine back in the years when it was truly a creative source for people who worked with textiles, from sewing books, from the incredibly generous online sewing community and from my own many, many failures. In my earlier years sewing I used to think that underpinnings like interfacing and underlining were essentially dishonest.

What I have learned over the years is that rather than functioning as a fabric fib, interfacing and backing fragile fabrics with sturdier ones can extend the functional life of fabric. So as I re-construct the Schechter Mappah I keep figuring out way to make the piece last a long long time into the future.

This time around, I have backed all of the silk that is being used in the "masonry" with the lovely Grateful Dead flannel that my son gave me.

The flannel gives the silk a heftier, richer hand and hopefully will keep the silk in good shape for many, many years to come.

When I was making this Mappah fifteen years ago Robert Talbott Ties had sold off a large chunk of their gorgeous silks to Fabric Mart Fabrics. I was able to purchase several mystery bundles of beautiful Italian tie silks for the cost of mediocre cotton. I used many of the wonderful stripped silks in the making of the Mappah.

For me, there is nothing more wonderful than being able to be generous with luxurious fabrics. I loved that kids, who are so sensual would have these lush fabrics under their hands as they led services.

In the intervening years I have sewed my way through most of the stacks of fabulous silks from Robert Talbott. Those silks have made their way into lots of tallitot, tallit bags, and challah covers. In the intervening years, and particularly since COVID, the price of silk has skyrocketed.

I had some of those wonderful silks still in my stash but not all that much. I had to be strategic in how I used the silk.

There is no point using this now rare resource UNDER the arched doorway.

You can see that I traced the outline of the arch that I have already constructed and have beun piecing the silk masonry. The backing piece is more of that Grateful Dead flannel.

Below you see the arch in place---as yet unsewn. I will probably back the arch with some fleece so the fabric heights are equalized and for some additional stability.

I have been working away on the texts that will be added to the Mappah. The goal is to have the texts that are recited by the users of the prayer table included in the mappah. My thought is that since this is used in a school setting --the mappah itself will teach students about the tasks of the various service leaders.

The day before yesterday I had gotten a piece of bad news. A very dear friend is gravely ill. In my distress, I misplaced a small but essential part of my sewing machine. I ordered two of the part.

While I was waiting for the sewing machine part to arrive I worked on the next piece of text.

This is the prayer for healing. I don't have to tell you that as I painted each and every letter, each one was filled with my prayers of healing for my dear friend. I remembered how during the worst of COVID when my husband had a concerning medical issue and all services were taking place on Zoom and none were in person, my friend walked the mile and a half to my synagogue on a Saturday morning and just focused her hopes for the good health of my husband at our synagogue.

I don't know if it was the power of my friend's prayers but my husband's condition reversed itself. I thought about the way my friend took care of us after our parents died. I thought about the two of us as very young girls. I thought about our long walks during COVID and our times cooking and eating together. I hope that my hopes and prayers have as much power as my dear friend's did or at least a little bit of the same power.

The sewing machine part arrived. Today I will return to the task of sewing the Mappah. There are some pieces that I have made during difficult times. Those pieces, at least for me are filled with the deep emotions that I am going through during the construction. I have no idea of those feelings are visible to the users but when I see the piece those feelings come rushing back to me. This Mappah was created during the time that my father was dying. I am restoring it while I am hoping with every fiber of my being for the recovery of my dear friend.

Both fifteen years ago and now, every stitch is a prayer.

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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