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At long last...


 The Schechter Mappah is complete!!!


This is the view that the people leading services will have of the piece--- a gateway into the experience of prayer.


The Torah readers will view the mappah this way.



Tucked beneath the edge of the mappah



are the blessings for the Torah.



On the other side of that piece is the misheberach for the ill in the community.






The other text panels  also flip. Here is the introductory text for the weekday Torah reading.





"Turn the page", and you have the introduction for Shabbat.


The text panel on the other side of the mappah


has the half kaddish on one side and


the text that you recite right afterwards, as the Torah is lifted, on the other side.







Officially this was a restoration job. I would say that probably 80% of what you see here is new and reconstructed. The blue wool sky with hand embroidered clouds replaced the hopelessly stained  hand dyed and hand embroidered white wool sky that had been there previously. 

The striped silk "masonry" is  all new but this time, constructed with strong underpinning. The shredded silk archway has been replaced by hand dyed and block printed sturdy Ultrasuede. The dome just had it's lettering refreshed and a new border hand stitched into place.


You can see the  hand embroidered wool border of the olive green dome as well as the hand embroidered clouds (the embroidery secures the new wool to the new unstained wool) you also see the couched border between the edge of the sky and the original blue Ultrasuede border of the mappah.



The texts that the kids will need to read all have the vowels included for their ease in reading.


The texts that the kids won't be chanting aloud are written without vowels. I assume that those texts will take a bit longer for the students to take in and understand.







This piece is tactile.  I want it to give the students pleasure in the act of leading and participating in services.


The dedication both from the class that donated the piece in 2008 and this year's graduating class that donated the restoration are on the two olive green side panels. When the piece is in use they act as side skirts.













Restoration of this mappah was a series of really interesting technical challenges. It was a huge amount of hand work.



I hope that this mappah encourages  the students at Schechter to engage with our most central Jewish texts.






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