Back at work

I have taken a bit of a break from posting. Some of it was to acclimate myself to being back home and safe. For several nights when I would wake up in the middle of the night I would think that I was still in Dubai. Those of you with a more psychological bent will figure out that Dubai was a less terrifying choice than being in the safe rooms in Ashkelon. This morning I didn't wake up worried about getting plane tickets to safety. We are both still jetlagged.

Both of us are deeply grateful for all of the good wishes and prayers for our safety and hopefully we can all redirect those wishes and hopes to those who live in Israel.

I also wanted to create something of a space between our experiences in Israel and re-entering life back home.

Bonnie's tallit is due soon so I knew I had to get back to work on it. It has been a while so I will remind you about this particular tallit.

Bonnie grew up in southern Massachusetts and she wanted the stripes to look like the water off that coast . I Shibori dyed the silk and then spray dyed it so it looks like the right kind of ocean.. The pale textured fabric you see behind the dyed silk is the beautiful nubby silk that Bonnie had purchased for this tallit.

The text for the atara comes from Psalm 36, In your light we see light. First I dyed a strip of silk to look like sky. I spray dyed it with dark colors one one side and pale on the other. I also dyed grosgrain ribbon using the same sky colors. This ribbon with edge the water stripes

I drafted the letters onto card stock using two pencils taped together.

I then used a blade to cut out the letters.

My thought was to have the first word באורך (in Your light) be bright on the dark silk and have the letters darken as the silk gets lighter and lighter.. To me at least, the change of light and dark lettering and silk sort of illustrates the verse.

I used oil paint sticks for the color.

I had chalked a guide line for the tops of the letters

Here is the whole thing. Yes, there is quite a bit of space between each word. That is deliberate.

Getting back to my regular life is making me feel more like myself.

It was a challah baking week. I made stuffed challot.

Shabbat Shalom to all of you.

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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Connecting with the past

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

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