sarah in nyc

  When I was asked to restore the  Schechter Mappah  the principal of the school asked if I could also create a hanging for the inside of the ark that included the texts one recited while the ark is open and the service leaders are facing the ark. My hanging would replace a crumpled piece of paper  with a photocopy of the texts that was taped to the inside door of the ark. I figured that anything that I did would look better than crumpled paper. I delivered the mappah just before Rosh HaShanah and figured that I would complete the piece as soon as we got back from Israel in late October.  October 7, we were in our son's apartment in Ashkelon sleeping his beautiful bedroom facing the ocean when the rockets began to rain down from Gaza. It took me a little while to get back to work but eventually, I did. The texts are painted onto Ultrasuede which I sponge painted to look more like parchment. Because this is a piece to be used by school children I added in all of ...

 When Judith brought me this tallit to mend I had assumed that the the right way to go about the job was to add patches to cover the worn away bits. I dyed a couple of lengths of silk to use for the patches. Unfortunately as I was about to begin patching, I realized that a patch would cause further damage. The weight of the heavier fabric would break the existing fabric. Luckily I have more than one mending trick up my sleeve. I needed to strengthen the weak parts of the fabric.I put some turquoise tulle behind the worn bits of the tallit and grafted the tulle and the silk together using embroidery thread. here it is from the front and from the reverse The stitching is still incomplete and the tulle will be trimmed. Here is the same process on the other side of the atara. The embroidery threads on their own are fragile. The tulle on its own is fragile. The silk tallit is fragile from wear but joined together the three weak things are strong. You can create your own d'var torah...

 One of the trains of thought that has been percolating in my head over the past couple of weeks has been about the power of old objects. When my husband and I first got married we didn't own a whole lot of  stuff. Now our apartment is filled with STUFF. The other day I had used a plate that we got after our dear friend Yocheved died. We were part of the crew that was helping to clear out her apartment.  I had put some rolls on the plate and thought about Yocheved. And then I wondered about how this blue earthenware dish ended up in Yocheved's home.   Was it a gift from someone she loved? Did this little plate come into Yocheved's home as she was clearing out the home of a friend who had died? I wondered about the memories this plate may have held for Yocheved, and how it helps me to remember out friend. Those thoughts also led me down the path of wondering about the purchase of antiques makes it possible to purchase the memories of others as contained in meaningful ...

  I had made this tallit I think before I had a blog. you will have to forgive the photo the colors aren't reading quite right. The main body of the tallit is a deep turquoise. The magenta is far less strident. This tallit is made out of silk noil which was chosen by Judith, My client because she loved how noil  really took in the dyes. Silk noil may take dye like a champ but it is made out of short fibered silk which means that it isn't as long wearing as some other silks, (Although it is much LONGER wearing than China silk whose fibers break if you look at it too long. China silk is a type  of very thin silk often used for inexpensive linings or in the 90s was washed to raise the nap and sold as inexpensive shirts that broke if you left them in your closet for too long.)  Anyway, this noil tallit has begun to go the way of all noils and has suffered a bit of breakage. Judith wondered if I should mend this tallit with neutral colored silk. (None of the silks used in...