Completed!

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 the vowels for easier reading.

I used this embroidered ribbon from my stash to border the piece.

But I wanted the hanging that I had made to coordinate better with the ark curtain made by Bracha Lavee who tends to use bright jewel tones. So I embroidered the ribbon You can see the two rows of blue scallop stitch used to decorate the ribbon and the magenta elongated diamonds that were used to attach the ribbon to the ultrasuede.

I don't think that these bits of color will be something that you might even think of consciously when you will see the two pieces together. I do know that they will make the two pieces by two artists work together harmoniously rather than having the two pieces bicker at one another.

I even set up a simple way to hang the piece. I covered washers with gold yarn and stitched them to the back of the piece. A few cup hooks will attach the hanging to the inside of the ark.