Skip to main content

A Little Behind in My Blog Posting

 I haven't posted for a while because I  have been sick. The world hasn't stopped because of of a bad cold though.




We reached the halfway point of Chanukah last night.



There isn't a photo of night three because I had to light Shabbat candles as well.




I loved this video about a tallit and tzizit factory in Israel.


I'm sorry that there isn't an English translation. But this factory does the entire process of tallit making from making the wool threads, through twining and weaving the tallitot themselves.

If you want to see tallitot made by hand you can watch this  video of a tallit weaver in Tzfat.



The weaver sees the act of weaving the tallitot as a spiritual practice.

For me, both videos are food for thought as I work away on the tallitot that are currently on my plate.


And for your Chanukah listening pleasure, the Muppets singing a Chanukah song.


Chag Sameach!

Comments

  1. I hope you are feeling better. Have you had this cold for awhile or am I thinking of some one else?? Your Shabbat candlesticks look similar to mine, although mine were made for my father during World War II on a ship!!! I Use the candlesticks I grew up with!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! I hit the two week mark on this cold today. The photo is of the miracle Chanukiya my parents found in the window of an antique store in Quincy while they were out on a Shabbat afternoon walk. They asked the owner to hold the piece for them until after dark.It is an 18th or 19th century piece ( but the later date is more likely). I will never forget how giddy my parents were that they had found this treasure, completely black with tarnish and fitted with two onion shaped candles. My parents never used this piece but it was the centerpiece of their living room. This Chanukiya has pride of place in my living room but I also light it every year. It weighs a ton, heavy enough to kill an intruder---Using it on the Shabbat of Chanukah when you glide from lighting Chanukah candles to lighting Shabbat candles is just an elegant magical thing seamlessly tying the two different mitzvot of candle lighting together into (almost) one act.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

  וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים   You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for  giving life to all.  I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of  Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or  the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...