A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life.
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Working and writing with a heavy heart
I began writing a post yesterday but the murder of the two Israeli embassy workers in Washington just left me to upset to write. Before any of you say that perhaps it is understandable that they got shot exactly because they worked for the Israeli embassy, I would like to remind you that they weren't wearing big signs that stated where they were employed. Theywere at an event at a Jewish institution and the point of the event was to promote co-existance. We are living in sad and anxious times.
So as you read the rest of this post I just want you to know where my head really is. To mis-quote the poet Judah HaLevi, "My heart is in Washington but my body is in New York."
A little over a week ago I was contacted by a young couple. The groom's mom is no longer living. The bride and the groom wanted to include his mother in the wedding in some way.
This is the dress that the groom's mom wore to her 1986 wedding. It is a Hanae Mori tea length dress.
The dress is made out of a high quality synthetic all sewn together with French seams. Ezra and Shay wanted me to turn this dress into a tallit that will be used as part of their chuppah.
The base of the tallit will be silk noil. I ended up buiying the silk from
The pricing isn't cheap but the quality is there. I placed my order and picked up the silk a day later.
Anyway, back to the tallit.
Ezra and Shay wanted me to make an atara with irises, because it was his mother's favorite flower.
After a couple of failed starts I painted irises onto a strip of silk charmeuse left over from another project.
I edged the atara with stacked and embroidered ribbons.
Usually, the atara gets left for last but it just made sense to begin where I usually end.
I have carefully deconstructed the dress, unpicking all of the seams. Ezra's mom was thin,
the dress is a 1980s size four so I have to carefully harvest every useable inch of the skirt.
The pinot are lined and serged, ready for their ribbon edging and awaiting being sewin in place.
I plan to work over the weekend constructing as many stripes as I can.
While I have been working on that tallit, I have not been neglecting Nini's.
I have been couching the letters and cutting away
the batiste where I had marked the letters. each time I use this old fashioned technique it feels like a
magic trick. This method is a farily low stress way to transfer lettering to fabric. Couching the letters
is also a low stress work method and is less fiddly than machine embroidery and less time consuming
than hand embroidery.
Floury is no more. Much to my husband's chagrin, I came to the end of the last gallon bag of flour.
My lovely new scoop made a previously long and unpleasant task fairly quick and easy.
I am usually not a fan of kitchen tools who have only one use. This scoop makes my life much better
so I have made an exception.
the very last bit of Floury
I opened this box of egg matza this week and noticed the warning on the top of the box.
Most of dinner is cooked. I still need to make a carb to round out our meal.
I am of mixed mind about posting the following song.
The song was written in 1956 or 57 and is an imagining of all the lovely things one would be able to do once there is peace. One could go visit Khan Younis for anight at the movies or to El-Arish for a swim on the beach. The song describes all the lovely things one could do. The song is a fantasy of lovely coexistance it is so hopeful and makes me so sad.
A song that sits exactly on the fine line between a religious and secular love song to the land of Israel.
I felt so bad when I heard on the news of the killing of the young couple in Washington. The depth of my sadness cannot equal yours but it’s there with no way of relieving the hurt. This isn’t the way this country should be. I’m sorry for the loss to your community. Liz in Tucson
Thanks for caring. It really means a great deal. We have been friends for a long, long time Liz. People of my parents; generation experienced antisemitism in this country in their youth. For a long time , for many decades, it just wasn't blatant because it was just uncouth . Somehow it feels like the guard rails are coming down in our society, not just about Jews but also about the poor and the vulnerable. I keep waiting for a course correction. At the moment I keep wopndering about how people knew in the 1930s when it was time to leave Berlin or Warsaw.
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...
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...
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...
I felt so bad when I heard on the news of the killing of the young couple in Washington. The depth of my sadness cannot equal yours but it’s there with no way of relieving the hurt. This isn’t the way this country should be. I’m sorry for the loss to your community. Liz in Tucson
ReplyDeleteDear Liz,
ReplyDeleteThanks for caring. It really means a great deal. We have been friends for a long, long time Liz. People of my parents; generation experienced antisemitism in this country in their youth. For a long time , for many decades, it just wasn't blatant because it was just uncouth . Somehow it feels like the guard rails are coming down in our society, not just about Jews but also about the poor and the vulnerable. I keep waiting for a course correction. At the moment I keep wopndering about how people knew in the 1930s when it was time to leave Berlin or Warsaw.