sarah in nyc

Y's bar mitzvah is this Shabbat so I made sure I was done yesterday. I was touched to see how much Y and his mother loved the tallit. After they were done with their first round of admiring the tallit, we got down to the work of tying the tzitzit. Having my clients tie their tzitzit means that they get the opportunity to pay attention to their tally before the big event( usually a bar-mitzvah). Y and his mother loved the shimmer of the tallit. There is lots of gold but it does not look like a Liberace tallit. The tallit also references Africa but does not in any way look like the "Lion King tallit". Tying the tzitzit takes time and the four of us worked together companionably. Occasionally I was called on to help out, to recount thread wraps or to undo wonky work.  Eventually, all of the corners had properly tied tzitzit. It was time for Y to put on his new tallit with all of the intentional verses from Pslams, say the proper ...

It was great to get back to baking challah. This week our meal will be eaten some at our table and some at a Shabbat table three blocks away. There is something about food that is made to comfort friends who have recently gone through a loss. There is a famous story about a king who eats at a Shabbat table. He loves the food and asks his hosts for the recipe so the meal can be recreated at his palace. The recipes are given and the food is prepared by the palace chefs. The meal is somehow lacking. It just isn't as delicious as it was in the simple Jewish home. the king demands to know what spice was omitted from the recipes. After a bit of thought, the king is told that the special spice is Shabbat. I  don't know the truth of that famous story. I can say that I coordinated meals for mourners at my synagogue for years. I can't tell you how often a person who had volunteered to cook would tell me that the soup or the lasagna they had made for a Shiva house ended u...

The Passover dishes are all put away with a great deal of help from my husband and kids and my son's friend. Shir haShirim, the Songs of Songs is  usually read on Passover and one of the famous lines there is "for lo the winter is past.." I grew up in New England where a snowstorm in April is not unheard of. Usually, I think that my New York neighbors are weenies when they complain about the cold in April. But this year, despite the Song of Songs and despite the calendar day after day feels like late November. The calendar does read April though so my next tallit is due fairly soon. This tallit is being made for a young man who was born in Ethiopia. I am using parts of an Ethiopian hand woven scarf in the tallit. The text that is tying the tallit together comes from the teachings of Nachman of Bratslav. The melody was written by Baruch Chait who was a member of the band The Rabbi's Sons which was the Orthodox version of The Beatles. Their music was even more ...