sarah in nyc

Because I had sold my only copy of this matza cover, it was time to make some new ones for my stash. I really like the design. my lettering has improved a whole lot since this was made several years ago. The center of the matza cover is made out of a quilting cotton that is no longer in print. Now that I have access to really beautiful silks and wools, it seems like a waste of time to make challah covers and matza covers in quilting cottons.   The stone path through the water is the major focal point of the matza cover, so I had to figure something out. I’m also trying to figure out how to do work in less obsessively labor intensive ways. When I actually sit down to figure out how much I make per hour, it can be pretty depressing.   I decided to try painting the rocks. I pulled a piece of  ivory wool/rayon broadcloth out of my stash. my tallit is made out of this wool as is my son’s. This is what I came up with. Rocky enough for you? I then cut strips ou...

Jews are usually described as “ The People of the Book”.  Words, and lots of them, are central to Jewish worship.  Some of my fondest memories  growing up was doing the call and response of High Holiday piyutim / liturgical poems. My father in his role as rabbi would call out those tooth breaking lines, and we, my mother and sisters and I, would lob those verses right back at him from the front row. Yes, there were another 300 people in the room but reciting piyutim always felt as intimate as a father playing catch in the back yard with a child. My parents also believed strongly in the value of having a nice handwriting.  One of my mother’s teachers was either Sol or Tzvi Sharfstein, who standardized Hebrew cursive writing in America. So when I learned how to read Hebrew, my mother also sat and taught me how to write Hebrew, folding each machberet / notebook page into four columns and having me practice writing each letter ( from the top down, so they would be...

Late night TV is filled with ads promising to help inventors. This photo shows a Jewish ritual object that I invented about fifteen years ago. Shabbat ends with a short ceremony, called havdalah , speration.  During havdalah we smell sweet spices to ease our transition from the holiness of Shabbat to work- a –day life. My invention was transferring the text of the havdalah onto a bag filled with sweet spices. When you hold the bag when you recite the prayer the spices get released into the air. This morning I got an email asking if I had any havdalah bags available to be picked up this afternoon.. I didn’t. I did have an order for another bag so I made both together. I made one bag extra, which is still unembellished, but will be ready with just a few moments of needle play.

Shaun, my client for this tallit loves color. I have posted the progress of the color red in the base of this tallit. Shaun was happy with the photos I had emailed to her.  Shaun particularly  loves when similar colors bump up one against the other. Back in the days when I used to make quilts, I used to pull fabric bolts off the shelf in the fabric store, stack them on the cutting table, and play with color combinations until the colors vibrated in my eyes. The quilts I made in those days were pretty wild. Yesterday, I bought the embroidery threads that I will use to cover all of the seams on this tallit. I purchased the ribbons on line. I love the red paisley, and and not quite sure about the multicolored watercolor print. pictured as well, is the red shantung stripe with lettering. There will be other stripes in purple. I see a whole lot of color vibration going on…how about you???

One of the current exhibits at the Jewish Museum, called Modern Art, Sacred Space. I went on Sunday. In 1951, the rabbi of the Millburn N.J.  Conservative syangogue decided to cal on the stars of the modern art world to help him create a synagogue that was both deeply Jewish and also expressed the ideas of the abstract expressionists. The architect who designed the synagogue itself was Percival Goodman. Goodman essentially created the vernacular of the post-war suburban synagogue. If you have seen a synagogue in the suburbs you have either seen Goodman's work or the work of one of his imitators. The exhibit is a small one, just two rooms. The piece I really wanted to see was Adolph Gottleib's ark curtain pictured above. I captured the image from the Jewish Museum's website.. Exhibited along with the curtains were Gottleib's sketches. Seeing those sketches was a treat. First of all, I loved the pure sketchyness of those sketches. His cartoons for the ark curtain do...