It isn't often that I can trace all of the threads of ideas going into a tallit but in the case of Linda's birthday tallit I can. At the moment, Linda's tallit exists only in my head. But I want to take you through how we have come up with our design for this tallit. This tallit is a birthday gift from Linda's husband. The gift was announced with this certificate. I loved that it sort of mimicked the look of old Hebrew School certificates from the 1940s and 50s. Then came the work of figuring out what sort of tallit Linda wanted. Linda is a rabbi and has a wardrobe of tallitot. Linda wanted this tallit to be white. She also wanted it to be relatively lighter weight than some of her other tallitot. The inspiration behind this tallit is the pandemic. One prayer that has been especially resonant for Linda during this era of Covid -19 when so many have died struggling to breathe is this one. אֱלֹהַי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַֽתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא אַתָּה בְרָאתָהּ אַתָּה יְצַרְ...
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. A note about comments: I love comments from readers, from spammers, not so much. I approve comments before posting them so comments are not cluttered with junk. It may take a few hours before your posts appear. Be patient. If you are a real person with a real comment it will be posted.