sarah in nyc

Today’s post is a jumble of thoughts, a blog salad if you will.   Yesterday was the Yahrzeit of my mother’s friend Rachelle. I think they met in college. My mother kept  very few of her pre-marriage friends. Rachelle was one of them. Rachelle’s daughter Miriam was in my class in school. She was unfailingly nice to me in a place where kindness was a rare experience for me. I went to several of Miriam’s birthday parties. At one of those parties, Rachelle served not the regular frosting topped birthday cake but a Dobos  Torte.  I have eaten Dobos Torte exactly once, at Miriam's birthday party in 1969, and I still remember that hard caramel topped  many layered cake. The cake was a wonder to look at it it’s thin layers of cake and frosting. It was a sophisticated thing to serve to elementary school kids. I remember that Rachelle warned us that it was rich and we shouldn’t eat too much of it. I ate two slices.   In 1978, Rachelle published this cookboo...

Zachary is my neighbor. He’s a really delightful kid.  We met before his bar mitzvah to learn a bit about tallit. Zachary wore his deceased grandfather’s tallit at his bar mitzvah. Zachary and I discussed what I could make for him as a gift. He needed a bag for his t’fillin.  I suggested a text,that is recited while wrapping the straps of the t’fillin.  I will betroth you to me forever I will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice and with mercy. I will betroth you to me with faithfulness Hosea 2-21-22   I painted the text onto heavy weight black satin in gold paint. I just used the words “ I will betroth” once. I shadow quilted the borders. For you non schmatta geeks, that means decorative stitching in the same color as the face fabric with a heavy filling beneath the face fabric. the heavy filer in this case was an old heavy weight wool skirt.   This is the back of the bag. I painted the gold vines and then did diamond...

When it was time for my daughter to study for her Bat Mitzvah we hired a teacher to work with her. Either my husband or I could have taught her, but given where she was emotionally at the time, it seemed better to have her learn with someone else. When it was time for my older son to begin to study, I started to work with him with the assurance that if he wanted to work with someone who was not his mother, we would find him a teacher. We worked in little snippets of time early in the mornings. I don't think we could have found a teacher to show up for ten minutes at a time, at 7:00am. We worked well together. We have a fairly easy relationship.r When our youngest was 10 or so, my husband went to a charity auction. One of the items in the silent auction was Bar Mitzvah lessons with Jerry. Jerry runs an alternative Hebrew School and has prepared hundreds and hundreds of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. my husband bid on the lessons and won. Jerry was one of the people that helped...