sarah in nyc

 Last winter I had begun a tallit making workshop for a synagogue. Between session 1 and 2 the Rabbi's mother died.  I was supposed to lead a session and had to cancel because my own mother was dying. We re-started  the project a while back. Amazon.com Widgets I suppose that if i decided ahead of time exactly what every participants tallit would look like, if I came up with some sort of a standard tallit formula I suppose it might have been an easier class to run. It does create more of a demand from a class to ask them to really think through both what is a tallit and what is YOUR tallit ( as opposed to what is a tallit that you could purchase in a Judaica store).  The class is made up of people with a really wide range of sewing skills (from zero to highly competent) as well as a similarly large range of Jewish knowledge and Jewish texts. So far the sessions have all taken place in a preschool in the Bronx with teeny tables and chairs. It was...

Yesterday I taught a sewing lesson. My student made a very cool red and black shaped shrug.On my way home I passed this building. It has always been a favorite of mine.  I had never see it before with this particular play of shadows. I was not the only person who had stopped to take photos of the pretty shadows cast by the brackets that hold up the fire escapes. Sometimes there are museums that are on my to do list. The Museum at FIT is always on mine. I had heard that  Fairy Tale Fashion  was not to be missed. I was looking forward to seeing the exhibit. I took a bunch of photos not realizing what a great job the museum had done in the online version of the exhibit. So feel free to just go to the link and flip through their photos. It's kind of an interesting premise for an exhibit showing garments as if they have been chosen to clothe a reenactment of the classic stories. It puts garments from different eras in new contexts with one another. ...

This afternoon, my husband and I decided to to go to the Museum of the City of New York. There were a few exhibits that seemed appealing. We hopped on the bus and went cross-town to the East Side. Amazon.com Widgets That particular stretch of Fifth Avenue was built mostly in the 1920's. The Federalist revival was in full swing. Buildings built during the 1920's tend to have facades that are much flatter than those built from the 1880's to the end of WWI. I was charmed by this building that seems to have been built in a hybrid Federalist/Egyptian revival style with a bit of Gothic /Deco thrown in for good measure.  I know that some architectural critics were made crazy by these sorts of architectural style salads. Visually though, the composition works and it made me happy to look at it when I walked by. I just loved this view looking east on one of the cross streets.  We went to the Museum to see the exhibit of Jacob Riis photographs and the on...

Those of you who read my Food Friday posts regularly might be surprised to know that I was a vegetarian for most of my college years. During my early  years of my marriage I cooked chicken only rarely and  beef only once in a blue moon.  Amazon.com Widgets These days though my Shabbat cooking is nearly always meat based. Having a vegetarian guest always has me scrambling. Tonight one of our guests is vegetarian. Her husband is a meat eater. I pulled three pounds of chopped meat out of the freezer and assumed I would make meatballs and veggie friendly side dishes. My husband began waxing poetic about how wonderful chicken is and how much he likes chicken. He also talked about how he thinks of meatballs as being a first course and not a main dish.  I got the point. He wanted chicken. I decided to make up the thee pounds of chopped meat into Middle Eastern flavored  torpedo shaped meatballs  with bulgher wheat, parsley and mint. Those will ge...

I have been working on researching my family history on and off for several years now. I found the children of my mother’s first cousin through the magic of Google. My cousin in Israel who I mostly know as an adorable toddler, despite the fact that he is the father of children, has been wonderful at organizing information. Through JewishGen.org I have been contacted by some of my maternal grandfather’s cousins. This has all been quite exciting. Several days ago my new to me cousin Jeff Miller –( his great grandfather and my great grandmother were siblings), let me know that he had found evidence of my grandfather changing his name from Yankel Freider to Jacob Levy from the online records of the Kings County Clerk’s office. You could mail in your request and pay $10 per document copied or you could go in person and just pay for the cost of photocopying the images. The Kings County Court house is 30 minutes from my house by subway so I made the trek this afternoon. I was direc...

Jack's tallit was completed. it was time for him to come tie the tzitzit. I showed him the completed tallit in all of it's details. The base silk was different than what he had selected. I sent his family photos of the silks that were available and they were pleased with the alternative choice. ( I was too, it was a much nicer silk. Sometimes the stock issues of my silk suppliers play out in our favor.) I also showed Jack and his family the sad red silk that I had ordered and they agreed that the deep red velvet was MUCH better We were then ready to tie the tzitzit. I usually show the bar-mitzvah child how to do the tying first. Often the family wants to join in.  Jack's mother and grandmother joined him in tying the tzitzit. Of the three, Jack's grandmother was the most used to doing handwork. She was a quick study. there is always something so companionable about a group of people all working together with their hands. Jack used a tooth...