sarah in nyc

 Linda and her husband picked up her completed tallit on Tuesday. Tying tzizit is just a lovely thing to do together. We know one another for so long. We have supported one another through pregnancies and births and deaths and everything in between. We used to see one another in synagogue every week but now we see one another only once in a while.  Linda mastered the slightly more complicated, yet much lovelier way to tie tzitzit. Linda is so skilled in so many areas. Tying the tzitzit is hard for her. Despite it being a bit of a challenge at first, she had mastered the skill after not very long. I love making a piece that is so completely specific for one human being. I am fortunate to be able to do this work. Yesterday I went into the local thrift store. I saw this on the wall. I immediately knew who the artist was. He is the hyper Jewish version of Bob Ross. Both use the act of their painting as a kind of entertainment. Bob Ross is soothing.  Morris Katz used to set up...

 The last several days have been filled with terrible sadness and an awesome sense of loss for our family and friends. If we punched cards every time someone joined us for Shabbat dinner or a Yom Tov meal, like the frozen yogurt place downstairs used to do, the person who would have qualified for the most additional free meals at our table would have been our friend Mike. I had first met Mike when our two sons with the same first name found one another in synagogue and proceeded to spend every Shabbat crawling around the pews in the back rows with their Spiderman figurines and Thomas the Tank Engine trains playing together and creating fantasy worlds the way two and three-year-old boys do. After several months, My husband (who during those days attended a different service in the building) asked me if Mike had attended a particular  Hebrew High school program in Queens. Mike and my husband studied together three afternoons a week all through high school. After a while, every S...

 Today is Friday. Like most other Fridays my day is a mix of cooking and my other work. In the cooking category, I baked challah this week. I also made breaded chicken. The breading is made of a mix of matza meal and coarse cornmeal and spices. The spices included hawaj, black pepper, smoked paprika, and cayenne. I topped the breaded chicken with fresh lemon juice. We will also have a salad topped with roasted vegetables. The rest of my day was taken up with carefully outlining the lettering I had done yesterday. This was the lettering yesterday. Here it is today. An outline makes all of the difference in the world.  I have another stanza or two to go before I start assembling both tallitot. Shabbat Shalom!

 This time last year, all of us in New York were not just socially distancing but were on lockdown. We avoided going outside. Each day I read the terrifying dispatches from the Covid-19 ICU written by my dear friend Kara, a hospital chaplain, who was doing her best to give comfort to the dying and their families. Helping people send last words of love to their dying parents through ipads, using remote translators to offer comfort to the dying, watching nearly every patient in the Covid ICU die except for one feisty Russian woman. Kara's postings reminded me why staying inside of my apartment was so important.  For weeks and weeks, our only contact with others was through the 7:00 pm cheer which was both a tribute to healthcare workers and a reminder to one another that we were still alive, that all of the windows facing my apartment were filled with people. The cheer gave us a moment to connect with one another not through a screen, but in real life. Last year, the thought of ...

 A post mostly about pretty stuff and a small bit about Shabbat dinner. The other day I came across an old friend in the local thrift store. In my house, growing up, this can housed Red Rose tea bags.   Each side of the can was decorated with scenes from Israel. The mix of mid-century modern abstraction with the pretty and old-fashioned shape of the can make it very appealing. Although the graphics were by a "famous Israeli artist" the candy makers failed to credit the famous artist. As a not particularly famous artist, my response is, "Grrr.". I was delighted to see the tin canister but did not purchase it. The median strip in the middle of Broadway is maintained by a neighborhood group (and the parks department). The tulips are about to go to seed but look so much like the Warhol silkscreens of poppies. I leaned over the bench to get close-ups of the tulips all while this grandpa and his grandson enjoyed one another's company. The two were so sweet together I ...