sarah in nyc

 Over the years, people have often asked me if my father the rabbi came from a rabbinical family. If he was part of a long lineage of rabbis. I would always answer that probably not. My father's immediate family wasn't particularly observant. This photo of my father leading birkat-hamazon at his cousin's wedding, with the married couple, doing their best to hide their "OMG HOW LONG IS THIS JEWISH STUFF GOING TO TAKE???" expressions on their faces and Uncle Bernie not even bothering to try to hide his boredom and my father doing his best to do right by birkat ha mazon just about sums my father's sense of his family's connection to the rabbinical. I do remember my father telling me about how he learned to love to study Jewish texts from his grandfather Sam Cohen.  Sam (Issachar) Cohen, born in Kalish Poland had studied in Yeshivah before coming to New York. There was a family legend about him studying with  Akiva Eger  or at his yeshiva  except that the tim...

  וכל העם רואים את הקולות and all of the nation sees the sounds  If you asked me to depict this particular biblical verse as an image I probably would have shown you something like this. I also would have assumed that my particular visual imagining of the verse was probably universal.   This was my assumption before I met with Liat. Liat understood the 'seeing the sounds" as the strips she painted below. Once I understood what her understanding of those words was I could get to work. I painted three wide strips of silk. The dyes had to sit to cure for a couple of days to keep the color as intense as possible. Then, I heat set the colors first by ironing the strips with as high a heat as my iron put out and a high steam setting. Then I steamed the strips using a steamer. Only after the heat and steam could I rinse each strip to get rid of any excess dye and after the strips dried I could iron them and then cut them to size. So for about a week, I was working away at t...

 My cousin introduced me to Esther more than twenty-five years ago, Esther needed a referral for family-based daycare for her new baby in the neighborhood. Esther called me back a few years later for a recommendation for a daycare center for her toddler. What had started out as a couple of phone calls has over the years grown into a long friendship that has even survived Esther, Frank, and Maya moving out to the suburbs. Frank's father was an academic and he spent a good deal of his career living in Southeast Asia. Frank was born in what was then Burma. His father was expelled because of his political views and Frank started kindergarten in Mandalay. Frank's mother chic. She loved clothes. She was an accomplished seamstress. She bought wonderful fabrics in the various fabric markets where she lived with her family. She had an incredible collection of textiles. Frank's parents died this summer, within a week of one another, both after a long and difficult struggle with demen...

 My aunt and cousin were in town and they invited me to lunch at a beautiful restaurant in midtown. I took the subway there but on the way to my subway stop, I took photos. The next storm may blow all the pretty foliage away. The little building with arches was built as a public restroom but is now a community art gallery with occasional shows.  I got off the subway at Central Park South and 59th Street and then walked along the park. I took these photos from the street looking over the wall along the park. Central Park is as much a designed space as Disneyland. It is designed to be as photogenic as a beautiful young actress with no bad angles. The restaurant we ate at was equally photogenic.  The restaurant walls were lined with large serving platters. This photo is from the restaurant website. We ate in the room just beyond the glass doors seen in the photo above. Each of the vases/lanterns was decorated with a pierced illustration of a new York city building or bridge....

  Today I had to go to the post office to mail off Chanukah gifts for my great nieces and nephews. I got to the post office about half an hour before closing and the line was nearly out the door. I took this photo at the end of my block while I was on my way. One might have expected the post office to be positively bristling with cranky energy. Instead, the three women in front of me were laughing and chatting. They were all quite a bit older than me. I assumed that they were neighbors who had either met by chance in the post office or had planned to do this unpleasant chore together. Just before I turned the corner to the post office But after several minutes one of the trio a woman who looked remarkably like my late mother-in-law asked me my name. The three women had met on the line and turned it into a party. All three had been social workers. Two had spent their careers working with the homeless population of New York.   The line moved slowly because there was only on...

 Dear friends from out of town will be joining us tonight for Shabbat dinner. One thing that I learned from my mother is that you can express how much you have missed your friends and how happy you are that they are with you by serving them a beautiful meal. The chicken portion of dinner is flavored with Herbes de Provence that have been zhuzhed up with additional herbs and the juice of a couple of Meyer lemons. My hands and the house all smell of Meyer lemons. I flavored our rice with cardamom and a tiny bit of rose water. It isn't photographed because it looks like white rice but will be all fragrant. I roasted some chickpeas with za'atar sumac black pepper, fresh Meyer lemon and a bit of liquid smoke. I decided to bake a cake. I had watched the latest episode of The Great British Bake-Off while I was working out and was reminded of how any food looks fancier if it involves layers. So I baked a simple 4 egg sheet cake ( called shit cake by my father).  My mother was serious ...

 My dear friend Rachely spent a few years living in Boston and then returned to Israel where she has been living since she was thirteen or so. Those three years of New England autumns created an annual hunger for the color of turning leaves for Rachely.  I am posting these photos for her, but you are welcome to enjoy them as well. The photo below is both about the yellow leaves and the excellent shadows cast by this sculpture, a steel rendition of  crochet  lace. A street-level view of the trees I see from my living room windows. The photo above is not of fall foliage but of a sign held by a local zealot. i have som many theological and grammatical issues with his sign. Is he saying that God doesn't have the power of forgiveness? Do people not have the ability to forgive one another? This sign needs punctuation for clarity