Beauty of Creation

I "discovered" a new artist (actually two) today- RITUAL THREADS. It is an exciting artistic venture featuring the fabulous talents of Leah Sosewitz, a Ketubah and paper-cut artist, and Marsha Kasanov, a fabric artist. I know that coveting is one of the no-no's in the top 10 but I can't help myself in the case of this tallit.

Tallit Haiku

Keep me safe and warm

Cover me L'dor v'dor

Blanket me with joy

A lovely and girl tallis... a beautiful gift for a bat mitzvah girl. From TantahLeah's Handmades

Shabbat Shalom!!!

Lovin' the leather...

I found the work of Renée Weiss Chase quite accidentally one day. It is amazing what the right combination of words can deliver when typed into Google. I was pretty amazed to find these leather tallit bags. I certainly have never seen anything like them.

Renee has been a fashion designer throughout her professional life, creating women's sportswear for hundreds of retail outlets. While clothing has been her first love, using her skills for spiritual and aesthetic pursuits has been another requisite in her life. Over time, she has been commissioned to make a number of Bimah and Torah covers for synagogue use. The imagery for these pieces has been derived from various Jewish sources, most recently Women and the Holocaust.

The medium of choice for Renée is always leather –

the finest, softest leather available. And

since she works with couture one-of-a kind garments when she designs clothes, she uses those same techniques to design her Tallit bags- hand work, pure silk linings and precise attention to every detail.Yad Tallit bags and Kippas are crafted of leather and worked by hand and machine using top grain kidskin dyed in luxurious palettes. Each bag is hand cut and takes more than twelve hours to assemble. The linings are silk charmeuse, printed with the Yad logo. Each bag is delivered in a cotton fleece protective sleeve to be cherished for a lifetime. Kippas are made in coordinating color and material

Ki Teitzei Tallit

Once again, from the studio of Marilyn Jackler...

Ki Teitzei deals with laws of war, inheritance, marriage and divorce, and proper conduct in regard to all of God's creatures.
Band I
Oxen work the fields unmuzzled so they can eat if they are hungry. They are paired with their own kind in order to share their burden equally, as required by Jewish law


Band II
This scene expresses the peace and tranquility which can be enjoyed by the animal kingdom as well as by mankind if the laws of the Torah are practiced.







The neckband of the tallit is decorated with the traditional blessing, hand painted with gold-outlined, crowned, Hebrew lettering.
The tallit is shown on a background of cream wool blend. The tallit tzitziot (threads) are handspun.

A matching tallit bag, tefillin bag and yarmulke are also available. The tallit bag is made of cream wool blend and has a strip of painted silk running horizontally.

The tallit and all items are handmade.

Disturbed

I like to think of myself as a liberal Jew... a liberal, open minded person. I saw something this weekend that really ruffled my feathers.

I was walking through a local convention hall (checking out the beading meeting) when I saw a woman wearing what at firt appeared to be a scarf. As I came closer, it was obviously not a scarf rather it was a tallit nearly identical to the one that I inherited from my grandfather. There were no Jewish services being held at this place... it was a Sunday at noon. I think what bothered me was that rather than as a religious object, this woman was wearing it a fashion statement, tied in a loose knot, tossed over her shoulder. What does it say? What does my frustration mean to me.

Parsha Matot and Mase'ei: Numbers 30:2 - 36:13

HIGH EXPECTATIONS




At the beginning of Parshat Matot, God tells Moses to do battle against the Midianites - immediately after which Moses is destined to die.

Now for Moses, this sounds like a real dilemma. He knows that war against Midian will speed the Jews' entry into Israel, but the consequence will be his own death. What does Moses do?

You guessed it - without hesitating, Moses quickly organizes the people for war. This is self-sacrifice taken to the Nth degree. In order to fulfill the wishes of God and advance the national cause, Moses literally hastened his own death.

Now let's look at the other side: what was the Jewish people's reaction to all this? Recall these same people had complained bitterly against Moses for the past 40 years in the desert - even threatening to stone him! But now, the Torah tells us, the people refused to fight the Midianites - so as not to cause the death of their beloved leader Moses. Why the change of heart?

The commentators explain that all those years of criticism were only because the people respected Moses so much and had the highest expectations of him.

It's like when parents criticize a child - it's only because they love the child so much and want the very best for him. Of course the methodology may be wrong, but the sentiment is sincere.

And that's why, with the threat of Moses' death looming before them, the Jewish people were ready to boycott the war, and delay their own entry into Israel, in order to extend Moses' life. In the end, we see that all their complaining was really rooted in love. Remember this the next time ... someone complains about you



These combined parshot bring us to the end of the book of Numbers. The three Tallitot above were inspired by the book of Numbers and are from the studio of Marilyn Jackler. Marilyn is attempting to paint all fifty four portions on tallit... quite a task ahead of her. Please go the website and examine the detail that Marilyn painted into these tallitot. They are just wonderful works of art as well as d'var torah!

Pinhas Numbers 25:10-30:1

Rabbi Tracee Rosen on Friday July 14, 2006 spoke these words as part of her Sermon in Utah.

In this week’s Torah portion, Pinhas, Moses and Elazar the High Priest are instructed to conduct a census of the Israelites: “Count the heads of all the community of Israelites from twenty years and up by their fathers’ houses, everyone who goes out in the army of Israel. (Numbers 26:2)” While ostensibly they are to count “all the community of Israelites,” the latter half of the verse qualifies this statement by limiting the count to all males over the age of twenty, those who are eligible to be drafted for military service.

Just like the first census of the Israelites at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, women, children, slaves, resident foreigners, etc. aren’t actually counted in the census. Painfully, when we deal with the texts of antiquity, we are often confronted with a past that was male-dominated, sexist and exclusivist, reflecting the outlook of people at a particular point in time. Fortunately for us, we Jews have always been interpretive readers of text, not fundamentalist literalists. What the text meant 2,500 years ago is not what it was construed to mean 1,000 years ago, or what it has to mean today.

When the signers of the Declaration of Independence affixed their signatures 230 years ago to a document which affirmed that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” what was self-evident to them was that all free, white, property-owning, adult males were endowed with certain unalienable rights, as those were the individuals who were privileged with the status of citizenship. However, even if it was only unconsciously, Jefferson laid the groundwork for the later women’s movements and civil right’s movements to claim for themselves the basic tenet of equality.

So, too, this basic value in the Torah, that all people count, needs to be expanded in our day beyond the narrow literalist reading of the verse. This is the consummate Jewish act. The 19th century Hassidic master, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, known by his mystically oriented Torah commentary, Sefat Emet, The Language of Truth, offers a wonderful insight into the need for the two census activities in B’midbar. The first census, he says, was needed for the process of giving of the Torah; the second was related to the settlement in the Land of Israel. “Just as each person has a unique and special portion of the Torah, so too, each person has a designated portion in the land…Every census in the Torah is for the purpose of standing each person on his/her ‘root’ (the place of grounding which enables someone to reach upward to achieve their human potential and purpose).”

For the Sefat Emet, the census of the Torah is not merely for the mundane purpose of assembling troops to conquer the land of Israel, it has a higher and more mystical purpose of directing each individual to his or her destiny. We can almost imagine his vision of such a numbering process: “You, Number 602,434, Rachel daughter of Golda, here is your unique piece of Torah that you are meant to share with the world. Here is your land, your place in your community. Now go out, live your true potential, help create that bridge between the upper and lower realms which will pave the way to tikkun olam, repair of our broken world.”

We know, by the way, that this unambiguously male-dominated view of the world is not the last word in a dynamic, ever-evolving Torah. Even in this week’s portion, we have a rather limited case of the five daughters of Tzelophehad who challenge the biblical law that only sons may inherit the property of their fathers. When their case is decided, they prevail, and are allowed to inherit their father’s property. They, too, are made to count among the citizens of Israel, so much so, that like the chieftains of the Israelite tribes, they, too, are enumerated by name.

The beautiful Tallit above is from Iris Quilts... it depicts the 12 tribes and was created by IrisQuilts. I don't think a bunch of men wandering the desert for decades ever looked this lovely.

The tallit that binds

It is very common among traditional Jews to use a tallit for the chuppah... but I love what Chai Chuppah has done with THEIR tallit chuppah.



When you both marry for a second time, and you and your groom bring five children together in a new family, it's tricky to figure out how to include them all in your ceremony. This chuppah is made of interwoven tallitot, belonging to various members of the new family. We carefully basted them to a background of see-through netting, so that none of the tallitot would be harmed and so that the chuppah could be taken apart after the wedding and the tallitot returned to their owners.

Can't you imagine buying new tallit for the children brought together for this union and having them sewn together bringing individuals together into a family!

Shabbat Shalom (oh! and by the way, I am moving in to my new home today).

How to wear your tallit

Putting on a tallit is a religious act, one worthy of special ritual and blessings.
*Pick up the tallit and hold it with both hands, one hand at each end of the atarah or ``collar,'' the part of the tallit with the Hebrew words. Spread out the tallit. The Hebrew words should be facing you and be right-side up. At this point, some choose to kiss each end of the atarah. Some talitot have only a decoration and no Hebrew words on the collar.
The Hebrew words on the tallit are the traditional blessing for putting on a tallit.

*Say the blessing.
*Put the tallit over your shoulders, in the fashion one would put on a cape. Make sure the atarah is where a collar should be --- around your neck. The Hebrew words on the atarah should be on the outside.

Now that you know how to don a tallit, don't you want to wear a beautiful one the next time you go to Shabbat services? Look no further than Pomegranate Judaica, the site of Anita Rabinoff-Goldman an artist who works in fabric rather than paint. Anita's work is strong on color and design and one can see that she is inspired by natural and floral themes. Here we see lilies, pomegranates, biblical flowers and birds of paradise... Truly paradise!

Tallit for all

In yesterday's blog posting I wrote about tefillin and the mitzvah of laying on tefillin. Another ceremonial piece used in daily prayer is the tallit or prayer shawl. Again, a piece worn traditionally by men, it can be a work of art by itself.
I have been collecting examples of tallitot and choosing which one to feature first is quite difficult. In any synagogue on any Shabbat morning you will see many identical tallitot. The individual who stands out in prayer, is the one with beautifully woven or quilted tallit. From across the room, one can tell that this prayer shawl was especiallly chosen. One cannot help but to feel holy when wearing such a tallit.

The work of Temma Gentles work is extremely special- the colors and design are simple yet sophisticated. Even RabbiGunther Plaut the co-author of
The Torah: A Modern Commentary commissioned one. You can see the Rabbi wearing his tallit above. Temma weaves her own cloth and also works with applique, beading and silk screen. The tallit on the left was designed to commemorate a young woman's bat mitzvah. It is entitled "Matriarchs and Seasons". On the right is a tallit that Temma designed for her self many years ago.

On a personal note, I recall receiving a copy of Rabbi Plaut's commentary before I graduated from high school. There was a time when I thought I would become a rabbi and my parents, although not thrilled, were recognizing my commitment to Judaism on the same night our temple was recognizing my many years of work in the religious school.