Shabbat Tapestry.

Through closed eyes, flames dance
Prayers are sent heavenward
Sabbath peace descends
Toby Goldsmith


Lynne Feldman grew up on Manhattan's upper west side. She attended the High School of Music and Art, New York University and has a master's degree in art education from Columbia University. Her formal art training began at the age of 12 at the Art Students League of New York where she continued to study drawing and painting there for the next 15 years.
It was not until 20 years into her career as a painter that Ms. Feldman began to explore Judaic themes in her work. What began as an expression of emotion in response to her grandparents' death became a passion, a profound need to convey Jewish culture on canvas.
Her work has been reproduced in Moment magazine and on the covers of Hadassah and Lilith and Tikkun magazines, and has been used by the United Jewish Appeal, B'nai B'rith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Her painting "Purim Dance", commissioned by Temple Beth David in Westwood, Massachusetts, was featured in the recently published book The Jews in America: A Treasury of Art and Literature.
Ms. Feldman's work has been shown at the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati, the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, and many galleries, universities and JCC's around the country. In 1992, she was award the simon Rockower Award for Illustration in Journalism. Ms. Feldman lives in Rochester, NY with her husband and two children.

Shabbat Shalom.

Wake up! There is eating to be done.

This Challah Cover in bright orange from Joan Shifrin will certainly light up your Shabbat table. I personally love the color orange. I know it is not a favorite of many others but to me it speaks of sunshine and mangoes!
There is not much about Joan on her flickr site, but a quick look on Google helped me learn more about her. She and her partner Catherine Shimony started Global Goods Partners, an organization dedicated to alleviating poverty and promoting social justice by strengthening women-led development initiatives for marginalized communities in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Shabbat Shalom.

A good way to spend the Depression

This and eleven other windows at Temple Beth Sholom were designed by artist A. Raymond Katz (1895-1974) of New York. Katz worked in various media, including murals, stained glass, mosaics, bas-reliefs, printmaking, paintings and drawings. Born in Kassa, Hungary, he came to the United States in 1909 and spent his early years in Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Among his murals are those for the 1933 Century of Progress exposition in Chicago, a post office in Madison, Illinois, the Young Women's Hebrew Association of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and many synagogues in the United States. His bas-reliefs and stained glass designs also can be found in numerous synagogues. Katz was well known for his designs based on characters of the Hebrew alphabet and for his interpretations of Jewish themes. After seeing his Ten Commandment paintings, Temple members Willard and Lois Cohodas visited Katz in New York and he offered to design, without charge, ten windows to symbolize the Ten Commandments for the Temple. Those windows were installed in 1962. This Sabbath Window was designed a few years later, not long before his death in 1974. All of the windows designed by Katz for Temple Beth Sholom were fabricated by Rohlf's Stained and Leaded Glass Studio of New York.

Patricia Lazar

Patricia Lazar has done some wonderful paintings on ceramics. I had hoped to find more of her Judaic work but was unsuccessful in my search. This Toronto artist also does some amazing work with pet portraits.


From the Jewish Catalogue:
As a ceremonial object or art, the candle is generally overlooked, yet it has great significance. Whether intended for practical purposes such as providing light, or for more evocative, quasi-magical ends, such as rekindling the winter sun, almost every festival and celebration incorporates the use of candles at some point.

Fire is universally recognized as one of the basic elements of the world. It is mysterious, frightening, mesmerizing. Its attraction is almost irresistible. In the Kabbalah, the image of a multicolored flame emanating from a candle is taken as a metaphor for God's relation to the world and man. The flame is a single entity, yet it appears to be undergoing constant change. The flame adheres to, relies on, and appears to emanate from the candle, yet is a distinct and separate entity. The white interior of the flame is constant, but its exterior is always in motion and changes color.

Reducing fire to a few metaphors, however, robs it of its natural power and mystique. Fortunately the tradition, by incorporating the lighting of candles into the celebratory cycle in a number of different ways [e.g., Shabbat candles, Havdalah (at the end of Shabbat), Hanukkah candles, memorial candles], left open the possibilities for recognizing the many potentialities of fire. It is for us to rediscover those potentialities and allow them to "illumine our eyes."

On Friday night, one is required to light candles in the house for the sake of shalom bayit (harmony in the home) and oneg shabbat (Sabbath joy). The candles ought to be in the room where the Sabbath meal is to be eaten.

It is the woman who lights the candles, but men may light them when no woman is present.

Candles may be lit, at the earliest, 1-1/4 hours before sunset, but the [customary] time is up to 18 minutes before sunset. Check a Jewish calendar for the precise time of [candlelighting and/or] sunset. [A local daily newspaper and a myriad of websites are other good sources for the time of sunset.] If the [traditional 18-minute] time limit cannot be met, candles may be lit during the 18 minutes immediately preceding sunset.

At least two candles should be lit. These represent "shamor" ["keep"] and "zakhor" ["remember"], the first words of the commandments [in the two Ten Commandments passages in the Torah] concerning Shabbat (Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12). They also symbolize the unity underlying all apparent duality, such as man and woman, body and soul, speech and silence, creation and revelation.

It is permissible to light more than two candles. In fact, it is considered particularly meritorious to do so. This is implied in an interpretation of "And God blessed the seventh day" (Genesis 2:3). "With what did he bless it? Light."

Some people light an additional candle for each child in the family. Once you've lit a certain number, it is a custom never to decrease that number.

Students away from home should light candles for themselves, as they are no longer within the household of their parents.

The ritual of lighting the candles involves:

a. the actual lighting of the candles

b. drawing the hands around the candles and toward the face from one to seven times (three is most common)

c. covering the eyes with the hands

d. saying the blessing



The halakhah for this [i.e., the method prescribed in Jewish law] is a bit complicated. A blessing must [normally] be said before an act. However, since the blessing over the Shabbat candles is also the act which initiates Shabbat, it is forbidden to light a fire after the blessing is said [because of the traditional restriction against kindling a flame on Shabbat]. To get over this bind, one lights the candles and then covers one's eyes while saying the blessing. When the eyes are opened, the already lit candles are enjoyed for the first time, as it were, therefore both completing the blessing and not violating Shabbat.

There are several intentions associated with the waving of the hands around the candles: it serves to usher in the Shabbat Bride as the light of Shabbat fills the room and surrounds the person; it symbolizes the culmination of the six days of creation into the seventh day of rest; it draws the warmth and light inside oneself.

Shabbat Shalom, and happy 10th anniversary Rabbi Brian and dearest Naomi!

Fish on the Table (which is made of wood and comes from trees)

Fish is prominent on the holiday table, especially on the New Year and Shavuot. In Jewish lore, it is a symbol of fertility, because Jacob gave his children a blessing that they should multiply like fish in the sea. It is also associated with the coming of the Messiah; according to a legend, the Messiah will come in the form of a great fish from the sea.

The custom of eating fish on the Sabbath is apparently an early one, as the rabbis of the Mishnah (oral law, codified approx. 200 CE) ruled that it was meritorious to eat fish with each of the Sabbath meals; references in the Talmud also indicate that it was customary among Jews to eat fish on Friday night.
In the Ashkenazi kitchen

East European Jews acquired a liking for freshwater fish from the hundreds of rivers which crossed the mainly landlocked areas they inhabited. In the shtetl, fish was brought live on Thursday. It was swimming in tubs at the market and was kept swimming in the bath till Friday, with several changes of water to get rid of the muddy taste; on Friday morning it was killed with a knife or a hammer blow.

Carp, pike, perch, sterlet and trout were all grand fish. Édouard de Pomiane, the French gastronome of Polish origin who wrote about the cooking of the Jews of Poland, remarked that "every observant Jew eats river fish. The wealthy buy carp and pike. The poor content themselves with a miserable roach or sometimes a piece of salt herring." (The poor also ate tench and chub.) Jewish traders on the silk route were involved in introducing carp from China to Central and Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century, and it was Jews who first farmed carp in Poland. They managed fish ponds and also bred fish from the Black, Azov, and Caspian Seas and from the river Don. It was the carp, which traveled easily live in tanks, that they adopted as their fish. Whereas carp became a symbol of the Sabbath, salt herring, which Jewish merchants also traded and which was a lot cheaper than fresh fish, was the symbol of the weekday and marked the contrast between the two.

Many of the old recipes for freshwater fish and herring are now used for saltwater fish like halibut, haddock, cod, plaice, sole, hake, flounder, and salmon. Salmon has become the great Jewish party dish, ever-present at weddings and bar mitzvahs. At my local fishmonger, Corney's, which specializes in salmon, both wild and farmed, there are always long queues of people waiting to have theirs filleted or cut into steaks for the Sabbath. For more of this essay and for some recipes go here.


Rebecca Shore manages to combine our two themes this week into one piece of art. The Tree of Life, symbolic of torah is filled with letters from God's name. They are embedded in the branches of the tree, embossed in gold. We also find the seven species- figs, olive, wheat, barley, grapes, pomegranates, and dates. Below fish swim, they as the sole survivors of "the flood" remain a talisman of good luck to the Jewish people.

Ring that bell

Lecha Dodi was composed by Rabbi Shlomo Halevy Alkabetz (1505-1584), one of the Kabbalists of Safed. He arranged the poetical composition so that the first letters of each stanza spells out the name of the author, a practice quite common among liturgical poets. Although several versions of a hymn by this name had been circulating at that time, this is the one that was adopted by Rabbi Issac Luria, the foremost authority among the Kabbalistic masters.


This song has been described as perhaps one of the finest pieces of religious poetry in existence.


After the Minchah service, as the sun cast its setting rays over the distant hilltops, this saintly mystic and his disciples would go out into the fields to stand on one of Sefad's magnificent slopes. Gazing out upon plunging ravines and soaring heights, they would open their hearts in song as the sunset swelled into a cadence of changing colors: "Lecha dodi, likrat kallah; P'nei Shabbat, nekablah." This refrain concludes each of the nine stanzas of the hymn, in which Biblical phrases from the books of Shoftim, Yeshayahu, Yirmeyahu, and Tehillim are pieced together to create a liturgical mosaic. There is scarcely a phrase in the entire hymn which is not borrowed from the Hebrew Bible.


Only the first two and the last stanzas relate to the Shabbat theme. The rest reflect the Jewish longing for redemption, which includes the restoration of Yerushalayim and the coming of the Mashiach. Each of these other six stanzas describe another stage in the process of redemption.


The words of the refrain and the last two words of the hymn were taken from the Talmud. The Talmud relates that every Shabbat eve, Rabbi Hanina would don his finest garments and declare: "Come, let us go out to mee the Shabbat Queen." Rabbi Yannai likewise put on his festive clothes and declared: "Come, O Bride, Come, O Bride"

I thought I had seen everything... but then Midrash Pottery made these Shabbat Bride Bells... perfect for ringing your family to the table to light the Shabbat Candles together. (And this post even fits with my wedding RING theme of the week!)

I'm so glad its Friday...

Shabbat is here, Shabbat is here
I'm so glad Shabbat is here.
The candles burning bright.
It's Friday night
I'm so glad Shabbat is here

I can hear my son's preschool singing at Kabbalat Shabbat (not actually our school, but you get the idea).

And in recognition of that song, let's look at some beautiful candlesticks! Naim Basson made these wonderful hand painted on plexiglass and bronze, gold plated candlesticks. They would make such a festive mark on your Shabbat table.


These glass candlesticks by Amalia Flaisher are just stunning... as is the rest of her Judaica.


Have a great, quiet and health weekend. And for those of you in Central Florida... may it be calm and sunny.

Wood you?

I find it amazing that yet another week has passed. Shabbat again. I hope you all enjoyed last week's tzedakah boxes. This week was a good one... not nearly as stressful as last week (long story) but a little wine would be nice. So let's talk kiddush cups. Many religions believe wine to be sacred. Jews thank G'd for creating the fruit which gives us wine, and we thank G'd for the reasons to celebrate with wine. The wood carver Gabriel Bass uses exotic and lucious woods to create his kiddush cups, adding silver or glass as a receptacle for the wine.



I found this on Thursday... a group of Iowa artists who make Judaica as well as furniture, mirrors, boxes and other art for the home. They use birch an poplar as a base for their work... and then add very original painting. Here is a lazy susan they made for the Shabbat table... what a great way to pass the Challah.
Have a peaceful Shabbat.

Cut with care

The Art of The Jewish Paper Cut
The Jews became familiar with papercuts in Germany of the 17th century, where they were known as "Scherenschnitt" (scissor-runs). Austrian monks and nuns went on to create "Spitzenbilder", splendid "lace-pictures" of cut paper and the art was also known in Holland by the 18th century. But Jewish merchants probably met this form much earlier, in the 14th century, from travels to the Far East. Papercuts became most popular in the 19th century and into the early 20th. They were made exclusively by men: pupils in heder, yeshiva students, teachers (melamedim) and their assistants. Sometimes old men made papercuts in their spare time.



Dan Howarth has been creating original papercuts since 1978. His works have been seen in museum exhibits, publications, and private collections throughout the world. His works incorporate papercutting into multi-layered and three dimensional works of art. His body of work includes Jewish themes (papercut ketubot, family trees, ceremonial art, mizrachs) as well as Americana, functional art, and landscapes. Dan has taught the art of papercutting in the United States and Israel for nearly twenty years.







And with those last two beautiful pictures may I wish you all a Shabbat Shalom (Sabbath of Peace) and Shavua Tov (Good week). See you next week.