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DETION
JEW= IINWS
Divine Stitches:
Daughter's Tallit
RAHEL MUSLEAH
Special to the Jewish News
I measured the proximity of my
daughter's bat mitzvah by my
progress on her tallit.
Inspired by my sister, who
had made both her sons' tallitot as
well as her own, I asked my daughter
Shira if she'd like me to make her a
tallit. "Sure," she said.
I grew up in an Orthodox syna-
gogue with a mechitzah (separation of
women and men), so I had no memo-
ries ,of playing with my father's tallit,
none of that visceral feel of silk and
knots and closeness to father and
prayer.
But I have been wearing a tallit for
seven years, since I fell in love with an
ivory, sky-blue-and-silver Malka
Gavrielli creation in Jerusalem. Instead
of borrowing a tallit off the rack when
I read Torah in my Conservative syna-
gogue, I wanted my own.
From among rolls of fuchsia and
emerald silks in a nearby sari store,
Shira chose a delicate patterned fabric
of lavender, turquoise and white, and a
white silk for the atarah, the band that
crowns the top of the tallit.
My sister Flora showed me how to
fringe the material on two sides. I
chose a verse for the atarah and traced
out the letters I was going to embroi-
der in purple thread: Ashirah l'Adonai
—"I will sing to God" — to match
Shira's name and the words from the
Song of Moses at the Red Sea, in her
Torah portion.
My satin stitch didn't always look
satin — it curved to the whim of the
letters and my unpracticed hand. The.
three crowns of the shin slanted differ-
ent ways, and the lamed looked like it
had a tiny bite munched out of its
body where my needle hadn't quite
met the outline I had drawn.
But when it was completed, it
looked perfect from far away. Almost.
The purpose of atarah is to make
sure you always wear your tallit the
same way. "If you didn't," explained
Flora, who teaches Bible and rabbinics
at Solomon Schechter of Nassau
County, Long Island, "it would be like
wearing your shirt upside down."
I sewed the atarah onto the tallit by
hand, and four white silk squares onto
the four corners. Next step: making
buttonholes on the squares, through
which the tzizit would be looped. The
tzitzit, the ritual fringes, are attached
to the four corners in accordance with
the Shema prayer, which says: when
you look at the fringes, you will recall
and observe the commandments of the
Torah.
Flora's sewing machine balked at the
fragile material, so a seamstress did
them by hand.
The Thursday night before the bat
mitzvah, we knotted the tzitzit, with
the help.of Flora and The Jewish
Catalog.
Wind the threads around seven times,
tie a double knot. Twist it around eight
times, tie a double knot. Wind it around
11 times, tie a double knot, and twist it
again 13 times, finishing with a double
knot. -
The windings add up to 39, the
numerical value of the letters in the
phrase, Adonai Ehad, "God is One."
The Sephardic tradition follows this
pattern: ten, five, six and five, repre-
senting the letters in the
Tetragrammaton, God's name. The
five knots symbolize the five senses, .
the five books of the Torah, or the first
five words of the Shema.
The Symbolism
We each took a turn at winding and
knotting. As I took pictures, I focused
on how the chain of tradition was
being passed down in a new way.
Tallit, tzitzit, those male-imbued
words, were being transformed into a
woman's domain.
When Shira put on the tallit, it
looked like it was made for her (well,
it was!), wrapping her in its gossamer
t'khelet v'argaman — the blue and pur-
ple that once adorned the curtains of
the mishkan, the biblical sanctuary. In
its subtle and beautiful way, the tallit