Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 The hardest part was getting the braid around the outside right. I wanted it to be just one line, going round and round, but if you just run a sinewave around the edge, you get either two or four lines, and I very much wanted only one line, because […]
Part 1, Part 2 One of the clever things about piyutim is all the little linguistic tricks they use. Rhyme, of course; I tried to use white space between stanzas to show the rhyming structure, but I think I didn’t use quite enough of it. So, there’s rhyme. Then there’s alphabetical acrostic, which I’ve indicated […]
Part 1 Since this is a poem for Shabbat Nachamu, a poem which references the first verse of the haftara we say that day, I wanted to have that haftara in the border. It’s Isaiah chapter 40:2 ff and a bit of 41; it starts in the top right-hand corner. There are a couple of […]
This is a liturgical piece, a Magen by Qallir for Shabbat Nachamu. A Magen is the first in a sequence of poems adorning the first three berakhot of the Amidah, up to the Kedusha; the Magen adorns the first berakha, “Magen Avraham.” Translation from the ever-estimable Mar Gavriel: With Me, from Lebanon, you shall not […]
I write Torah scrolls for congregations, and part of my job is working closely with the congregation to make appropriate programming. Such as, for instance, an opening ritual. A good ritual starts by speaking to who the community is, and inspires them with a vision of who they want to be. My job as the […]
You’re not supposed to write your name on the back of a sefer Torah, just in case you were wondering. What *is* this? And what is it doing scribbled on the back of a sefer torah? By the way, if anyone can decipher these, I’d be delighted to hear about it. I really do wonder […]
6 sections: Life; Works; Works II: Criticism of the Mishneh Torah; Sources; Disciples and Followers; Relation to Philosophy and Kabbalah Life: Twelfth-century Provence becomes a relatively exciting Jewish scholarly scene – context of a) Christian intellectual activity b) influence from Spanish Jewry. Most of what we know about his Life comes from clues in his […]
(Click to see bigger) Bride and groom, When we started this process, you said “I don’t think it could possibly work out, but I just had to give it a try.” You asked for something you thought was impossible, and it turned into something quite lovely. May your marriage have many similar shots at seemingly-impossible […]
You’re merrily checking through a sefer Torah, one in which the scribe tends to underestimate his lines, and has to stretch at the ends to compensate (lines 1, 2, 6, 7). And you see a chunk (lines 3, 4, 5) of squishied-up writing. Why? This usually happens when you accidentally leave words out. Calligraphers have […]
I like a bit of a challenge now and again. Here’s a community that wants to honour its rabbi by giving him a piece of artwork. Since the rabbi is well-beloved by the families with children, the Surprise Committee wanted to have the children participate in creating the artwork. Unfortunately, that doesn’t usually result in […]
