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Crafts

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Collection
Needlepointed tallit bag with hamsa on orange background

Stitching My Tallit Bag, Stitching My Identity

Clara Sorkin

With my grandmother and my mom in mind, I chose a design for my tallit bag that represents the influence that women have had throughout my life as a proud Jew.

Black and white checkered stars and photo of folded napkin

Oma Irene's Napkin

Aviva Schilowitz

Particular emphasis is put on setting the table for these occasions. So much of my Jewish and familial identity is tied to these meals.

Photographs of Miriam Niestat, her family, and a loom collaged on woven green background

Weaving My Asymmetrical Jewish Identity

Miriam Niestat

My uncle had the idea that maybe I could weave a tallis of my own. But I didn’t want it to somehow invalidate my bat mitzvah.

Topics: Crafts, Family, Ritual
Photo of wall covered in hamsas, on a yellow patterned background.

Unity through Symbolism: The Hamsa

Leila Nuri

As a teen with a Muslim-Palestinian father and a Jewish-American mother, the hamsa has always meant a lot to me.

Topics: Crafts, Family, Palestine
A white cloth with the words "Gut Morgen" (Good Morning in Yiddish) followed by the initials R.L.

Restoring Hope Along with a Family Heirloom

Sheila Solomon Shotwell

Restoring my great aunt’s linen is a tribute to her for embracing my non-Jewish mother, in defiance of her family.

Topics: Crafts, Marriage, Prayer

Lillian Simon Freehof

Lillian Simon Freehof (1906-2004) was a leader in developing transcription services for people with visual impairments and blindness, working with Sisterhood volunteers at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh, PA, and, at the national level, with the Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (now WRJ).  She also wrote books and plays for children and young adults and books on needlework and Jewish festivals for adults. She was the wife of Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof.

Marti Friedlander

London-born Marti Friedlander migrated to New Zealand in 1958. She became one of the country’s most outstanding and influential photographers in portraiture, photo-journalism, photo-books, and “street” photography. Her photographs still live vigorous public lives in exhibitions, books, and periodicals published after her death.

2019-20 Rising Voices Fellow Hannah Landau's Zine Pages

How to Be Perfect: A Guide for Girls

Hannah Landau

Perfection is the goal and trying is the consequence.

Topics: Feminism, Crafts
Collage by Lila Goldstein

Collaging in Quarantine

Lila Goldstein

Collaging is an old hobby of mine that has taken on new value during this pandemic.

Topics: Art, Crafts

Linda Stein

In crafting sculptures that incorporate concepts of weaponry, armor, and the female form, Linda Stein has found new ways to consider issues of power, violence, and protection.

Chloe Wise

Chloe Wise uses her art to comment on consumer culture, most famously through her Bread Bags series, which creates purses made of realistic-looking bakery items, adorned with the straps, logos, and hardware of designer bags.

Catherine Lieber Shimony

From American Jewish World Service to Global Goods Partners, Catherine Lieber Shimony has dedicated her career to international development, helping women across the globe develop the skills they need to better support their families and lead their communities.

Debbie Stoller

Debbie Stoller has been hailed as a pioneer of “girlie feminism” for reviving interest in traditionally feminine activities like knitting through Bust and Stitch ‘n Bitch.

Judy Chicago

It was obvious that birth was a universal human experience and one that is central to women's lives. Why were there no images?

Mae Rockland Tupa

Mae Rockland Tupa: Artist and Author

Keren R. McGinity, Ph.D.

The objects Mae made and the books she wrote helped shape the field of Jewish Americana. Mae’s work, taken as a whole, reflects her view that “just as Jews have become an integral part of the American scene, so can a classical American symbol be used to express a Jewish theme.” A shining example is her hannukiah titled “Miss Liberty”, which is emblazoned with the last lines of Emma Lazurus’s poem “The New Colossus,” and is in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Topics: Crafts, Non-Fiction
Shadow Box on the Life of Amelia “Zenia” Greszes by Alex Estroff, 2013

Jewish Women in Modern America: Lessons to Live By

Alex Estroff

Last semester, I was one of four boys in a course at The Weber School dedicated to Jewish women in modern America—a group of people who have had great impact on our lives. However, this group has received little of the public recognition it deserves and is vastly underrepresented in traditional history classes. Like most other American high school students, I have spent the bulk of my academic career studying Christian men from Europe. No wonder that I knew little or nothing about these remarkable women. Yet learning about them is only one reason why this course was so enlightening.

Topics: Crafts, Education
Adina Karpuj and her Grandmother, Esther Rebeca Leibowich de Bortz, circa 2011

“Thinking Inside the Box”: Framing My Grandmother’s Life

Adina Karpuj

I had never taken the time to learn much about my grandmother, Esther Rebeca Leibowich de Bortz’s past. While I knew that something in her history must have gone right—she became a renowned gynecologist in Argentina—large gaps existed between each of the detailed but disconnected anecdotes that she recounted to me over the years.

My grandmother—or Bobe as I call her—and I have never lived in the same country. She was born in Argentina and has lived there for her entire life, while I was born in Chile and have lived in Atlanta for most of mine. With each of her visits, I learn more about this woman I have always been taught to revere, but in truth never knew much about. Consequently, I welcomed the opportunity to take the course, “Jewish Women in Modern America,” at The Weber School in Atlanta, where I am a junior.

Topics: Crafts, Family

Sonia Delaunay, prolific artist, dies in Paris at 94

December 5, 1979

Sonia Delaunay (1885 – 1979) was in on the birth of several art movements—Dadaism, Surrealism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism.  She knew Picasso, Braque, Tzara, Diaghilev, and married the painter R

Isabella Karp in a Tallit by Miriam Karp

The story of creation: Artist Miriam Karp on making her daughter's bat mitzvah tallit

Leah Berkenwald

Miriam Karp is an artist who has been creating hundreds of one-of-a-kind ketubot since 1976.

Beatrice Alexander

"Madame" Beatrice Alexander knew how to dream big. Born into a world in which many women worked but few achieved prominence in business, she built her own company virtually singlehandedly. Raised amidst teeming poverty, she amassed a significant fortune. From the obscurity of an immigrant neighborhood, she became one of the foremost female entrepreneurs of the twentieth century.

Judith Leiber handbags featured in First Lady museum exhibit

March 22, 2005

Four handbags created for U.S. first ladies by Judith Leiber, luxury handbag doyenne, were featured in a New-York Historical Society exhibit that opened on March 22, 2005.

Opening of art exhibit of work by Holocaust survivor Daisy Brand

January 13, 2006

The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Northern Clay Center sponsored an exhibit of works by ceramicist Daisy Brand, which opened at the Center on January 13, 2006.

Sylvia Sidney

Feisty and opinionated, Sylvia Sidney was quite the opposite of the waiflike victim of social oppression she played in Hollywood’s Depression Era films. While she disliked playing the victim, her vulnerability and working-class persona resonated with audiences. She earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, took on a comic role as the caseworker in Beetlejuice, and played a sympathetic grandmother in one of the first TV movies about AIDS, An Early Frost.

Sarah Thon

Sarah Thon was born in Lvov, Galicia. She married Yaakov Thon and they settled in Ottoman Palestine at the end of 1907. She became the representative of the Women’s Association for Cultural Work in Palestine and established five workshops for girls. She was also influential in the establishment of the girls’ farm at Kinneret and in the fight for Jewish women’s suffrage.

Bertha Schaefer

Bertha Schaefer broadened the definition of interior decorator to designer, innovator, and pioneer in integrating fine arts and architecture with interior design. Schaefer’s two New York City businesses – an interior design firm and an art gallery – showcased defining features of the postwar period, garnering her significant praise and attention in the world of art and design.

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