Two Brothers

Two brothers recently celebrated their birthdays. The older boy turned 6 at the end of May. His Mum told me that he loves to play with cars, and enjoys football and basketball too. I made him the driver of a bright red sports car and by the side of the road there is a basketball net and football goal, ready for him when he wants to go and play.

His younger brother turned 3 just a few days before him. His photo showed him with a mass of curly blond hair, though Mum said that it was soon going to be cut. It is customary to allow a Jewish boy's hair to grow untouched until he's 3 years old. On his third birthday friends are invited to an upsherin haircutting ceremony (from the German words "scheren", which means "to shear" and auf, which means "off").

There are a number of explanations for this three year wait. Some relate it to the Biblical law which stipulates that you are not allowed to eat fruit from a tree during the first three years after it is planted. Jewish tradition sometimes compares human life to the life of trees. Waiting three years to cut a child's hair, like waiting three years to pick a tree's fruit, suggests the hope that the child will eventually grow tall like a tree and produce fruit.

Another theory is that the upsherin is the third in a series of "cuts" symbolising a child's movements away from his mother and into the world. First the umbilical cord is cut after the birth, then the foreskin is cut during the brit milah. The haircut at age 3 marks the beginning of the child's movement into society when he is ready to be less dependent on his mother and to interact more with adults and friends.

Besides the important haircut, this blue-eyed 3 year old enjoys doing puzzles and absolutely loves the Winnie-the-Pooh character Eeyore. His Mum also said that he sings and dances a lot. He sounds like a delightful little boy!

Tali's Recipe Book

Remember the recipe book I put together? Well, I made another one. The very same day that I showed it on my blog a customer wrote to ask whether I could make one for her granddaughter's upcoming Bat Mitzvah. Social media working at its best!
My customer told me that her granddaughter, the Bat Mitzvah girl, loves shopping, fashion and listening to music on her iPod touch. She enjoys holidays in the sun and is also a keen cook. Her grandma thought that a recipe book was the ideal gift for her.

A little bit of sketching and I managed to piece all of the young lady's interests together. I decided to show her by the beach, with a big yellow sun in the background and her flip-flops and towel nearby. She is wearing her favourite Hollister hoodie and has her new silver heart necklace, recently given to her by her parents, around her neck. It looks like she has been shopping too and bags from Selfridges and Abercrombie are in the background. I am told they are her favourite places to shop!

Because this is the cover for a recipe book, and because Tali loves to cook, I have shown her with a mixing bowl in one hand and with a big cooking pot nearby. Her other hand is busy with her iPod. I have a child of almost the same age. I know what's important.

Now, the inside pages took on a life of their own. We originally talked of filling 10 of the pages, and leaving the other 10 for future use. Well, the book grew and grew and grew, and soon it was full. It was quite a jigsaw to make it all fit!

Tali, and her Mum, are apparently always associated with the colour pink. She loves flowers, hearts, nail polish and basically anything girlie and so, once the pages were laid out, that's what went on them.

My customer, well actually her daughter, the Bat Mitzvah girl's Aunt, collected recipes and delightful messages from the young lady's friends and family, and the book was soon filled with some fabulous ideas... and lots of love.

I added a little illustration of the relevant food item on the recipe pages, just some of which I have shown here. Thus the carrot cake recipe was decorated with bright orange carrots, and the strawberry cheesecake page got some sweet little strawberries to make it look pretty. I cut some teeny tiny pink raspberries to go on 'The Princess Tali Pink Ripple Cake' page too. What a great name!

Tali was getting some Uggs as a Bat Mitzvah gift and her Aunt was keen that they should appear too. They don't have a lot to do with recipes or food but they looked pretty cute anyway!

My customer emailed me when the album arrived. "Album amazing!" her message said. "Thank you SO much! You went to so much trouble on our behalf."

Apparently Tali was thrilled with it too. She couldn't believe how many of her friends had sent messages and contributed to the book, and when her grandparents gave it to her she kept going to reread it again and again.

I hope that it is something she will really treasure.

Masada and the Dead Sea

A dear friend who I have not seen for a long, long time was in Israel recently and I jumped at the chance of spending a day with her and her wonderful family at Masada and the Dead Sea. I mean, who would say no? Masada is an incredible natural fortress located in the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. A Friday morning spent there is a pretty good way to start the weekend!

The palace complex of Masada, whose Hebrew name means "fortress", was built by King Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BCE on top of an isolated rock plateau. Herod wanted a place where he was protected from revolts and external threats. Later, during the Jewish rebellion against Rome in the first century CE, a group of Jews took refuge in Masada and remained there for seven years until they finally fell at the hands of the Roman army. However, rather than be killed or enslaved, they chose mass suicide and consequently Masada became a symbol of the determination of the Jewish people to be free in their own land. 

Nowadays Masada, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a special place in the hearts of the Jewish nation. Israeli soldiers who had just completed their basic training used to be sworn in there with the declaration "Masada shall never fall again". That ceremony now takes place at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

I had visited Masada before, the most recent time being in 2008 when I climbed to the top via the Snake Path, a long winding route up the plateau which totally exhausted me! The incredible desert views, however, make it all worth it. On this occasion we took the cable car and had more time, and energy, to wander and soak up some ancient history. The guide my friends had hired, Joe, was superb and he showed us all kinds of buildings and ruins that I had never seen, or at least understood, before.

We visited the massive Northern Palace overlooking the Dead Sea, some wonderfully preserved thermal baths, a Byzantine church dating from the 5th century, and saw the Roman attack ramp on the western side of Masada. A synagogue, storehouses and the homes of the Jewish rebels have also been identified and restored, and the Mikve (ritual bath) and columbarium for doves, give a clear indication of Jewish life on Masada.

For me it was the first time I had taken the steps down into the huge water cistern built by Herod so that he could live out the rest of his natural life on Masada, no matter what happened outside. This cistern was later used by the Jewish rebels and allowed them to conserve enough water for the long time they spent there. At this southern water cistern we saw graffiti from 1943 which related events of the 40's to the story of Masada. The graffiti says, "Labour Youth seminar, 1943. 70 people. Our faces turn to Hebron".

I recently celebrated a birthday - yes, I just turned a whole year older - and my friend sent me Alice Hoffman's 'The Dovekeepers' as a reminder of our day together. I look forward to learning even more about Masada and think that it will bring it all to life for me just that little bit more.

I really could have stayed all day but the girls in our little group were keen to experience the Dead Sea. We drove to the Ein Bokek beach and quickly changed into our swimsuits before entering the water. The Dead Sea is 423 metres below sea level and is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water. It is the lowest point on earth and a natural health spa, and soon we were lathering ourselves in the black mud deposits from the sea bed, said to be so good for the skin.

Funnily enough I am not going to show you any photos here but let's just say that we had a lot of fun! Floating effortlessly on my back in the mineral-rich waters, perusing the dramatic and beautiful landscape around me, with good friends by my side, I can honestly say that it had been a pretty perfect day!

Doing the Double

Remember the anniversary card from my last post? Well, what I didn't tell you - nor the couple at the time (though we laughed about it afterwards) - was that both the husband and the wife ordered cards from me! Fortunately they had quite different requests, so I was able to make the cards look very different with no overlap at all!

The husband's request came in first (good for him!). He asked whether I could design a card showing a bride and groom looking like the couple did 20 years ago.  Unfortunately he didn't send me a photo but I was able to take a reasonable guess - he had more hair and the bride wore white! He wasn't sure what the colour scheme had been at the wedding but did know that the flowers arrangements had included irises. He also wanted a 20 on the card and a heart. I came up with a sweet design which even included some teeny tiny irises, though I did learn afterwards that the scheme was gold. Oh well.

Whilst we're on the subject of wedding anniversaries, this card was created some time ago for a couple celebrating their Golden Wedding - 50 years of marriage! I went with a predominantly gold colour scheme and added a bouquet of flowers and balloons, along with a big 50 to mark the special anniversary.

Finally, we recently celebrated Shavuot, the Jewish holiday which celebrates God's handing of the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. Shavuot, which literally means weeks in English, is the holiday when it is customary to eat dairy meals, with cheesecake being the most popular dessert on the menu.
According to Jewish tradition, the Ten Commandments handed to Moses included laws on how to prepare meat for eating. As all their utensils were no longer “kosher” according to these new laws, the Jews on Mount Sinai ate dairy products for the first time, which according to the Ten Commandments were now permitted (previously it had been forbidden to eat produce, including milk, from a live animal).
The holiday also marked the beginning of the new agricultural season in former times and was called Hag HaKatzir, which means “The Harvest Holiday.”
As I do every year, I made my favourite cheesecake, the recipe for which you can find here. It is rather time-consuming but always worth the effort. My cheesecake disappeared at a rapid rate and so I quickly took one last picture of it before this last slice went.
I must admit that I was the guilty party though. Yum!

The Beautiful Blue Danube

My friend called me up at rather very short notice. "If I send you a photo of J and I taken on our recent trip to Budapest" she said "could you copy it and make an anniversary card for me please?". 

I checked my email. The photo was there. It was a lovely, happy picture of my friends but quite blurred and overall pretty poor quality.

Gulp.

But of course I made her the card, though I'm not going to tell you how long it took me!

I traced the outline of the happy couple then made some adjustments to the layout to make it work. My friend was keen for me to show the skyline of Budapest, which they had viewed whilst travelling on a riverboat along the Danube. They can be seen sitting at their dining table, toasting their 20th wedding anniversary with a nice glass of wine. Truthfully I am not sure who had red and who had white - the photo was such poor quality - but we can see them making the toast on the card and that's what matters!

Happy anniversary M and J! Can you take a better camera with you next time you go away please?

Sam's Bar Mitzvah

Sam recently celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and so I am now able to show you the customised album I created for him. Sam's Aunty ordered the album and told me that he has quite eccentric tastes. He likes The Beatles, plays the electric guitar and is in a band, though she couldn't tell me the band's name as apparently it keeps changing! He is a fan of Star Wars and of the music of Paul Simon and The Beach Boys, and is very good at art. She wanted me to include his school's badge too.

I have shown Sam with his guitar in one hand and a couple of pencils in the other. The guitar required quite a lot of attention to detail but I think I got it just about right!

I embellished several pages inside the album. Each page, like the cover, has a blue striped tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) on it. Many boys begin to wear a tallit from the age of Bar Mitzvah, 13. The reason why the tallit is striped is simply because that was the fashion in Greece and Rome in Biblical times. However, the stripes remind us of the strand of techelet (blue) once worn as part of the tzitzit, the special knotted fringes attached to the tallit's four corners. The Torah (the first part of the Jewish bible and a central document of Judaism) commands that tzitzis contain a thread of tichales (blue), which in former times came from an animal called the chilazone, thought to have been either a squid or a type of snail. In memory of this dye it became customary to place a blue or black stripe on the tallit itself.

In addition to the tallit, each embellished page took on a theme. Sam likes the British comedy Jeeves and Wooster, above, so one page included the programme's title card and the iconic hats of the two main characters. There was also a page devoted to several of the Star Wars characters, Paul Simon and The Beach Boys, Sam's school and lastly, his guitar once again.

Sam's Aunty said she thought the album was "fantastic". I hope that Sam liked it too!

Ein Hod

The artists' village of Ein Hod is situated on a hillside amongst olive groves and nestles at the foot of Mount Carmel, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was established in 1953 when a group of artists, led by the renowned Dada artist Marcel Janco, moved into the abandoned Palestinian village of Ein Hawd. They believed that the village was a place where they could work, build studios and workshops, and form a creative environment for art and art education. After a period of time Ein Hod became the only artists' village in Israel, and one of the few in the world where artists live and create in every artistic media from the visual arts, to theatre, music and literature.

A few weeks ago we set out to explore it.

Many well-known Israeli painters, sculptors and musicians live in Ein Hod and their studios and galleries are open to the public. Their creations have been beautifying Israel's public places and homes for many years. Some of the old stone houses of earlier occupants - from the Christian Crusades to the Turkish Empire - have been preserved and the village mosque has been converted into a popular restaurant-bar. Art workshops for printing, ceramics, photography, silk screening and more are run, and during the summer performances take place in the outdoor amphitheatre and main square. Ein Hod simply bubbles with creativity.

We strolled through the streets and explored the private galleries as well as the main Artists' Gallery, which exhibits the work of member artists living in the village who have been approved by the local jury. We stopped many times to discuss the sculptures dotted around the village streets and in the artists' gardens. We hiked the short distance up the hill to the Janco-Dada Museum, set up in 1983 by a group of friends of Marcel Janco. The museum contains several galleries dedicated to Janco's work and also the work of young artists, contemporary art and video art projections.

Ein Hod was evacuated and the village suffered considerable property damage during the 2010 Israel forest fire but it seems to have recovered nicely. For lovers of art, landscape and nature, the beautiful village is the perfect place to spend a few hours. It certainly made for a memorable day out for all of us.