Daniel's Album

My Bar Mitzvah albums have become a tradition with this young man's family. I have made albums for his older brothers, Ro'i and Yonatan, and hope that I will also one day make them for his younger brothers as well (yes, that's five boys in the family!).

Daniel chose what he wanted on the cover of his album. He wanted to see himself playing the ukulele, with a bonfire in the background. Mum added that he always wears camouflage patterned short sleeve T-shirts. She liked the tefillin (phylacteries) that I had given his brothers, and wanted me to show Daniel wearing them as well (Jewish men start wearing tefillin just before their Bar Mitzvah).

So I showed spiky-haired Daniel playing the ukulele. There is a small campfire behind him. Daniel is wearing a camouflage T-shirt and he is wearing tefillin on his head, on his left arm, and the straps are hanging down over his shirt. (Tefillin consist of two leather boxes with parchment with biblical passages inside. The first one goes on your arm, the second on your head. A right-handed person, which Daniel is, places tefillin on the left arm).
The navy blue background box matched the colour scheme of the Bar Mitzvah celebration. Daniel's name appears in Hebrew in gold lettering at the top, the words Bar Mitzvah and the date of the Bar Mitzvah celebration are written below.
Black and white tallitim also appear in two corners of the album cover. The tallit is the large sheet-like fringed prayer shawl worn during the morning prayers. Tallit is an Aramaic word from the root tll / טלל meaning 'to cover over'. By wrapping yourself in the tallit, or by covering your head with it, it is believed that the intention and direction of your prayers can be enhanced.

The album opens the Hebrew way, from right to left, and on each page I once again added a black and white striped tallit. Then, on the first page I added a paper version of all the musical instruments Daniel plays - a piano, a guitar, a harmonica and a melodica. I won't let on how long it took me to create those teeny-tiny instruments! Next came his beloved camouflage hat and, yup, his camouflage tefillin carry case. A page dedicated to Daniel's favourite Avengers superheroes followed. Once again, the list was a long one. I included Spiderman, the Hulk, Superman, Captain America and Iron Man. The Avengers logo features prominently in the centre.

Daniel likes to cook with a wok. I created a little paper wok for another page of his album and added curly noodles, chopped vegetables and some chopsticks.

Finally, on the last page, I showed Daniel's sleeping bag and walking shoes that he takes with him on Sayarut, or "Green Horizons", as it is known in English. Sayarut offers hiking, navigation, camping and nature activities for youth aged 10-18 in Israel. The organization was founded in 1974 by friends of Uri Maimon, a passionate hiker and charismatic leader of youth projects who fell in the Yom Kippur War.

It seems that Daniel and his mum were both delighted with the album. "We are speechless!" she wrote to me. "It's everything we talked about! It looks just like him! You nailed it! We all LOVE it! Daniel loves it!"

I also made Daniel a card to congratulate him on his Bar Mitzvah. It shows a tallit prayer shawl, a kippa (skullcap) and a Sefer Torah (a long scroll containing the entire text of the Five Books of Moses: the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). I made sure to include the camouflage pattern that he is so fond of as well.

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