Skiing and Studying

A new customer wrote to me to tell me that her son's Bar Mitzvah was approaching at the end of January and she wanted to order a card. "They're beautiful!" she wrote to me. Her son's passion is skiing and if they weren't in Israel, her son was going to have his Bar Mitzvah celebration on the mountains in Colorado. She wanted to know if I could create a card that incorporated the Bar Mitzvah theme and tefillin, along with mountains and skiing.
Of course I could!

I showed the Bar Mitzvah boy wearing a green ski jacket and holding a pair of skis. He is also wearing tefillin. Tefillin (sometimes called phylacteries) are cubic black leather boxes with leather straps that Orthodox Jewish men wear on their head and their arm during weekday morning prayer. Jewish men start wearing tefillin just before their Bar Mitzvah.

Tefillin have two leather boxes, one of which is worn on the arm and the other of which is worn on the head. If you are right-handed, which this young man is, you should wear tefillin on the bicep of your left arm. The tefillin box worn on the head should be centred just above the forehead with the two leather straps wrapped around the head, then hanging down over the shoulders.

Behind the picture of this young man I cut out some snowy mountains and a ski lift. I added the number 13 to mark his age and the age that Jewish boys become Bar Mitzvah.

His mum wrote "The card was super cute!"

Eliya was turning 17. Her mum told me that she is a swimmer and is completing a Wingate* course to become an instructor. She was a madricha (youth leader) in the Scouts, or Tzofim as they are known in Hebrew, and is now a רשג״דית (ראש גדוד or senior counsellor) in charge of a whole age group. Finally, Eliya's mum told me that she is taking 5 units in Arabic, maths and physics at school. Israeli kids graduate from high school after taking exams available in different levels of difficulty, marked as units. 5 is the highest level. Eliya is obviously a smart young lady!

I have shown Eliya holding a pile of books. Each book shows the subject and number of units she is taking. To her right is a swimming costume, swim cap and goggles, along with the badge of the Academic College at Wingate. On her left I added her green and white striped tie, which shows her rank in the Israeli Scouts.

Mum told me that "She loved the card. It was perfect."

* The Wingate Institute, officially Orde Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sports, is a sports training facility located south of Netanya, established in 1957. It is named after the senior British Army officer and supporter of Zionism, Orde Wingate. The facility serves as the host facility for numerous Israeli national teams.

** This post has been shared on Little Things Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things