Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community

Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community

Eichler-Levine, Jodi

Hardcover

Series: Where Religion Lives

Crafts GeneralJudaismGeneral Gender Studies

ISBN10: 1469660628
ISBN13: 9781469660622
Publisher: Univ Of North Carolina Pr
Published: Oct 19 2020
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Exploring a contemporary Judaism rich with the textures of family, memory, and fellowship, Jodi Eichler-Levine takes readers inside a flourishing American Jewish crafting movement. As she traveled across the country to homes, craft conventions, synagogue knitting circles, and craftivist actions, she joined in the making, asked questions, and contemplated her own family stories. Jewish Americans, many of them women, are creating ritual challah covers and prayer shawls, ink, clay, or wood pieces, and other articles for family, friends, or Jewish charities. But they are doing much more: armed with perhaps only a needle and thread, they are reckoning with Jewish identity in a fragile and dangerous world.

The work of these crafters embodies a vital Judaism that may lie outside traditional notions of Jewishness, but, Eichler-Levine argues, these crafters are as much engaged as any Jews in honoring and nurturing the fortitude, memory, and community of the Jewish people. Craftmaking is nothing less than an act of generative resilience that fosters survival. Whether taking place in such groups as the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework or the Jewish Hearts for Pittsburgh, or in a home studio, these everyday acts of creativity--yielding a needlepoint rabbi, say, or a handkerchief embroidered with the Hebrew words tikkun olam--are a crucial part what makes a religious life.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Crafts General

View All