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

Name: Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community
Brand: University of North Carolina Press
SKU: 9781469660639
Price: 32.99 USD
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Contributors:

Jodi Eichler-Levine

Publisher:

University of North Carolina Press

Binding:

Paperback

Book Category:

Crafts & Hobbies, Religion, Social Science

Book Subcategory:

Judaism, Gender Studies

Book Topic:

Rituals & Practice

Series:

Where Religion Lives

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Specifications +

Release Date:

2020-10-19

ISBN 13:

9781469660639

Weight:

0.75 lbs

Size:

9.10 x 6.10 x 0.70 inches

Pages:

240

Mint Condition +

product description

Description

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.

About the Author
Eichler-Levine, Jodi: - Jodi Eichler-Levine, Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization at Lehigh University, is author of Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children's Literature.