Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis by Jodi Eichler-Levine

Author:Jodi Eichler-Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 4.3. Arlene Diane Spector, Naomi and Ruth. Photograph by the author.

This delicate piece shows two women, one facing forward, the other pictured in turned profile, her long braid spreading down toward the bottom of the canvas. Ruth’s famous speech, including the phrase, “For wither thou goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest, I will lodge; your people shall be my people,” is inscribed around the border of the image. Although this Jewish piece is most definitely not a Christmas craft, it was inspired by a Hebrew Bible passage that is common to both Christians and Jews, one that is popular in both traditions as a story of conversion; it is also important because Ruth ultimately holds a place in the genealogical tree for King David and, in the Christian tradition, Jesus. Thus, while this Jewish statement was certainly no Christmas ornament, it was also not as ethnoreligiously particularistic as, say, a challah cover or Torah mantle, objects specific to Jewish rituals and only Jewish rituals, would have been.

To be clear, Jewish crafting is not always “anti-Christmas.” Among the roughly 50 percent of Jewish Americans who marry non-Jews, including Christians, we see ever more fluid and nuanced revalorizations of both Christianity and Judaism as “cultures” that can be blended without offending the Jewish spouse; “Chrismukkah” crafts abound on Etsy and elsewhere.31 For the women of the Pomegranate Guild, however, identification of Jewish crafts over and against Christian ones is still an important dividing line. Due to the current length of the commercial season, “for both celebrant and noncelebrant alike, there is no escaping Christmas”; furthermore, “American Jewry’s success in challenging Christmas’s vaunted status rests upon forging an identity that is at once separate from the religious and historical dimensions of Christmas, yet convergent with its underlying spirit.”32 Even though the Jewish women of the Pomegranate Guild were internally diverse in their Jewish practice, they agreed on what they were not: they were not Christian. Thus, on one level, the Pomegranate Guild functioned as a space where members of a minority culture could congregate and fully be themselves. Not every member of the Pomegranate Guild necessarily observes Yom Kippur, but all agree that the guild would never hold the new members’ tea then. Even more critically, they helped one another to learn more about both the fiber arts and Jewish traditions, with a particular focus on how these two overlapped. This leads us to an examination of the Pomegranate Guild as a teaching space.

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