Fringe Benefits
Tallit making project at Great Neck temple inspires girls and boys alike.

By Avital Louria Hahn
Jewish Week Corespondent
Photos by Kym Kewborn

Debra Birenbaum may not have worn a tallit for her bat mitzvah if she didn't make it herself. That, in turn, inspired Stephanie Langsner, who will become a bat mitzvah on Sept. 6. "Debra looked proud," Langsner, 13, said of her friend. "She looked really good in it." "I felt kind of proud," Said a smiling Birenbaum, also 13.

Wearing a tallit was something Langsner had not even considered before her Hebrew school class at Temple Israel in Great Neck participated in a tallit-making project. The seemingly innocuous endeavor, the first of its kind at Temple Israel, was packed with meaning for students. Especially for the girls, who in many Conservative temples are considered ritually equal to men. "It is nice to have a symbol that means that I am a part of the Jewish world and also that I am a girl and I can wear a tallit," said Birenbaum.

"We have always been a egalitarian congregation," said Selma Aaronson, principal of the religious school. "When you go up for an aliyah, you need a tallit." Birenbaum's mother, Ellen, who had never worn a tallit, said without this project, many girls would not have had a tallit. "The girls took it seriously," she said. "When else would they have gotten one? People don't think to give one to a girl, and for her bat mitzvah, she probably would not have worn one had she not made it." Debra Birenbaum putting on her tallit in temple "was very powerful," her mother said.

It seemed anything but meaningful when Fran Medoff introduced the tallit-making kits to the Vav class. Her experienced art-teacher eyes spotted definite signs of disinterest, even traces of boredom in the young faces. But as soon as the project began, the bar and bat mitzvah-age youngsters became consumed with the shawls, selecting prayer verses to adorn them, tying the knots of the tzitzit, coloring the cloth with original designs and schemes. "As soon as they got their hands on the markers they were hooked," said Medoff, a Port Washington artist and author, who wrote "The Mouse in the Matzoh Factory."

"It was fun, a break from everything else we had to do," said Jake
Englander, 13, who decorated his tallit with blue, green and black geometric shapes and used golden Hebrew letters for a verse from the Shema prayer. "That's the beauty of the project," said Aaronson. "It comes out of the curriculum and goes hand-in-hand with coming of ages as a Jew."

But wearing a tallit is definitely not for everyone, she said. Some make the tallit for a male member of the family. Others are ambivalent. Langsner thought at first, "Why should I make a tallit? I don't know if I am going to wear it." But that was before Birenbaum's rite. Langsner's mother, Fran, says she has "mixed feelings" about her daughter wearing a tallit. "But Stephanie will probably wear one if she wants to."

Making a tallit was special for the boys, too. It was "something you can be proud of," said Englander, who planned on wearing an heirloom tallit from a grandfather for his bar mitzvah and to let his younger brother, Sam, use the handmade one. Jonathan Danoff, 12, said he had always been fascinated with tallitot. "In the kids service, I loved to watch the designs and wondered how to make the knots," he said.

But Danoff, who enjoys working with his hands and had built a treehouse with his father, found that tying and twisting numerous knots wasn't easy. It was a while before he could master the intricate twists and turns of the thin thread. "It took 2 1/2 sessions," he said. But Danoff soon caught up with his classmates, and completed a tallit resplendent with green, silver and black Stars of David and words from the Shema.

Aaronson first spotted the kits at a Jewish educator's conference in Cambridge, Mass., in 1995, but it wasn't until the following year that she ordered the $28 models in the b'nai mitzvah (20 by 65 inches) size from the manufacturer, Judaic Art Kits of Rochester, N.Y. It was "something that I thought about before but that all came together this year," she said. "I was very anxious to start it."
Aaronson reorganized the class schedules to include 40-minute weekly sessions for five to six weeks for each group of students. Seventy students in the Vav class participated.

The kits come in white or ivory silk-like material with holes on four
corners for the tzitzit, which are imported from Israel. It is kosher
woolen and has seven strings plus one extra long one. The package comes with practice string, wool tzitzit and instructions, design patterns and fabric markers. Aaronson said she plans to repeat the course, making sure to enroll the students in the art classes before their bar and bat mitzvah dates, so they would be able to wear them on their special day.

Medoff will be giving the course to adult members of Beth Israel Synagogue in Port Washington, her hometown. "There is a very special feeling when you put on a tallit and you made it," she said. "It's a validation of you as a woman and as a Jew."