Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis
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A01=Jodi Eichler-Levine
American Jews
American religions
artifacts
Author_Jodi Eichler-Levine
Category=JBSF
Category=QRJ
Category=QRJP
communityOCoJewish
craft
craft activism
craftivism
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
family history
gender
gift culture
history-Jewish
Holocaust memory-American
Jewish Americans
JewsOCocontemporary
JewsOCotwentieth century
Judaism
Judaism-American
knitting
material culture
material culture and religion
memoryOCoJewish
objectsOCoJewish
quilts-American
religion-American
religious studies
resilience
sensory religion
sewing
sociology of religion
sociology-Jewish
spiritualityOCoAmerican
spiritualityOCoJewish
technology and religion
women and material culture
WomenOCoJewish
Product details
- ISBN 9781469660639
- Weight: 345g
- Dimensions: 154 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 19 Oct 2020
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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, Eichler-Levine shows: 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, as 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.
The work of these crafters embodies a vital Judaism that may lie outside traditional notions of Jewishness, but, as 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.
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.
