Birkat Chaverim Blog

These are not such original ideas but they can be a fun holiday toy for a young child in synagogue or wherever. The idea of using a matchbox as a house came from colouredbuttons.com, where she has many lovely ideas in general, but in particular really sweet things out of matchboxes.

I just modified her idea for the holidays and for use with a smaller child who is a bit rough on toys. I did not add many embellishments because they were liable to be chewed or pulled off and I didn’t make them into necklaces. I made a sukkah with a little girl doll (bead, pipe cleaner, part of an old shirt, yarn), and a shul with felt Torah, Torah cover, kiddush cup and synagogue backdrop. This is a really quick project. It could probably be used as an actual matchbox holder for lighting candles for Shabbat and holidays. It is a great project to do with children older than mine, although she had many ideas of what I should put in the box (“Ima make a shofar, make besamim.” “Ima can you make me a house too?”)

I had actually been saving the matchboxes to make into rolling ball games using historic Jewish sites, but I have not gotten around to that yet. Perhaps we’ll do that this year in the doll clothing classes (we do go off topic sometimes.) I will probably add a lulav and etrog to the sukkah and some other items to the synagogue.

You may also be interested in this Pomegranate craft to hang in your sukkah.

The title sounds a bit weird, since everyone knows you are supposed to fast on Yom Kippur, but there are people who do not fast on Yom Kippur such as people who are seriously ill or children under the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

I remember going to shul as a young child, there was often a buffet set out for the children (sandwiches and the like.)  I particularly remember being told by an adult (I don’t remember which adult) that when we were ready to say Birkat Hamazon, we should add Yom HaKippurim in the Yaaleh VYavo addition to the Grace after Meals prayer.

I was thinking about this today, as I gave my toddler lunch and actually discussed this with her. She does not yet know all of Birkat Hamazon up to the inserted section, but she does understand adding prayers for the holidays so it was an appropriate discussion. I also remembered that we actually have this addition in the Bnei Akiva birkon, so I’ve included it as an illustration to this post.

Just a reminder that the simcha (celebration) logo give away is still on. One simcha logo and a runners up prize of $18 off a purchase here are up for grabs. Useful to anyone who is celebrating a rite of passage so feel free to send a friend a link to the contest. See the post about the contest for full details of the contest.

The recent news of the IRS/US Treasury extending the date for submission of the FBAR and amnesty to Americans with unreported foreign accounts (that according to US law require reporting) has led me to think that it may be worthwhile to extend the contest a bit. The  extension for the FBAR was to help people who had trouble getting all their paperwork together in a timely fashion, and I am thinking that during holiday season people may have a similar problem. I’ll keep you posted about that.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have started a new category on the store website for sample bencher covers. I’ve noticed that people are not really sure what they can do with the color cover option, so the main reason is to give people ideas regarding what they can do. I will be including options for foil and black ink options too. The covers in this section may be used with a purchase of the Bnei Akiva birkon.  Upon request, and with certain requirements, they could also be used in other contexts such as invitations and cards.

I have for years had a file of sample logo designs, so I will be adding those as cover samples as I get to it. I am also planning on adding some of my other designs (as I get to it) for web and print media. For the moment there are only a very few cover designs, but you can always ask me about other options available.

The symbol of the Jewish month of Tishrei is moznayim, libra, scales (see for instance the symbol from the Beit Alpha synagogue to the left.) This symbolizes the judging that occurs on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

As a kid I can remember making a scale where we would put mitzvot (commandments/good deeds) on one side of the scale, and on the other side we would put sins. Of course we wanted to work hard so that the good deeds outweighed the bad deeds. I wanted to do something similar with my daughter and I had been thinking about what I could do, when I saw a post on Filth Wizardy on how to make scales from home made materials. I decided that the idea of the hanger scale would be perfect for us. Here’s our version:

Our version uses the containers that mushrooms come in and has a modification in that we (for the moment at least) are not interested in comparing weights of things around the house, but in conceptualizing weighing the good and bad things that we do. I made a bunch of little pictures with mitzvot and sins on them, cut them out and taped them to “sabras” a type of prickley lego toy.

You can see that the bad deeds are things like hitting and biting and that there are fewer bad deeds than good deeds. Good deeds are things like helping parents, putting toys away, prayers etc. When my daughter saw the scale, she was more interested in the fact that the baskets with strings attached made great shopping baskets. I did explain the concepts and we put some deeds in each basket to see what would happen. Then she took over the baskets for shopping. She did, however, bring me one of the sins with a worried expression “Hitting, Ima!” Later maybe we’ll also use this as an actual scale.

Just wanted to let anyone interested know that I haven’t been posting about doll clothing projects because we are on hiatus until after the holidays. We will probably be meeting on another day this year as well. Probably Tuesdays, but we have not decided yet.
Anyone who would like to know about the class and when it meets should contact me via the contact form on the shop site. For more information about what we have been doing in the classes check out the posts in the classes section.

In honour of the new year Birkat Chaverim will be giving away a custom simcha logo (value $150) as well as a runners up prize of  $18 off any purchase over $50 from the Birkat Chaverim site.

To Enter:

• Comment on any blog entry on our blog
• Become a fan of the Birkat Chaverim facebook page

Additional Entries can be made by:

• Leaving an additional comment on the blog
• Uploading an image or video of the Bnei Akiva birkon in use to our Facebook page
• Adding a link to our blog or birkatchaverim.com on your website

Entries accepted through October 29th.

Terms & Conditions apply. Contact us for more information.

Just wanted to post a recent project done for Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue in Washington. Ohev Shalom is a great shul with a dynamic, innovative rabbi (disclosure- we are related, but I still think he does great stuff!) and welcoming community. I am always impressed with the types of programs the shul runs, the outreach in the community, and the issues the shul focuses on.

This towel was intended as a high holiday gift for congregants. From my end, it was really a very simple project- putting a logo, contact information and al netilat yadayim (the blessing after washing ones hands) on a towel. Really doing what the customer wants but with a nice Hebrew font.

There was discussion about which direction to print the details (so people could fold it over in thirds, and still see the information, vertical, horizontal etc.) in the end the printing was done horizontally.

I have done towels before, but not machine printed. I did a series of shibori dyed and hand printed towels in shades of blues, purples, reds, and green. The synagogue towels feel really nice and soft, and the screen printing is quite clear and pleasant to read. I understand that these towels come in a nice variety of colors as well. The printing work was done by Marion Aaron & Associates, and Marion was quite pleasant to work with.

I was thinking about towels that were embroidered in the past for Pesach hand washing, with all types of animals and Passover imagery while working on these towels. One of these days I’m going to do towels with appropriate iconography but not only a hand washing cup. I recently had an opportunity to see many of these during a roots trip in Romania and Hungary during which we visited many Jewish cemeteries. I’m thinking that beer Miriam,or Miriam’s well, would be appropriate for hand towels too. I have a particular affinity to that symbol and the biblical and midrashic stories surrounding it. Perhaps one time I’ll blog about that.