Traditional Arts Spotlight: Judaic Weaving
Master Artist: Carol Goldsmith
Apprentice: Adina Daar
Traditional Art Form: Judaic Weaving
The 2023-2024 cohort of the Vermont Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program includes 18 collaborations between mentor artists and apprentices who are working together to keep traditional cultural expressions vital and relevant to the communities that practice them. With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and a longstanding partnership with the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Folklife initiated this program in 1992 to support the continued vitality of Vermont's living cultural heritage. In this ongoing series of Field Notes we’ll introduce you to some of this year’s program participants and the traditional art forms they practice. Vermont Folklife has been documenting the work of participants in the Apprenticeship Program since its inception. These interviews and audio-visual records are part of an ongoing collection in our Archive centered around traditional arts, music, and trades.
This note features interview excerpts and photos recorded at a recent site visit by VT Folklife staffer Mary Wesley. Interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
Adina wearing her handwoven tallit prayer shawl.
Adina Daar My name is Adina. I'm originally from Florida and moved around the country a lot before I found myself in this area of the world, which is actually a beautiful epicenter of fiber arts in the country with a lot of resources. During Covid I became involved with the Fiber Guild in Bennington, Vermont, and I went to one of their open houses and sat down at a loom and just felt like, "Oh, I belong here."
And from that point on, I was taking lessons, going to their meetings, and I learned how to weave. My first project was a baby blanket. Maybe a year and a half later I came into acquiring a loom. A little while after that, I was introduced to Carol [Goldsmith] through the Rabbi emeritus in Manchester. I said, "I'm a weaver.” I've made challah covers, which cover the bread we have at our Shabbat dinners. And he said, “I know another weaver–Carol.”
I'd been thinking about weaving a tallit [a Jewish prayer shawl] for a while, but it was daunting to me, and we'll get into why that is. And so when I met Carol, I really was like, "I learned about this Apprenticeship Program. I think it would be perfect. If you can teach me, I would love to learn." And here we are.
Carol Goldsmith My name is Carol Goldsmith. I've been weaving for about 12 years, maybe more, maybe 15 years. I came to weaving after, unfortunately, our son passed away. We were living in New York City at the time. I spent a lot of time walking the streets and below street level I saw a loom and I said, "I want to do that." And I went there. It was a simple Saori loom, which is total freeform weaving, no teaching. And I started weaving.
Adina and Carol working together
Once again, I did not have a loom. I wove in a couple of places, then I came to Vermont, to our home for the summer. We had been in Vermont for 45 years, as a ski home/summer home. I came to Vermont, found a weaving teacher, got started, and eventually bought a small loom and kept on going. Adina approached me last summer, I think it was the end of last summer. And I said, "Gee, this sounds like a great idea.”
I do not consider myself an expert weaver. I have received expert instruction in how to weave, what to look for, what to improve. And along our journey, Adina's and my journey, I see this as the end product of our journey—being the prayer shawl, known as a tallit. And along the way, I hope I have given Adina advice in enhancing her weaving techniques and allaying some fears of working with very fine threads. So here we are. And we've had a progressive journey through the last 7 or 8 months now. And it's been great.
Weaving, to me, is both an expression of artistry—I never considered myself an artist—and also to me, it's a beautiful meditation, from winding the warp to the actual weave.
Adina’s project notebook
Adina Daar I've always kept this workbook of all my projects. So it's my first baby blanket and some early weavings. So this is where I started the process. I made some challah covers, giving some away as gifts. They're very basic patterns. And then some hand embroidery. But looking at these things now, I've learned a lot from Carol, and Carol is...when I'm weaving she’s in my mind a bit because I'm always like, "Oh I should go back and fix that thing.” I have a much better eye for quality.
Carol Goldsmith The edges.
Adina Daar The edges. And we've done a lot of sharing techniques. Carol recorded videos and sent those to me.
Carol Goldsmith Her edges are one of the things I had to work on with Adina, to help her slow down. As with anybody new, they want to get it done. And the best results usually are time consuming—every throw of the shuttle is very intentional, and you keep checking and checking, and no matter how much you check, there are sometimes errors, but you do your best.
We talked about how to plan a larger project. So first Adina wanted to make a prayer shawl that was 30 inches wide. And I said, "Adina, this is a big deal. You want it to be perfect. So let's take something a little less overwhelming to start with for a first perfect project."
So that's when we started paring it down. And figuring out: What yarn are we using? What's the weight of the yarn? How many threads per inch. How much yarn do you need for the warp? How long is your warp going to be? Every warp involves sampling—waste on the loom, which you can't avoid. There are fringes, there's the shawl, and there's shrinkage. And all of these things go into the mathematical calculations of how much yarn is going to be needed. And we worked on that together. Adina got the hang of the necessary precision in each of these steps.
Adina Daar I was also learning [that] you wear it [the tallit] in different ways but it served multiple functions. In the old, old times this would have been a garment that would have been worn. It does act as an isolating experience. You can really block out and pay attention to the reading or to prayer. So that I think is a primary function of it, of this style. And they're passed down, often to sons; my brother has my father's, and they get them at bar and bat mitzvahs.
Carol Goldsmith One of the things is—and Adina knew this before I came on the scene—there is nothing ritualistic or required on the shawl itself other than the fringes on those four corners.
So to give you an example I just completed one that is the Campbell tartan tallit because our grandsons are members of the Campbell clan in Scotland. So I just gave our oldest grandson, who is now 24. I have had beaded embroidery on some of the collar areas; I put names on others. So there's nothing commanded except those four corners. So you can do whatever you want.
Adina’s cat, “Squid,” in the weaving studio
I'm much older than Adina, and where I grew up, women, young girls did not have bat mitzvahs, which they do today. Heaven forbid we would wear a prayer shawl! All of this, I would think, has been developing over maybe the past 40 years, maybe 30. But [now] it is as you wish to do. And in the synagogue in Manchester [VT] it's very eclectic. In more Orthodox synagogues only men will always wear prayer shawls—basically black and white or navy and white, little color. But we're in more liberal faith and more liberal communities and we can do very much what we want.
Adina Daar I will say this [tallit that I'm weaving] is for me. But my intention going into it was that I wanted to know how to make them for others. I love that handmade gifts are passed on and are precious. They're precious. They're really beautiful objects. And we have a lot of young people who have bar and bat mitzvahs, and I just think it's really special.
I guess from my side, maybe why I've always been very fascinated with the objects of our tradition is because there's very few in my family. My grandparents were the only survivors of the Holocaust in their entire family. My father was born amidst that as a refugee. So there's very little [passed down] in that regard, but we've got to make do, you know? It's a very adaptable approach and I feel like the generation of me and my siblings are trying to create. We're creating. So that's why I like making baby blankets and challah covers. You can never really recreate what's been lost, but we go on, we carry on.
Carol Goldsmith We create anew.
Applications for the 2024-2025 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program are now open! Applications are due July 21, 2024. Click below for more info.