By Kathy Carlson
‘Immersion: Rebirth,’ Hand dyed silk, cotton, glass beads, by Rachel Kanter
Nashville’s Lion of Judah participants will add their personal stamp to an ever-evolving communal artwork when noted fiber artist Rachel Kanter comes here next month.
Kanter will participate in a Jewish Federation Lions of Judah luncheon and workshop set for 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on Fri., March 9, in the Gordon Jewish Community Center. In addition, her work will be displayed at the GJCC throughout March. The national Lion of Judah designation recognizes women who have given $5,000 or more annually to the Jewish Federation of Nashville’s Annual Campaign.
“We are going to be creating a community wimpel,” Kanter said in a telephone interview. A wimpel is a traditional Torah binder, wrapped like a belt around a Torah scroll to hold it in place before the Torah is dressed.
In a German Jewish tradition that largely disappeared after the Holocaust, a wimpel was fashioned from the swaddling cloth used at a baby boy’s bris and then given to the child, she said. On it were embroidered the child’s name, birth date and family lineage. Parents also would embroider depictions of what they hoped and dreamed for the child. The family presented the wimpel to their synagogue when their son turned three, a birthday that marked the first time to cut the boy’s hair and the age at which he could begin to study. The wimpel would continue to be used to bind the Torah on the child’s birthday, bar mitzvah, wedding and throughout his life, she said.
“Instead of holding the Torah together, (this wimpel) will conceptually hold the community together,” Kanter said. Participants will use acrylic paint and permanent markers to illustrate their own stories, sense of community and family life, she said. Kanter will also talk about her work, in which she explores the Jewish experience through women’s eyes.
“I think it’s a very interesting concept and program to bind everyone together,” said Lion of Judah Karen Yazdian, donor acquisitions chair for the Federation’s 2012 Annual Campaign.
All Lions will have an opportunity to contribute to the project and it’s not necessary to be a professional artist. The roughly 100-foot wimpel-in-progress is itself a scroll that goes from community to community, where women add their stories to a continuing collection of stories. It has been to Philadelphia and to a Jewish conference, Limmud NY, Kanter said.
Invitations to the event will be mailed to Nashville’s Lions of Judah. Other community women who are interested in making the philanthropic commitment to become a Lion of Judah are encouraged to contact Naomi Limor Sedek, Federation Campaign director, at naomi@jewishnashville.org or 615/354-1642. All Lions – current and new participants – will receive an invitation.
Kanter is the sister-in-law of Pam Kelner, executive director of Jewish Family Service, and Shaul Kelner, assistant professor of sociology and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Kanter grew up sewing, knitting and creating other craft works, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ceramics. She worked in clay for 10 years but after the birth of her second child, she turned to fiber and quilting techniques to further her exploration of Jewish ritual objects.
She has shown her work at The Jewish Museum in New York, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, American Jewish University, Hebrew Union College, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism and Temple Emanu-El in New York, among other places. Her piece “Fringed Garment” is in The Jewish Museum’s permanent collection, and her work can be viewed online at www.rachelkanter.com.
“I am very interested in taking these traditional Jewish ritual objects and not changing the essence of them, but changing them a bit so they work with my vision and what I want to do today,” she said. “I study Jewish texts a lot – I look at the text and all these commentaries,” she said. “I feel my work is along those lines.”