The Tallit

Among the many things I did not ask my grandfather about, I never asked him to tell me about the buttons.  It was enough just to play with them.  If I could talk to him now, say that it wasn’t too interesting – some designer ordered buttons from a button manufacturer.

I can, however, tell you the modern story of some of Grandpa Meyer’s buttons.  I know he would find this story interesting.

At our Temple, each Bar or Bat Mitzvah child gets to make his or her own personal tallit (prayer shawl).   Currently we (my son, Michael, my husband, and my father) are helping Michael design his tallit.

When my daughter, Rachel, designed her tallit, she wanted to incorporate things that were important to her into the design.  Her mitzvah (good deed) project involved helping the cats at Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Organization (where our cats our from).  We had our dear friend, Ginny, owner of Sandpiper Embroidery, Wildwood Crest, NJ, embroider replicas of our then five cats across the bottom of her tallit.  On the top of the tallit, she wrote the Hebrew words for “and God said, ‘fill the earth with animals.’” 

In the midst of planning Rachel’s tallit, the buttons called to me.  We could take some of the buttons and sew them on the corners of the tallit.  The buttons would no longer be waiting in the bottom of the sewing box.

Each corner of the tallit has a different design.  One corner has buttons to remind Rachel of her great Aunt Bobbie.  In the Aunt Bobbie corner, we sewed the butterfly button, a fish button, a flower button and a shell.  In two corners, Rachel selected her favorite Grandpa Meyer buttons. 

In addition to Grandpa Meyer’s buttons, the tallit also has one other very special piece – my father in law, Lester Shubin’s WWII army insignia from his uniform. 

The tallit keeps the memory of my grandfather, my aunt, and my father in law  alive.  The buttons, once a functional item and then a toy, now serve as a bridge from the past to the future.