A huge thanks to Dr. Carol Gerson for sharing photos and details of this button-closure tallit bag she designed to accompany a hand-made tallit for a bar mitzvah boy.

Making the tallit was a family project, with the bar mitzvah boy choosing the design elements, Dad on the sewing machine, and Mom helping out, too.

In addition to designing the bag, Carol employed her digital embroidery skills to personalize the tallit’s atarah (neckpiece) and corner pieces: “The boy picked out the tree corner and I digitized the pomegranates large and small and clipped the leaves from a purchased design. I added the dove from the branch design to the tree corner and the atarah so that all of the design elements would appear in each corner and the atarah. There is green in the tree corner, but it is in an outline that is hard to see.”

Carol, who is a pediatric surgeon by profession, is also a mohelet, a female mohel who performs circumcisions, certified by the Reform movement’s National Organization of American Mohalim. She’s married to Rabbi Emeritus Gary S. Gerson of the Oak Park Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.

Thank you Carol and the bar mitzvah family for sharing your photos and story.

We’d love to post pics of your handmade tallit – send them to us at maria{dot}bywater{at}sewjewish{dot}com. And to keep up with new projects, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter.