A gift

For two years, without ever so much as a hint that she was doing it, Margie has been knitting this beautiful shawl for me. It is unimaginably soft and as light as foam, a fine wool with cashmere woven in, and it is, as she says, “the colors of the forest.” Today she gave it to me, and I am knocked out with the WOW of it. Every loop and stitch is time she devoted to making it: a shawl like this is a weave of time, of moments. Her daughter Lucy did “the lacy bits,” Margie says. "I couldn't keep track of the complicated math involved."

We talked about gifts, about Hanukkah and Christmas, and Margie laughed, “I’ve always felt like a straw in a field of grass. In New York where I grew up among Jews, my family was non-observant. In Ohio, among Christians, I was a Jew. I've never even known what Hanukkah is all about. I started this shawl for your birthday a couple of years ago, but it took me much longer than I expected, so here it is now, this is just when I finished it.”

We talked about the Never Again Action that will be held this evening, in a few hours. Rabbi Ariel Stone has organized it. It will be at the ICE Building, a detention center for people who've been arrested by ICE agents, the place where we’ve had so many rallies. Aimee (of the Bronze Shoes) has painted a gorgeous banner of the Statue of Liberty holding a menorah instead of a torch; Aimee has also built a giant Hanukkiah; and after the lighting of candles, the rabbi plans to lead a walking meditation around the building, as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship has done every month for the past two years. I may slip a photo of that event into my blip tomorrow. The face of Liberty on Aimee’s banner is very like the face of Emma Lazarus, the Jewish woman who wrote the poem inscribed on the Statue. You have to see it.