Making "Women of the Balcony" Learning of the closing of Ohav Sholaum Synagogue in Washington Heights, I went and gathered up the objects that were left behind. The most unusual and moving thing I saw was on the second floor in the women’s balcony. There, rows of abandoned, modest, multicolored cushions remained on the benches marking the places of their absent owners. I took them home — orphans with little intrinsic value except as a memorial to the generations of Jewish women in synagogue balconies.

Sitting outside by the stoop to pry open the cushions and remove old stuffing and feathers, I felt like a textile archeologist peeling back layers of fabrics. The fabrics were remnants from the bottom of the sewing shelf, but now they revealed the modest lives and choices of German-Jewish refugee women. A 1960s upholstery fabric covered a 1950s curtain, which in turn covered a 1940s patterned dress silk… like finding cities below cities in an archaeology dig.