Women in the Balcony (first in the series)

This large panel honors the memory of the German-Jewish refugee women who attended services in Ohav Sholaum Synagogue in Washington Heights, NY. The background is tallis-like creating a sacred space, or rather sacred canvas, to concretize these women’s life experience. In the women’s balcony, there were rows of multicolored cushions abandoned 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.

The fabrics of all the original cushions are reused in the vanishing perspective stripes that recall the view I saw in the synagogue balcony. I was told that when the women died, their cushions were never moved nor removed. In fact, the cushions, which expressed their personalities by the fabrics they chose, became their markers—in life, and then later in death.

Other viewers may also see the railroad tracks that many of the friends and families of the cushion-makers traveled on their way to oblivion in Europe. The stripes are also versions of the black stripes found on traditional tallisim — but leaning in to form an iconic but subtle triangle representing all womanhood.

The ritual fringes (tzitziot) are clearly non-traditional. They are the braided or corded events in women’s lives—particularly Orthodox women: a challah, a young girl’s braided hair, and an umbilical cord. The forth is a traditional fringe but it includes a non-traditional red string.

A seamstress, who represents them all, is seated in the center. She is making a cushion, of course, and using the same red string.