Month: December 2017 (Page 1 of 2)

Tahara Guidebook

December 16, 2017 /

This is a manual I produced for the Chevra Kadisha (literally, “Sacred Society,” a volunteer group which prepares the deceased for burial) of Cincinnati. The previous manual had no illustrations, and some of the Chevra’s procedures had changed when the local funeral home moved into a new facility. I also seem to remember that there were inaccuracies in the previous guidebook, in regard to certain customs and prayers – but I no longer have a copy of the old guidebook, so I can’t verify that. At any rate, the new book was produced with the imprimatur of the late Rabbi Zelig Sharfstein, who headed the local rabbinate, after consultation with Rabbi Elchonon Zohn, a well-known authority and president of the National Association of Chevra Kadisha. I was a participating member of the Chevra, and I had attended some of their training sessions with Rabbi Zohn, so I appreciated the need for the revisions, and I had first-hand knowledge of the procedures which needed illustrating.

Looking now at the page with the contents and credits, I see that only took credit for the typesetting. I guess I was feeling modest at the time. I still have my photographs and sketches, on which I based the diagrams, as well as the Photoshop and Illustrator files.

The printed guidebook was produced on legal (8.5 x 11) paper and saddle-stitched; I modified the layout for the PDF posted here.

 

Large Group Photo[shop]s

December 13, 2017 /

In 2008, the Kollel’s PR started emphasizing its role as a community builder. To illustrate that point, I was asked to create a group photo which would include the staff, all the alumni who had stayed in Cincinnati, and their families. One Sunday, almost everyone gathered for a photo shoot in the dining room of Cincinnati Hebrew Day School, which we had festooned with blue plastic table covers. Dr. Nachum Klafter took the actual photo. A few days later, I photographed the handful of people who hadn’t been able to make the weekend shoot. I put everyone together in Photoshop, and superimposed the group on a photograph of Old Westbury Gardens – the only photo I could find which matched the scale and perspective of the group photo!

photograph: Kollel Staff & Local Alumni, with Families - September, 2008

Kollel staff and local alumni, with families – September, 2008

 

photo shoot, September 2008

Printed on photo paper and framed, the result looked a lot better than it would seem if you had only viewed the photo on a computer monitor. On screen, you can definitely tell which people were added later, and artifacts remain from the “blue screen.” In hindsight, we should have made sure the group shoot was lit up better. We were also running up against the limitations of digital camera resolutions at that time.

the ‘studio” in 2010

 

the magazine cover

Two years later, I was asked to orchestrate another group photo, this time for a magazine cover. We did the shoot in a nearby, vacant house, where we could set up our tripod, the “blue screen,” and the lighting, and leave them, undisturbed, for the week or so it would take for everyone to file through and have their pictures taken. This helped to make sure that the lighting and perspective would be consistent across all of the photos. All together, there were 65 photographs! Because they were all shot from the same perspective, they didn’t look right when arranged horizontally (as I’d done in 2008). I ended up stacking everyone on top of each other, and I chose a stock photo for the background which would make it seem as though the photo had been taken from a distance – which would jive with the perspectives of the individual shots.

Kollel staff and local alumni, November 2010

 

the photographer in his studio, 2016

In 2016, after the Kollel expanded its staff, we did a third group photo, which we used as the centerfold of that year’s annual report. This time we set up shop in the Kollel’s Annex Library. Again I took lots of smaller photos and combined them, but this time we only took pictures of staff members and their families, so there were only 32 photos to work with. Instead of looking for an appropriate photo to use as the “setting,” I incorporated the group photo into the backdrop of the annual report – a photoshopped picture of the vintage Formica in my mother’s bathroom! The photograph below is the result, as it appeared in the centerfold.

Kollel staff and families (most of them, anyway), November 2016

 

Cincinnati Torah (2013 – April, 2018)

December 13, 2017 /

Years ago, a friend and former coworker started agitating for a locally produced parasha sheet – a weekly, one- or two-page publication with insights into the weekly Torah reading and religious holidays. The Kollel wasn’t ready to take the project on, so he arranged for a local synagogue to distribute it. I was already producing the synagogue’s newsletter, and I ended up also doing “CZE Torah,” as it was called, in my “spare” time – which was barely enough for me to scan the material for glaring typos.

At the beginning of 2013, the parasha sheet finally became a Kollel project. It was renamed Cincinnati Torah, aka Torah miCincy (a Hebrew pun). The weekly was also given an additional raison d’être: coverage of the Kollel’s activities and programming. The quality of the layout improved, and I started editing the content in earnest. I was able to make more contributions as a writer now, which I enjoyed, but the tradeoff was that I also ended up becoming the guy who had to ask other people to write pieces for the sheet.

In 2016, the Kollel expanded both its staff and its programming. The parasha sheet got a minor facelift, and Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Crystal took over as what I call “Contributing Managing Editor,” overseeing the creation of more varied content and soliciting contributions (written contributions, that is; another staff member took charge of finding sponsors). I continued in my role as “Contributing Production Editor,” doing the design and layout, editing the content, and writing the occasional piece, until April, 2018, shortly after I left my post at the Kollel .

There’s an archive of several years’ worth of parasha sheets at cincykollel.org, but here are several issues from the most recent iteration of the parasha sheet, including three for which I did some of the writing.

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Here are three earlier issues with content I wrote.

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And, finally, here are some badges I created, to identify special or seasonal content that spanned a series of issues.

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Purim at the Kollel

December 11, 2017 /

Purim is a holiday full of mirth, merriment, and parody. The holiday schedules I put together for the Kollel reflected that. Here are sixteen examples, including one which got “censored.” (Actually, more than that got censored, but not so publicly.) Click on any thumbnail to see a larger image.

 

“An Evening of Music”

December 11, 2017 /

From 2010 to 2014, the Kollel‘s point man for campus outreach, Raphael Weinschneider, organized a series of chamber concerts to benefit his programs. I tried to carry the look and feel of the publicity materials over from year to year, while subtly varying them to reflect changes in the musical line-up. The idea of riffing off of a grand piano’s silhouette probably came from the original album cover for “Mi Ya’aleh” by Schwebel, Scharf & Levine (later re-released as “The Lost Album,” with a less avant-garde cover).

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Logos and Monograms

December 10, 2017 /

I’ve enjoyed the challenge of designing a good logo or monogram since I was in high school. I especially enjoy playing with letterforms and their similarities to other shapes.

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Esrog Boxes

December 6, 2017 /
photo of four esrog boxes
(L-R) 2007 prototype; 2008 camp project; 2016 camp project; 1995? camp project

Esrog boxes are a woodworking project I’ve turned to a few times over the years. They take a whole summer to make, and, unlike other projects like bread boards and lamps, it doesn’t matter if a camper’s older sibling has already made one – as soon as a boy is old enough, he can use one of his own. Wooden boxes must, by necessity, be larger than the fancy silver ones, because a thin sheet of metal is much stronger and resilient than an equivalent thickness of wood – and the internal volume of the box must be large enough to hold a decent-sized esrog. That makes designing a modestly-sized wooden esrog box a challenge.

My first design for an esrog box dates back to the mid-nineties, when I worked at Camp Shivte Yisrael, in the Catskills. If anything, it was too easy for campers to cut out, and it was a little tricky to assemble without clamping. It was also really big. (I sometimes call it my “esrog trunk.”) However, it was easy to inscribe and decorate, and it would be very easy to mass-produce. The corners are standard cove molding. (The ornamentation was done before varnishing, using oil color pencils from Walnut Hollow Farm.)

Esrog Box 1.0, decorative detail (esrog)
Esrog Box 1.0, hinged lid
Esrog Box 1.0, decorative detail (lulav)
Esrog Box 1.0, from above

Esrog Box 2 was designed for Camp Ashreinu, a day camp. The first prototype had a horizontal, clamshell design, with a braided leather carrying strap and a solid brass pitam. IIRC, it looked like it might be a little tricky for the campers to pull off, and the hinged lids wobbled a bit. I redesigned it with a vertical alignment. The lid lifts right off; when on, it’s held in place by two rare-earth magnets. (I love using rare-earth magnets in craft projects!)

Esrog Box 2.0
Esrog Box 2.0, open
Esrog Box 2.5
Esrog Box 2.5, open

Esrog Box 3 was also designed for Camp Ashreinu. It cuts a much smaller profile, similar to that of the cardboard boxes esrogim ship in. (If I were to do it again, I’d make it half an inch longer.) Each layer was made from a precut blank – the boys hollowed out the insides. A lip, glued to the lid, allows the lid to fit snugly into the sides of the box, and rare-earth magnets keep the lid from popping off. This time, I came up with a new twist: Instead of printing the usual paper patterns, which have to be pinned onto the wood in just the right position and traced with carbon paper, I designed 3D-printed plastic stencils, which snapped onto the wood blanks.

Esrog Box 3
Esrog Box 3 – campers’ finished projects
Esrog Box 3, open (with partially dried esrog)

Wooden Table Lamp

December 5, 2017 /

This was the Camp Ashreinu woodwork project in 2011. It was built around an IKEA lamp and lampshade, and a hidden message appears when you turn it on! Full details of the build, including a glimpse at the original camp woodwork shop, can be found at IKEAhackers.

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Flyers: “Creation” and “From Creation to a Nation”

December 5, 2017 /

From late 2007 to early 2010, Rabbi Yaakov (“Cobi”) Robinson gave two series totaling 15 lectures to women. The goal of these flyers was to create a “brand,” as it were, which would highlight each lecture’s topic, while making it clear that the lectures were part of a continuum.

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