last word
Ilene Cetlin Lipow
WEAVES TOGETHER COMMUNITY
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
28 and tallitot for a handful of friends and
family before even considering open-
ing the KI studio.

Though Lipow studied to be a lawyer
and passed the bar exam in 1985, she
later became a stay-at-home mom and
became an avid synagogue volunteer.

She’s been the membership chair, vice
president and president of KI, among
other lay leadership positions.

Lipow’s relationship with Judaism
was not as simple as her one with fiber
arts. She grew up attending an obser-
vant synagogue with different tradi-
tions than KI.

“Sometimes women, especially in
more traditional communities, some-
times feel like they can’t participate
the way men do,” Lipow said. “When I
grew up, women weren’t even allowed
on the bimah — that I grew up in. We
certainly did not wear tallitot.”
Lipow’s attitude toward her Judaism
OCTOBER 6, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
changed over time. She wove her own
tallit, and weaving became a way for
her to become more engaged with her
Jewish roots. Since wearing a tallit and
kippah, Lipow has become a regular
Torah and Haftorah reader at KI.

“It’s increased my participation and
my connection to my community, my
connection to God by being able to do
all these things,” she said.

Fiber arts have long been part of a
discussion about the gendered nature
of crafts, but the tides are changing,
Lipow believes. While viewed for cen-
turies as “women’s work” and taken
less seriously than other art forms,
fiber arts, including weaving, were art
forms undertaken by men in Europe
during the Middle Ages.

Today, however, Lipow has seen
another shift. There are plenty of men
who walk into the weaving studio
interested in creating their own pieces.

Men have woven tallit bags for them-
selves and for their young sons coming
of age. One boy, still a few years from
his bar mitzvah, toured the studio and
plans to design and create a tallit for
the milestone.

“I hope to be able to reach more men
and say, ‘Hey, you can do this, too. It’s
not just for the women and the girls,’”
Lipow said.

Regardless of who comes into the
studio, the weavers walk out with the
same feeling, Lipow said. There’s grat-
ification in having completed a large
task, largely by oneself. The ritual
objects created have a lasting sense of
meaning to their makers.

“Honestly, the best part of this is
when they’re done weaving, and we roll
off the loom,” Lipow said. “I mean, peo-
ple’s faces — they’re just so excited.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Ilene Cetlin Lipow
I t’s been a little over a year since
Kesher Israel Congregation’s weav-
ing studio doors opened to the
wider community, and the demand has
shown no signs of slowing down.

The studio’s two looms have helped
to churn out 16 tallitot, and its patrons
have woven atarahs to don the necks
of the prayer shawls and tallit bags.

The wait list to access the studio is
booked through November. In August,
a mother and daughter duo flew in
from California and spent three full
days, about 25 hours total, weaving a
tallit in the West Chester synagogue for
the girl’s bat mitzvah.

Amateur weavers aged 12 to 77 have
used the studio, with three generations
of family members sometimes working
on one project, which one day will
become a family heirloom.

KI’s weavers owe the creation of their
projects to Ilene Cetlin Lipow, the stu-
dio’s founder and a KI member for
more than 30 years.

Lipow, 61, hopes the studio stays
busy; she wants weaving to be an avail-
able art form to anyone in the Jewish
community. After all, she knows first-
hand the impact creating one’s own
Judaica can have on one’s relationship
with Judaism.

“It has been really rewarding to help
people create something unique and
special that expresses their personality
or the personality of the person that
they’re making it for,” she said. “It’s a
great way to connect to Judaism with-
out having to know Hebrew or going to
services.” Knitting since age 6 — taught by her
grandmother — and quilting since her
20s, Lipow always had a love for the
fiber arts.

She discovered weaving a decade
later when attending a craft fair and
took a couple of classes. By the time she
was 40, she was hooked, and her hus-
band gifted her a Swedish floor loom
for her birthday. Lipow wove chuppot