Peaceful Hungarian Parochet
Rubner Modern Dove Sets
I became friendly with the famous copywriter Naomie Rubner when we took Rivka Malka Perlman's Transformational Life Coaching Training course together. She referred her husband's cousin who was looking for a few Torah mantels.
Here is the first exchange:
"Hello, we are having a Sefer Torah written in honour of our father. We are now at the stage of looking for two covers (48cm) Shabbat / Chagim and possibly 2 parochets and Ben Gavra. We have all the silverware. Our father was an artist and we are looking for a stunning cover. We have a cousin in Jerusalem who is also an artist and would be able to design something very special and bespoke, would you be able to custom make the covers and perhaps the other items?
I am based in Israel but my brother and sister are in London. The Sefer Torah will be taken to London.
Looking forward to hearing from you
With kind regards
Yolanda"
Memorial website created by Leslie Rubner's children. This was a great source of inspiration for the Torah mantel and parochet designs!
Yolanda and I ended up meeting on Zoom several times, along with her brother and sister and Rabbi, Chaim Hoch of Chabad of Elstree & Borehamwood (London, UK). We spent a lot of time talking about her father, Leslie Rubner, who was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who managed to escape the Communist regime, move to Israel and then England and become a jeweler. Yolanda and her siblings had aa very special time reminisching about their father and mentioned that he was a shy, peace-loving man. The concept of a dove and precious jewels came up.
So the concept for the initial hand-drawn sketch for the Torah mantel was: dove of peace, hiding behind the colorful 'Choshen', surrounded by precious gemstones.
Cousin Itamar Rubner, a talented artist, drew this mind-blowing sketch, which I then translated to computer and color! It took us a long time to decide on a color scheme that would both flow with the colors of the Choshen stones as well as the Chabad Center's interior! But we did it, B"H!
4 images above: Creative journey from Itamar Rubner's hand-drawn sketch to my computerized render and the embroidered Year-Round and Holiday mantels.
Then came time to select the fabrics.
Yolanda came to my Bnei Brak office several times throughout the project to select fabrics and threads.
She. did. not. want. velvet. period! Velvet has a connotation of being traditional, maybe too traditional, and she felt that her father's memorial judaica should look modern. So she opted for these gorgeous tweeds, brocades and upholstery fabrics with soft and rough textures. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts here.
Left: Center of the "Hadad Bros." Choshen. Right: Year-Round set's color palette.
Yolanda had such a great time that she decided to have me design and produce not only two Torah mantels, but two complete 'sets':
Year-Round Set: Dark Bein Gavra l'Gavra Cover, Parochet, Torah Mantel, Amud Cover, Bima Cover.
Holiday Set: Light Bein Gavra l'Gavra Cover, Parochet, Torah Mantel, Amud Cover, Bima Cover
You'll notice that we based all the designs on the original concept and Itamar's original hand-drawn sketch. Everything flowed from them.
After the design stage, came the fabric-choosing and PLANNING stages! Planning exact fabric placement instructions for my digitizer and embroiderer. Ooh-ah! That's loads of work! Just planning the numerous whites and greys in those realistic wings took, um, a very long time!
But it was sooo worth it, when you see how the finished products simply ELEVATE the Chabad Center!
Nu, don't you just love how we snuck the Chabad logo into every item?!
What a Hachnassat Sefer Torah! The emotion! The singing! The dancing!
And here is something fun from Chabad of Elstree's Instagram page- Hava Stone unveiling the resin art on the Aron Kodesh.
Surprise! The Holiday Parochet is revealed as well!
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