From Spark to Flame: Boca's Story

When Rachel Appel and Aliza Sloan, from East Boca Kehilla (Florida) approached me and asked me if I could update their parochet, I immediately responded with a hearty ‘of course!’ 

We planned a Zoom meeting, and I did my research on the community of East Boca Kehilla, Florida. The community thrives under the vibrant leadership of Rabbi Noach Light. The community's motto is to aspire to ignite the flame of Torah within themselves and share its warmth and light with others! The shul is so warm and welcoming that I wish I could become one of their members!

Let’s backtrack a bit and go back to the beginning of the story. This was their original parochet. A classic passuk. But the shul members really wanted a refresh…A new parochet that would represent THEM.

So, as I was listening to the Rabbi, I was hearing the word “Moditional” over and over again in my head, without him saying it.

They wanted a modern clean design with a touch of Floridain elements (aka palms trees) but also to have the traditional feel of a shul and a place to connect with Hashem, and to be a welcoming parochet.

So to describe that shortly- Moditional- a modern take on a traditional design.

So we started drafting the designs. Here are some of our first designs that they liked:

Initial Parochet designs sent to Rabbi Light.

The designs eventually evolved to these:

And then to these:

There was a lot of back and forth emailing in making sure everything was right.

Every time we sent them a new render of the design, one lady in the committee would hang up the picture on her fridge, to see how she felt and connected with the design.

Did it make her feel connected to Hashem while davening?

Did she feel uplifted?

Is this going to inspire her in Shul, for dozens of years?

They wanted to emulate the flame of Torah in their parochet and they weren’t really feeling inspired with this parochet, so we backtracked and tried something different.

A little while ago, I made a very “moditional” parochet for a different shul and I asked Dr. R. from that shul if he minded if we could use the design me and my team and him put together.  his design that we made for him for this shul in Florida.

He was happy to let us use it for this shul in Florida !

Here’s the winning design:

B"H everyone loved it, and we were ready to move on to the embroidery machine and bring everything to life. Here is our color by number for the digitizing and embroidery staff, so each piece gets the right color thread:

You can see the extensive range of thread shades being utilized, each bringing a unique vibrancy and depth to the design.

After that, we adorned the Parochet with 300 swarovski stones.

It requires a meticulous process of individually gluing and sewing each crystal.

Despite being a labor-intensive task, it significantly enhanced the final outcome!

B”H, the final result is vibrant, fresh, and traditional! The main point of updating this parochet was that, they should feel inspired to be connected to Hashem, while also connecting everyone together.
And that's what we accomplished.