Leah (the bat mitzvah)

Video of the paper-cutting process on Instagram

This piece was commissioned for a niece, Leah, who became an adult on parashat Bamidbar. This parasha spends a lot of time describing the census taken of the Jewish people. I’ve represented the census by including an unbroken row of half-circles around the outside of the papercut; these represent the heads of the people being counted.

The text around the outside is from the first half-sentence of the haftarah, Hosea 2:1, which translates to “The number of the people of Israel shall be like that of the sands of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted.”

Finally, the text in the bottom center is the Hebrew date of the bat mitzvah.

The outside font, “Orange,” was designed by Baruch Sienna.

June 2017
8" x 8"