A scene from a preschool classroom in 2008 produced a remarkable moment. Tami Ellison remembers it as if it were yesterday.
Ellison was teaching a science program for three-to-five year-olds at Temple Emanuel about the properties of symmetry.
“We were doing a winter theme, creating art of paper snowflakes, using the basic principle that there were six lines to make a pattern, to make each snowflake the same.
“With very little coaching or instruction, some of the kids simply shared ideas from each other, reinforcing that core, essential elements can be repeated over time.
“That was profoundly amazing.”
That “Snowflake Symmetry” activity later became touted by the National Science Teaching Assn.
Ellison, a native of Chicago whose mother (the late Irmgard Ellison, who fled Germany with her parents) lived in Denver for a lengthy period of time, along with sister Rayna Zussman and her family. Ellison was a popular fixture here while teaching “science for kids” programs for 10 years at many Jewish preschools, including at the JCC.
As life has unfolded, Tami’s teaching experience was merely a part of her multi-shaped mosaic.
In 2014, Ellison made aliyah to start a new chapter in her life in Jerusalem, continuing her teaching of science while also teaching English to Israeli adults. A trained scientist through her studies at the University of Illinois, she was also a hi-tech consultant.
“I always wanted to make aliyah,” says Ellison. “Circumstances just didn’t allow it for much of my adult life.
“I had been to Israel when I was six years old with my family,” says Ellison, 67. “I hadn’t been for 48 years, until 2012, when I went for a pre-aliyah trip.”
Two years later, she was on her way to becoming an Israeli citizen. It was there that Ellison found yet another calling: photography.
“I approached it with the same degree of wonderment, and exploration and discovery.”
Ellison found herself immersed in what she calls “ambiguous images.”
“It’s called that because depending upon where you look, how you look, how long you look, all different kinds of variables that go into it, you see either one image or the other, and it switches between them because your gaze drifts.
“It opened up eight years of research, trying to figure out what was going on with these figures and ground dynamic, and what properties of those images made them switch or not switch.”
So, the scientist became an artist, which leads to the present moment: author.
Fundamentally, it is really about creativity,” says Ellison, who has written books (under the name T/R Ellison), The Chladni Progression and Strange Fire, both novels.
“I have been very blessed in being able to apply that creativity in a lot of different modalities, whether it was in teaching, developing programs, consulting, arts and writing,” Ellison says.
“The ultimate expression has been the writing, because it has taken all of my parts.
“Israel helped to develop a lot of those parts and to bring those parts to the surface to be able to express it through writing. I’ve always written, but now I’ve been able to put my whole heart and soul into it.”
Of the latest book, Strange Fire, Ellison says the work is 40% fiction and 60% non-fiction. It is a mystery of a techie in his late 20s who wants to bring about the End of Days, with the help of AI.
“It’s about a love relationship with G-d,” says Ellison, daughter of the late Orthodox Rabbi Albert H. Ellison of Chicago, “and of finding yourself within that relationship and the responsibilities that we have, not only to G-d to ourselves, but to our fellow man and woman.
“That is the upshot of my life, basically. All of my writing has always been about spiritual aspects and about the evolution of the soul, where we go and what our purpose is in life.
“I took that on after Oct. 7, and it is a way of integrating what happened then, and what has helped shape our national and Jewish identity with the people and places and the events that that have crafted who we are today.
Ellison uses the words “redemption” and “spirituality” as common themes in her writing, and the combination of both. Sequels to the two books are in the offing.
Ellison made a recent book-signing appearance at EDOS. During events like this, many in the community remember Tami from her instructional days in Denver.
One particular instance Ellison remembers was from a workshop many years ago with a group of early childhood educators, based on the movement of sound and the use of a popular marketing catchphrase from a particular mobile phone company.
“The theme was ‘Can you hear me now?’” says Ellison.
“I utilized that, and I’d literally run around the room, turn my back to everybody, run outside the room, close the door and ask the question, ‘Can you hear me now?’
“Then we’d talk about the follow-up, and the answer to that is how sound moves. It became an active lesson of movement, which addresses learning modalities — not just hearing, not just reading, but also the movement, the kinesthetic aspect of it.
“It was so amazing to talk about.”
The scientist and the teacher were one, now including the author, T/R Ellison.
“What’s fascinating to me is that everything came together in the most amazing and wonderful ways, and they continue to come together.
“I did seven years of research on developmental pattern expression, and so patterns have always been a fundamental part of my life.
“I’m always trying to understand them and break them down, and decode them.
“Pretty wild, right?”
© IJN 2025
