The Kippah Chronicles

It happened again today. I was approached by a total stranger simply because of the Jewish head covering – called a kippah (pronounced keep-ah) in Hebrew and a yarmulke (pronounced yah-ma-kah) in Yiddish, and there seems to be very little pattern about who uses which term – that I've been wearing more-or-less regularly since last August. She was a fellow Starbucks customer and wanted to ask me if Hanukkah is still going on and wish me a Happy Hanukkah even though it isn't. 

I wouldn't say that this sort of thing happens all the time, but it happens often enough that I feel I should write about it. I've also been asked at least once why I wear the darned thing when so few Jews these days do – one student seemed to think it was a requirement of my conversion process, like a Jewish hazing ritual – and so I thought I'd clear that up, too. 

First, the "why wear a kippah" question. 

For a similar answer to mine, see this excellent recent op-ed by Jewish Telegraph Agency reporter David Wilensky. 

First off, it's not about religion, at least not entirely. The reason male Jews are "supposed to" wear one of these things on our heads, the religious reason, is actually pretty poorly defined. Back in the Near East in the formative age of Rabbinic Judaism, it was a sign of respect to cover your head in a ruler's presence. Since the ruler of the Jews – God – is always present everywhere, that led to the practice of always covering your head except when showering or sleeping or the like. At least, that's one origin story. Another one says that the kippah is there as a constant reminder of the presence of God (the Shekinah, in Hebrew) which is above us at all times. A third story says that the rabbis didn't want the Shekinah – one of God's feminine aspects – looking down on them and seeing just their bare heads. 

For whatever reason, it became traditional to wear these things, but never universal, and it was never elevated to the status of a mitzvah – a religious duty. In fact some Jews, today mainly of the Reform persuasion, object to wearing kippot on general principle. 

For me, the only religious aspect is that every time I reach up to touch the top of my head for any reason, or look at myself askance in the mirror, my kippah reminds me that God is with me. Putting it on in the morning reminds me whom I really work for. That sort of thing. 

Second off, it is about identity. A kippah is a public statement of identity. If you wear one, you are Jewish and you are letting the world know that.

And that is probably a lot closer to why I started wearing a kippah half a year ago. Here's how it breaks down for me:

• It's a statement of who I am. I got tired of everyone assuming and presuming that I was a Christian like everybody else in Baytown and environs is presumed to be. There is nothing wrong with being Christian, but I'm not that and I am this. So now people know. 
• It's an experiment in public identity, in deliberately un-assimilating, in declaring minority status. I may still be a middle-aged white over-educated male, but the kippah says I'm choosing to at least reject my Christian privilege and take a side with a historically oppressed people.
• It's decorative. I don't do jewelry, so this is about the only Jewish thing I can get away with wearing at work.
• It's a way to communicate my identity to others who care about it. More on that in a minute. 
• Finally, it's a statement of solidarity with religious and cultural minorities of every stripe, a way of standing up for every other person who isn't cookie-cutter "normal". As a college professor, I can wear this thing and my students have to accept it, to accept my different-ness, to consider that the world is not as simple and uniform as perhaps they had thought. And maybe that gives permission to some other person somewhere to put on their own kippah, or hijab, or whatever. Maybe. But in this world where anti-minoritism is on the rise seemingly everywhere, I gotta use what power I've got, right?

And the amazing thing is...it hasn't been a big deal at all. My coworkers have studiously avoided mentioning it, to an almost annoying extent. I had expected a "hey, nice head thingy" from someone, but at least I suppose that no bad news is a form of good news, right?

One coworker finally asked if I was becoming Jewish now, sometime mid-fall-semester. And one of my students finally got up the, er, chutzpah to ask why I was wearing a head thingy now and not last semester. Good for them. A conversation is rarely ever a bad thing. 

And that brings me to the hidden blessing of being a not-hidden Jew. Consider all of these interactions that would never have happened to me had I not been wearing my kippah:

• The man in the coffee shop last September who stopped me to ask when he should send his Jewish friend a Rosh Hashanah card this year
• The African-American transplant from New York City who said he missed seeing openly Jewish men around
• The textbook rep (who said Lee College was "the last place I had expected to see a yarmulke") who started a whole conversation with me about her half-Jewish family upbringing
• The student who insisted on greeting me "shalom" until I acknowledged that he at least knew something about Judaism
• The transplant from Georgia who had been in the process of converting to Judaism before he moved and wasn't sure where to find a friendly synagogue in these parts
• The two textbook authors I met at a professional development event who "bageled" me (one of them told me "bageling" is the code word for being recognized as a fellow Jew). One wished me a Shabbat shalom, asked if the fajita banquet offered any hope of eating kosher, and offered me help in my own quest to write a book. Nice. 
• The Petco manager who changed his "Merry Christmas" to a "Happy Hanukkah" when he realized that his constituency was a little more mixed than he had previously thought. 
• And of course the nice lady who struck up a convo with me about the timing of Hanukkah this morning. 

The point is, this little disc on my head has brought me far more good than I ever would have expected. May it, like the rest of my Jewish journey, continue to be a blessing to myself and others!