Monday, May 12, 2008

Jewish Kippah story


Ericsjournal from livejournal reported on the 13th anniversary of his bar-mitzvah, including this little story about wearing his head covering to school:

On the first of May this year, I wore a kippah, the traditional Jewish headcovering, to school. This was meant to be something unusual; to say that I never wear a kippah to class would be a grave understatement, and in fact I actually take pride and joy in the fact that I haven't had to put one on while inside of a classroom for something in the area of nine years now. It's generally known among people in my class that I'm genetically and even sometimes culturally Jewish, but nobody I know would mistake me for a religious Jew, and in fact a certain percentage of my classmates have heard rumours that I worship some sort of odd pagan deity. In any case, I put it on when I left my apartment in the morning around eight thirty, assuming that no one would comment on it until at least nine, when class started. My expectations were exceeded; I'd walked less than halfway to the hospital when I bumped into someone walking to the same lecture, who immediately noticed the kippah and became pleasantly confused. He asked why I was wearing it; I answered that I wore one every day. He saw through it, but it took him one lovely moment when he wasn't sure. I explained that I was wearing it for April Fools Day, and to forestall his next question, because if you pull your April Fools jape on the first of April, everyone sees it coming. No one else commented on it the rest of the day, in part because it was a small kippah and not too noticable, in part because most people seeing it simply assume I had a reason and didn't ask, and in part because most people don't look at me that closely. Or maybe in the minds of my classmates, when someone comes to class every day with a two-inch wide smiley-face amulet, you don't get too curious if he shows up one day and the strangest thing he's wearing is a kippah. True to the holiday, I took it off at the strike of noon.
Photo above from "Jessy Judaica Toronto" - Knitted Kippahs

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