Prepared to stick out
צילום: דודו בכר
Why I wear a kippah
The kippah is not a ticket to a club or a school uniform. A religious person is a person who confronts things, and therefore, the kippah won’t solve any of your inner conflicts
One of the ideologues of the Labor Movement would write the following notes to himself in the margins of his speech: “My next section is less convincing, so I need to raise my voice.” In other words, when we make extreme claims or raise our voice in order to back up what we are saying, it means that we know that our claim is weak. I am talking, of course, about Assaf Wohl’s column, Why Wear a Kippah?
I myself also know some big hypocrites who are called up to the Torah for the respected sixth or third aliyah and whose kippah reaches their beard. However, most kippah wearers are still average people who in their own way are attempting to worship God. That is, for them the kippah is not a way to escape decisions in life, but a principled statement about a certain faith and being prepared to pay a price for it.
Yes, placing a kippah on your head means being prepared to stick out in a world that sanctifies anonymity. All of Western culture is an escape from sticking out and the slaughtering of all holy cows, and here is a person who intentionally makes himself conspicuous. But when I speak about social conspicuousness I am not talking about looking down on others.
A person who makes himself feel good by diminishing others is guilty of the sin of pride, and certainly will not sit in the Lord’s synagogue near the eastern wall. I’m talking about internal conspicuousness. A man wearing a kippah is constantly reminding himself that there are values he believes in and whch he won’t compromise on in any situation.
Join a golf club
And here, actually, is the difference between me and Assaf in our perception of the kippah. A person who thinks that wearing a kippah means joining a club should take it off and join a golf club or the Rotary. The kippah is not a school uniform or an army uniform. It involves an understanding that there is a higher authority over man to whom we are all subordinate. This understanding is also a constant struggle to think, because at any given moment we make many decisions with moral significance.
And in general, for all of us, life in our world involves dealing with unanswerable questions. No faith can explain to us why a friend is killed in a stupid traffic accident. It’s the same for terminal illnesses and the other troubles that fill the air. I say this even though we all know people (who are certain that they are exceptionally religious) who know how to explain everything and find justifications for everything. Those people were also like that when they were secular, and the religious are not responsible for the fact that there are such people.
A religious person is a person who confronts things, and not someone who stores his brains in a safe the way we do when we enter the army induction center. So Asaf, put a kippah on your head. It won’t solve any of your internal conflicts. It will only require you to make decisions about whether or not you believe.
Rabbi Asaf Golan, a graduate of the Shavei Hevron yeshiva, is an assistant principal of a school in the north. He has a column in Hatzofeh and writes stories and poetry
