(RNS) — I was walking home from a Shabbat morning service, wearing a kippah and carrying my tallit bag in my urbane, diverse New Jersey town, when a pickup truck slowed down beside me. The driver rolled down his window and yelled something. I won’t repeat it here, but I can say with certainty it was not “Shabbat Shalom.”
Why? Because of a small piece of fabric on my large, bald head.
My truck-driving antagonist was in good company. On social media, bigots will refer to Jews as “the little hat people.”
Consider a remark attributed to Donald Trump: “I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
During the 1968 New York City school teachers’ strike, which aroused antisemitism, an announcer on radio station WBAI-FM read a poem written by a school child, dedicated to Albert Shanker, the Jewish head of the teachers’ union: “Hey, Jew boy, with that yarmulke on your head/You pale-faced Jew-boy, I wish you were dead.” Shanker, in fact, did not wear a yarmulke.
It is odd that the truck driver caught me wearing a kippah because I usually confine its use to synagogue and learning. Like most Reform Jews of my generation, I grew up “topless.” Why? Reform Jews had wanted to fit in. Men did not wear hats indoors; therefore, we followed suit.
The classical Reform Judaism of that era was interested in denying Jewish difference, which is why you could not wear a kippah in the Reform synagogue of my youth. The same was true for my first pulpit at a classical Reform synagogue.
Flash forward to 1976, when my friends Rabbi Dan Freelander and Cantor Jeff Klepper of the band Kol B’Seder recorded a children’s song, co-written with Susan Nanus: “Kippah, yarmulke, shows the world you’re a Jew. Wear it all day, or just when you pray, it’s totally up to you.” That became the emerging mood of Reform Judaism at the time, teaching that Reform Jews should make their Jewish choices based on knowledge and commitment. And many started making the affirmative choice to wear kippot, at least in synagogue or at public Jewish events.
Which begs the question: When did Jews start covering their heads? Certainly not in the Bible. The practice emerged during rabbinic times, and not everywhere.
When pious Jews covered their heads, they did so in the home and in the synagogue — not in public. Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, the longtime rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York during the 20th century, and a towering figure in modern Orthodoxy, insisted that the kippah was an “indoor garment.” Outside the home, in the 1940s and 1950s, Orthodox Jewish men wore fedoras like other men of their era — until President John F. Kennedy went bare-headed to his own inauguration, which spelled the end of the hat as a fashion statement.
One of the pioneers in public kippah wearing was Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg. In 1955, on his first date with Blu Genauer, who would become his wife, she recalled she was shocked that Irving kept his kippah on throughout the entire theater performance: “Why can’t he be more sensible, less conspicuous?” she later wrote.
Greenberg was a pioneer of conspicuous Jewishness. Through the 1960s and 1970s, religious Jewish men began wearing kippot in public in growing numbers. Soon, the dull, standard issue, silk yarmulke (the one you’d probably pick up at a funeral), became knitted, and colorful.
There was something else going on, too, that I think really started in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. It was the era of reborn Jewish pride. In the 1970s, the Soviet Jewry movement mobilized Jews across denominational lines. Marches, rallies, bracelets, slogans — all were expressions of visible solidarity. Jewish identity was no longer something to downplay. It was something to assert.
The kippah became part of that assertion. It was small, portable, unmistakable. Wearing it in public said “I am Jewish, and I am not apologizing.”
Today, the head covering is traditional Jewish garb. It might be knitted, silk, suede, small, midsize, large or really large and ornate, like the Hasidic streimel worn on Shabbat and festivals. Whatever size, material or style, it proclaims that the wearer is a certain kind of Jew; a certain Jewish ethnicity, even a different version of Zionism. Some are serious; others are whimsical, with the names of sports teams on them.
The story is equally nuanced and complex for Jewish women. Many of my women clergy colleagues and some other non-Orthodox Jewish women wear kippot. More traditional Jewish women might wear hats, particularly at services, or other head coverings, all the way to cutting their hair and wearing sheitels, or wigs, in ultra-Orthodox communities.
Which brings us back to the truck driver. With antisemitism rising and many of its targets visibly Jewish, should Jews still wear kippot on the street?
Some would be cautious and say that if you are on the subway, tuck the kippah into your pocket. It’s like the Hanukkah menorah. The Talmud says you should display the candles publicly, but during a time of persecution, it is best to set the candles back a little bit.
For others, the answer is precisely the opposite — to wear the kippah more deliberately than ever. It means refusing to let antisemites decide the terms of Jewish visibility, recognizing that the kippah has become a symbol not only of religious practice but of presence. It calls back to the story of the Jewish family that assertively displayed their Hanukkah menorah in Germany in 1931, even though they lived across the street from Gestapo headquarters.
I cannot dictate or suggest a correct answer, especially because I am not a full-time kippah wearer. But one thing is clear: The kippah has become a marker of identity in ways our grandparents could not have imagined. It attracts attention because it signals Jewishness. That’s why it provokes hostility, and why it can also provoke pride.
Perhaps that was my subconscious reason for wearing the kippah on the street in the first place. I refused to be invisible.
When that truck driver insulted me, I felt so seen as a Jew. At a time when Jews are again being seen, named, mocked and targeted, there is something quietly defiant, and deeply Jewish, about choosing to be seen.
