_(english).jpg "Soul Food")
_(english).jpg "Searching for Superman")
_(english).jpg "Tammuz: Forces of Nature")
_(english).jpg "America and Jewish Values")
_(english).jpg "Seven Wonders of Jewish History")
+.jpg "Bilaam Versus Abraham")
+.jpg "Friends and Family")
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_(english).jpg "My Son's Yarmulka")
My son will soon be turning three, have his first haircut and start wearing a yarmulka. I approach the time with anxious impatience. At every opportunity, I ask Michael whether he would like to put his yarmulka on, trying to get him used to it. But the truth is that I don't really think it's going to happen. It's hard for me to imagine that a product of my womb will openly declare his Jewishness to any and all who see him.
My father can't even imagine wearing his yarmulka outside the home. How could anyone be so foolhardy to expose himself to a world he believes hates Jews so ferociously? Living in a Hungarian village as a child, he would run terrified from his home to school, knowing that there were ruffians waiting all along the route to beat the little Jew-boy up. Then the yellow star, and the darkness that followed.
Even after the concentration camps were liberated, Hungary was occupied by religion-haters, and identifying yourself as a Jew could lose you your job, or a place to live. It's no wonder he taught me to actively avoid exhibiting physical indicia of my Jewishness.
My father still enjoys being ethnically anonymous in a crowd. When he immigrated to the New World, he discovered that people are not very good at judging your racial origins by looking at your face. So that if you do not put out any obvious signs, people will not guess that you are a Jew, and you can listen to work colleagues make anti-Semitic small talk without being afraid.
For my father, wearing a yarmulka means the private world, the home. It means that you trust the people you are with enough to expose yourself to them. To wear a yarmulka outside is like undressing your most private parts in public. When he was in Israel the first time, my father wore his yarmulka in the street. It was an extraordinary experience; he was able to bring his secret private space out into the open.
For a Jewish woman, it is much easier sit on the fence about these issues of identification. The Jewish dress code for women focuses on covering things like elbows and knees; for females there is no outward expression of Jewishness which all the world can see. When I was in college, I fought my fear of publicly proclaiming that I was a Jew and started wearing a Magen David necklace over my clothes. Surprisingly, my father did not object when I paraded around his office with this conspicuous ornamentation.
But after a while, the Magen David no longer satisfied the need to announce my Jewishness to the world: it could be too easily hidden away if needed; and it had no religious meaning. It was just about me volunteering to decorate myself Jewishly.
My husband, Moshe, just about never takes his yarmulka off. His worst memory of a surgery he had as a boy was when the nurse took his yarmulka away, and when he cried out for it in the night, they wouldn't give it back to him. Moshe has traveled through Western and Eastern Europe, never removing his yarmulka, never covering it up. When someone advised him to take it off at work, he said as long as people were coming in with rings in their ears, noses and navels, he was coming in his yarmulka. He's a third generation American and just can't see what all the fuss is about.
My son is named after my uncle, who taught himself French and disguised himself as a diplomat to hide from the Nazis in Budapest during the War. We don't know how he died. We assume that someone recognized him, and then all the Gestapo had to do was strip him, find the circumcision and, as was their practice, shoot him into the Danube. Bodily symbols are very important in our history, our culture.
Three years ago we imprinted upon my son one indelible sign of his Jewishness. In a few weeks he will show to the world another sign. And in doing so, he will announce his allegiance to our people in the public domain. For him, it will be a coming of age. For me, a coming out.
_(english).jpg "Holocaust Lamentations")
_(english).jpg "Choosing Homeschooling")
(19) Jarrod (Yehuda) Muhari, June 19, 2013 2:34 PM
I am making sure my children know who they are
My Grandmother was so afraid to express her Jewish heritage, she did everything she could to hide it. She was convinced that they (the Nazi's or other antisemitic lunatics) would come back to finish her off and kill our family, so she distanced herself from all things Jewish. The consequence of that was my own mother had no Jewish education, and I was not taught anything. Things are different now... My family are shomer Shabbat, my son attends a Hebrew school and proudly wears his Kippah & Tzitzits... I might have missed out on a Jewish education, but I am making sure my children know who they are
(18) Joan Sullivan, June 18, 2013 6:06 PM
In Zechariah 8 HaShem declares that ten men from ten language nations will grab hold of the sleeve of one jew and plead "Tell us what you know" So then all young men can freely wear Yarmulkas! I can hardly wait.
(17) Chavy, June 18, 2013 3:41 PM
We can't hide our Yiddishkeit.
Can't verify the truth of this story and maybe it's just a Jewish "urban legend." but the story makes an important point. Story has it that a non religious Jew confronted a Tallis wearing Jew one Shabbos and berated him for wearing the Tallis in the street and flaunting his Jewishness for all to see. The proud Tallis wearing Jew replied, "You want me to hide my Tallis in a bag? WHy don't you hide your nose in a bag?" We can't hide the fact that we're Jewish, there's no need to hide it in the USA these days, so don't even bother trying. Just wear your Yiddishkeit proudly and act according to its laws.
(16) glenda urmacher, June 18, 2013 3:36 PM
I wore my Mogen David bought in Israel 24/7, and would not take it off while visiting European countries with large Muslim populations. Not caring for Jews, or anything Jew is their problem , not mine.
I am an in your face Jew, spoke Yiddish in Europe, when all else fails, and haven't had a problem.
Fear is the problem.
Just remember who and where we came from; Einstein, Salk
Chagall, Gehry, Soutine, Rambam, King David, Solomon
These are not DNA and genes we hid!
(15) Anonymous, June 8, 2005 12:00 AM
This was truly an inspiring article. Jewish identity is not something to be trotted out on specific occasions, it is something that is constant, and the source of a Jew's identity, always. Of course, the specific externals are less important than what we really are, but as all Jews know, the externals influence the internals. So to emphasize something like kippah-wearing is much more important than it would appear.
Ma'aseh sheHayah: We once got home very late, and my six-year old son fell asleep in the car. We carried him inside and put him in his bed. No sooner than we had covered him with his blanket he awoke and asked me to go back to the car and get his kippah! I always take my kippah off before going to bed; I don't where my son learned to sleep with it, but I'm not questioning it!