By now you may have noticed that I don’t wear a traditional kippah. You may have also noticed that I do wear a headband/headscarf or a hat. Sometimes the headscarves are small, dark, and hard to see, other times they are colorful, large, and elaborate. The custom of a kippah is just that, a minhag, a custom. There is no commandment in Torah to wear a head-covering, though you can find a Talmudic story about a young boy covering his head as a way to remind himself of God’s presence. Today, the kippah signals Jewish identity, and it remains, for some, a reminder of God’s presence in this world. Hundreds of years after the custom began for people to wear a head-covering in prayer, and later at all times, one of our Law Codes, the Shulchan Aruch (16th c.), codified that you should not walk bare-headed for more than a few meters! Okay, but what does it mean to cover our head? How much of our head should be covered? What’s the smallest thing you can wear, what’s the typical … [Read more...]
“Do You Hear That?”
Long ago there was a young man traveling from village to village. There was a day when this young man had arrived in a particular village, not far from his own. The village had a watchtower, high up above the other buildings, and a watchman who sat and waited, looking here and there at all times. If the watchman ever saw smoke or a fire, he immediately sounded the alarm by blowing into his horn. Just as the young man approached this particular village a horn sound throughout the town – a fire had begun in one of the village homes! The horn sounded from the watchtower and the fire was put out. The young man was fascinated, what a great solution! He was going to bring this back to his own village! The next day, the young man headed back to his own village with a new horn in hand. He called all the villagers together and told them to no longer fear the fire, for he had a solution. The young man set fire to a small hut near the crowd, and as the fire spread he told the people … [Read more...]
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