Kippah
Uncut | Guest Chef Alex Sinclair | Sour Soup
The first exercise I gave my students at our recent residency in New York (part of the MFA in creative writing that I direct at JTS) was an “object exercise.” Each student had to choose an object that carries special meaning for them, and write about it. People chose all sorts of things, from an antique stolen from a Paris hotel room, to an empty test-tube from a failed genetic compatibility test. Alex wrote about his kippah (also known as a yarmulke). Something about his essay was different, and everyone in the room could sense it. There were many excellent and moving texts that used the object as a point of encounter with a parent, a partner, or a period of time, but Alex’s essay delved into something almost existential—an investigation of his own DNA. Three months later, Alex was detained by the police in a café in Israel because of that kippah. In an act that strains credulity, when the kippah was eventually returned to him, the “offending” piece had been cut out. The police may have vandalized Alex’s kippah, but miraculously, his essay remains intact.
Object Exercise: Alex Sinclair
My kippah is one of the first things you saw when you met me. It might be the reason we connected so quickly, bonding over shared understandings about Israel, Palestine, the future of the Jewish people and the Middle East; or it might be the reason you’ve been avoiding me, thin smiles barely disguising your suspicion and disdain.
Or you might have no idea what on earth I’m talking about.
For the past fifteen years or so, I’ve worn a kippah embroidered with the flags of both Israel and Palestine. My kippah has led me into fascinating and hopeful conversations, it has moved people to the point of tears, and it has almost got me beaten up. It’s got me kicked out of Camp Ramah in America, it’s got me funny looks on the train in Israel, and it’s got me a “thank you on behalf of all us” from a Palestinian cashier at my local supermarket.
There are three broad categories of response that I get:
1. Are you out of your mind? / It’s a chillul hashem / Those people all want to kill us.
2. Kol hakavod / Can I take a photo of your head to share with my friend? / That’s amazing.
3. What is that other flag, is it Costa Rica?
Walking around with a kippah on is not an easy thing to do, wherever you are. In the Diaspora, it marks you as a Jew from fifty yards away, which was (for me, at least) uncomfortable before October 7th and is perhaps verging on reckless these days. In Israel, it marks you as the member of a certain political and religious camp: right-wing, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian, Orthodox fundamentalist, and non-egalitarian, all of which are thesaurus.com antonyms for who I actually am. I can’t bear the pigeon-hole that other Israelis put me into when they see me wearing a regular kippah. Hence this one. I’m not really like you, it says. Yes, I keep shabbat, I say brachot sometimes, I do a bunch of the same things that you do, but don’t be fooled. Don’t include me in your revolting political agendas. Don’t assume that I believe in the same medieval fundamentalist God that you believe in. Don’t coopt me into your unenlightened version of Judaism.
I guess that’s a lot for a piece of cloth to convey.
Why I wear it in the first place is a complicated question, going back to when I started doing so in my twenties. I should probably “take it off,” but there’s something about it that I still like. It’s light as a feather but it weighs heavily on me, and that’s not always a bad thing. “Cover your head so that the fear of Heaven may be upon you,” it says in the Talmud. “The way of the wise is to be reverent and modest,” says Rambam. I don’t really believe in Heaven, and reverence is not really my strong point, but still, wearing a kippah does something to me, and for me. It’s what the theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith terms a “religious symbol,” an otherwise arbitrary object that we invest with meaning and that thereafter acts back on us as if part of objective reality.
It’s always there. A teeny-tiny percentage of my brain is always conscious of its presence. I can’t claim that it stops me from shouting go fuck yourself to the driver who cuts in front of me, or that it makes me stop and open the door for the little old lady, or that it develops in me an ongoing radical amazement about nature’s miracles. There’s little empirical evidence that it has any effect on those aspects of my daily life. Especially the go fuck yourself thing. Well, what do you want me to do? Have you seen those Israeli drivers?
It’s a teeny-tiny percentage, but it’s non-zero. A non-zero, teeny-tiny, constant reminder of who I am, where I come from, what my ideals should be. A non-zero, teeny-tiny, constant reminder that I’m a Jew, that I am part of a people who have seen themselves as having a role in this world, that I stand on a foundation of an incredible history, that I should try to live up to that history, to its ideas, to its vision.
I guess that’s also a lot for a piece of cloth to convey.
And you know what? Sometimes it does make me stop and open the door for the little old lady.
Gratitude for sharing Alex's essay. I rarely know the person to whom such reprehensible actions happen. I hope more and more people get to see Alex for the principled and complex person that he is, that we should all be.
I got to know Alex as a writer. I loved his two novels, Enemy of the People and Everybody's Hero. They both were books that made me think and I really like that. I read a lot. I am the National Chair of Hadassah Book Clubs, meaning I connect thousands of readers with authors——to meet on-line or in person. Just being exposed to his writing and sharing emails I consider him a friend who I connect with. I was shocked and saddened to read about this incident when reported by Ittay Flescher, another writer I have followed. And now here it is on your substack, Etgar. And so I am glad that if such an incident happened it happened to Alex, because as a writer and a friend of writers, Alex could speak eloquently and so could his friends. Many all over the world now know what happened, and can confront the challenges of those who strive for peace. Thank God for all you writers.