The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Vayetzei
Genesis 28:10-32:3
When I was a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, we often kvetched that one could spend six years in rabbinical school and still not know why Jews light candles on Shabbat or why we wear kippahs. This is not because JTS failed to provide us with a foundational education. Instead, the origins of some beloved customs, which are practiced by observant Jews without question, are simply not widely known.
The mystery around the origin of the kippah even inspired a well-known (by some) joke about this week’s Torah portion, Vayetzei. The reading begins by describing Jacob’s flight from home after deceiving his father Isaac and stealing Esau’s blessing.
“How do we know that Jacob wore a yarmulke?” the joke goes. “The Torah says, ‘And Jacob went forth from Be’er Sheva.’ Do you think his mother Rebecca would let him go out without a hat?”
For centuries rabbis have debated whether Jews are obligated to cover their heads; hats seem to have been part of Jewish culture since antiquity. The Talmud famously teaches that Rav Huna ben Joshua wouldn’t walk four amot (about seven feet) without covering his head — a sign, he believed, that the Divine Presence rested above him.
For much of Jewish history, though, our relationship with hats has been ambivalent. In medieval Europe, dress and head coverings were tied to social status and legally defined roles. Nobility, knights and clerics had distinctive garments and headwear. Jews — who often occupied a liminal social status — were also required by law to wear hats that marked their peculiar role as outsiders.
In medieval manuscripts and art, Jews are easily identified by the pileus cornutus, a pointed, often conical hat that may have originated in Jewish communities of Greece, Babylonia or Rome. While scholars debate whether the hat initially emerged organically within the Jewish community, the laws that mandated it transformed it into a mark of shame. That humiliation was compounded when the hat became a tool for visual ridicule in Christian art and in public punishment rituals.
In such art, the hat was often associated with those who tormented Jesus: the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas the priest and the Roman centurion who pierced Jesus on the cross are sometimes depicted wearing the pointed hat. Because it was shameful to be associated with Jews, other marginalized figures in the Holy Roman Empire — heretics, criminals, even people with dwarfism — were also sometimes forced to wear it.
Perhaps the most infamous outsiders forced to wear the Jews’ Hat were those accused of sorcery. Punishment for such offenses often included donning the Judenhut (German for “Jews’ hat,” marking the alleged practitioner as spiritually deviant and permanently outside the boundaries of Christian society. This is why popular culture so often depicts wizards and witches with features shaped by anti-Jewish caricature: pointed noses, distorted faces and the iconic conical hat.
That legacy of othering still leaves its mark on popular culture. Over the past week, millions flocked to movie theaters for part two of “Wicked,” Stephen Schwartz’s musical-turned-blockbuster.
From birth, Elphaba — the so-called Wicked Witch of the West — is marked as different. Her green skin and pointed hat set her apart. The films trace her transformation as she struggles to reconcile the stigma society places on her with the truth she knows about herself. Ultimately, she finds strength by embracing her differences. “I’m through accepting limits,” she sings, “’cause someone says they’re so.”
In interviews, Schwartz himself has noted that the story has particular resonance for Jews: Musicals often center on outsiders striving to belong, and “Wicked,” while not overtly Jewish, speaks to that experience. Often, that pathway to acceptance hinges on transforming the biases of others into a source of strength. That certainly has been the journey of the Jewish people — and of the kippah.
In the 19th century, during the period of Jewish emancipation, many Jews abandoned ritual head coverings as they sought acceptance in broader Western society. Well into the 20th century, it was not uncommon even for Orthodox Jews to limit wearing head coverings to moments of prayer and study — occasions when the codes of Jewish law require them.
This began to change in the 1960s. Inspired by the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement encouraged once-marginalized groups to embrace cultural identities, Jews began seeking outward ways to display Jewish pride. Kippot began appearing not just in synagogues or at religious gatherings, but also on the heads of college students as a visible marker of ethnic and religious solidarity. As the years progressed, what had once been a stigmatized brand meant to humiliate became a symbol of dignity and connection.
Today, as we continue to grapple with the challenges of Jewish identity and an ever-increasing climate of anti-Jewish attitudes, the kippah stands as a powerful reminder: No matter what the world demands of us, we affirm our identity and will not hide who we are.