The question began pulling at Jamie Hyams nearly 10 years ago when she was asked to read Torah at “a very liberal service” at Stanford Hillel.
“I put on a tallis, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with a kippah,” said Hyams, a textile artist and community programs director for the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay. “For me it has male gender associations. I used to live in Israel, and when you walk out on the street, nobody’s wearing a tallis, but easily a third of the population — men — are wearing kippot.”
After a year of soul-searching, study and research, Hyams developed a headcovering for non-Orthodox women: Velvet headbands with Hebrew inscriptions.
Orthodox women who are married cover their hair for reasons of modesty. But Hyams was more interested in creating a way for an alternative to kippot that would allow women to express their dedication to Judaism.
Hyams crafts her headbands, then pens or brushes on Hebrew phrases like “La’asot d’varai Torah,” or “to interact with words of Torah.”
“A lot of women like to wear this one to Torah study,” she said.
“I take one of four lines from ‘It’s a tree of life for those who hold fast to it.’ For a bat mitzvah, many people like, ‘from generation to generation we will tell of your greatness.’ That, and ‘May God shine His countenance upon you.'”
Two Judaica stores, Afikomen in Berkeley and bob and bob in Palo Alto, carry stock. Examples of the headbands can also be found on Hyam’s Web site: http://www.jfed.org/art/jh/
Although Hyams has never designed and marketed a product before now, she has created chuppahs and challah covers — items with a ritual history.
The headbands are her first attempt at creating a new ritual object.
“This is about answering a question in a way that is authentic for me. In some ways, I’ve stepped out on a limb. It works for me and I know there are others for whom this is an answer, too.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in history and spending 3-1/2 years at a women’s yeshiva in Israel, she landed back in the East Bay to work on a bachleor of fine arts degree at the California College of Arts and Crafts, majoring in textile design. She later earned a graduate degree in museum study.
Wearing a loose, hand-embroidered cotton smock, the soft-spoken Hyams looks like the artist she is. She sorts through a pile of headpieces with slim, sure hands.
“Sometimes I finish one and say, ‘yuck’ and throw it into the ugly pile,” she said. “My problem isn’t the design element. It’s that, if my hand is tense, the brush or pen doesn’t always flow.”
Having grown up in a Reform home, “strongly affiliated but with little textual knowledge,” Hyams has since worked at the Magnes Museum, Stanford Hillel and Lehrhaus Judaica, before moving to her current job at the federation’s Center for Jewish Living and Learning.
She was also chosen to be a participant in the Wexner Institute, a two-year course of study in Judaism for up-and-coming Jewish leaders, founded by The Limited’s Leslie Wexner. The students work with leading minds in the rabbinate, with the cost picked up by Wexner.
“If you want to continue after two years at your own expense, you can, and I did,” Hyams said. “I love to learn.”
The headgear idea first began to take shape last June during a Wexner retreat at Snowbird, Utah. “A lot of different rabbis of different stripes were there,” Hyams said. With, “a wealth of people” at her disposal, she sought opinions on her thought to create women’s headcoverings. Little had been written on the subject, she found.
She later consulted with Berkeley rabbis Eliezer Finkelman of Congregation Beth Israel and Stuart Kelman of Congregation Netivot Shalom, and Rabbi Kerry Olitzky of the Wexner Institute. The result: She wrote a scholarly paper on women’s headgear.
“I had various rabbis look over my paper,” she said. “I got a high caliber critique. That was important to me. I want to know factually I’m accurate.”
Her final bit of inspiration struck when “a girlfriend of mine took me into a boutique her 14-year-old daughter shops at. I saw all these wonderful velvet headbands.”
Hyams, 38, now leads the women’s study group at Temple Beth Torah in Fremont.
More important to her than whether sales soar is the discussion that inevitably develops whenever she shows the headbands to groups of women.
“Whether a woman is buying one for herself, her grandchildren, or a friend, she tends to be a woman who has struggled with this question. She is saying, ‘I am a committed Jew, I want something that shows I’m committed in a serious, thinking way.'”