Know Below Whom You Stand

My significant other finally read my blog and has registered a complaint that I haven't written anything. I walked myself into this conundrum. So as my growing anxiety over gradschool mounts, I suppose I should give the writing muscles a flex. Especially since rumor has it, in a profession where our goal is to help people be compassionate, engaged humans, and Jewish humans, several of our teachers are said to be brutal dick heads if you don't live up to their standards. To put it succinctly.

The word Yarmulke is said to be a composite of Aramaic “yari malke” or fear of King, i.e. G-d. It's not really the Almighty filling me with fear these days. In my personal past, the tiny circular hat-like thing was a celebration of Heschel's sacred time. It would be donned for holidays or Jewish learning activities. In Israel I found it less necessary for me to demarcate Jewish time or space, being surrounded by it on all sides.

Coming 'home' has given me a glimpse into Moshe's psyche when he came down with the Tablets pt. 1 and saw Mooby the Golden Calf. It started way before my return with the desecration of cemeteries, a verbal assault on my very American rabbi in our Nation's Capital. It continued with a misguided Nazi salute from a family member and a brief incident which made a Jewish summer camp's security updates seem so much more fitting. Particularly the discouragement of public displays of Jew. But the same way I would get permission from my companions in Jerusalem: since having a vagina and wearing a kippah could bring unwanted aggressions, I cannot get consent from 400 children on essentially and island. Begrudging silence.

So on the sorta island, I went from forgetting to take off my sorta hat between activities, to putting it on first thing in the morning. Emboldened by this article:

Wearing a Kippah For Solidarity and Visibility

So while exploring ritual garments in my ''Suiting Up'' activity, a young woman, almost bat mitzvah age, asked me why I wore this tiny hat all the time. I told her my old reasons, the ones that I most identify with like sacred time. Then I said that there seems to be a lot of fighting in the world and I think it's important to be visibly Jewish right now. In a shocking turn of events, she hugged me.

And what once was a story of defensive, and aggressive beanie-wearing, turns into a moment of human connection. And hopefully a flame of why I'm doing what I'm doing that even the least compassionate of teachers, or world events, can never douse.