Making Cover

The notion of creating my own minyan, one which might encompass the breadth of the Jewish community, has become something of an obsessionlately. The kippot (plural of kippah (also known as yarmulke), the ritual Jewish headcovering) are slowly piling up …

For now, this has become a Project, and there’s been plenty of research to compete. As a Reform Jew, my relationship to the tradition of headcoverings is not particularly strong — the men of my family’s synagogues sometimes wore kippot in synagogue. Yet my reading and research leaves me keenly aware of the politcs of Jewish headcoverings in our time.

So though I’ve started with those familiar to most of us (the simple black kippah, knitted or crocheted), at some point in the foreseeable future, there will be a sizeable assortment of Jewish headcoverings, that I hope will express the remarkable diversity of the Jewish community — of the present and the past, male and female, straight and gay, traditional and progressive, serious and playful … But perhaps even more importantly, these headcoverings are an opportunity to create a coherent community of Jews – at least within the reach of my hands and their work – one which exists in spite of the doctrinal and political differences that have challenged the community in so many ways of late. At least that’s the idea.

[And ... in spite of fits and starts, assurances and delays, we were visited by a couple of large and noisy cranes yesterday, and an impressive team of AC professionals, who have finally installed new central air conditioning / air cleaning / humidifying-dehumidifying / heat blowing system. Finally.]