The Jew's Hat

We all know what the 'kippah' is — what we put on our heads in the synagogue, and what many Jews hold should never be taken off the head by the men of our people. The word comes from Hebrew and means the dome, 'kubbe' in Turkish. In the second book of the Torah, in Shemot, we see that the Kohen Gadol must cover his head. It is believed that the first man to cover his head was the sage Rav Nahman ben Yitzhak of Babel (Babylon). The Talmud tells us that the kippah reminds us that God is the highest authority above us. In the Middle Ages some Jews said there was no obligation to put a hat on the head. On the contrary, in the Shulchan Aruch, Yosef Karo says that no Jew may walk more than two metres without a hat.

But again in the same period of the Middle Ages, some European countries such as France and Italy decided to oblige the Jew to wear a hat shaped like a cauldron lid with a fairly tall peak. In 1215 Pope Innocent III decided that Jews had to wear this hat so that there would be no mixing with Catholic Christians, that they would not intermarry, and more than that, to humiliate the Jew. Although this law came out in the 13th century, the use of the conical hat was seen more and more in the 15th and 16th centuries, in the Renaissance, when Europe emptied of Jews after the expulsions. This hat became a mark, symbolizing the evil Jew who kidnaps children to make matzah with their blood. The historian Naomi Lubrich, in her study entitled 'Judenhut und Zauberhut', 'Jewish Hat and Sorcerer's Hat', says that Europeans reached the conclusion that Jews and sorcerers have dealings with the devil.

This hat, which was meant to expel the Jews from national society to prevent mixed relations, was for the rabbis the salvation that prevented those relations. So the Jews did not take this obligation as a humiliation; they appropriated it in order to stay away from the Christians by covering their heads, and later the kippah, which at first was not a ritual object, slowly became part of the Jew's religious ritual. The humiliation the Christians expected became a pride for the Jews. Instead of bowing to the orders of the rulers, they said they bow to the orders of God.

The Jew, who in world history was seen as a dark, evil and lowly figure, always held his head high and was proud to be a Jew.