Yup, all of them exceot you and me.

Realistically, its more that people are inherently xenophobic and have a tendency to see the world in black and white. Its just easier that way. We are all capable of thinking rationally about things, but we rarely do. I’m sure that if I tried to nail down a rosh yeshiva’s opinion on leather yarmulkas or other signifiers, he would tell me its about identification – they want their students to identify with the yeshivishe world, so they have to wear the uniform. But that’s not how it comes across when they talk to students, and that’s not how people tend to think. And of course, it goes the other way too, when modern people think that a hat means something.

And btw the potential rabbi could have been given the hat at their bar mitzva and never took it off!

I straddle the line as I am certainly the yeshivishe type of Rabbi but I go hatless…

Someone says/asks- if ppl with hats should be considered

The comment bothered me but I am happy she made it, the Rabbi chimed in and said just bc someone at some point in their education picked up a hat does not mean we should hold it against them

I don’t recall if he added what is “wrong” with a hat

Thanks for your contribution and come back soon!

At our pro-Israel demos, the kippot most commonly worn are knit. But that is a conscious outward sign of affiliation and membership in a group – the branches of Jewry that are less ‘separate from the nation’ are less likely to wear such things. The people who wear knit kippot wear them tag & nacht…….
Visible tzitzit are not at all common, black hats are rare, sheitlech and gartelen hob ich nit gesehn.

The point is, a knit kippah to me says ‘Jew’. Any other form of kippah says ‘Jewish’.

Exactly. Unfortunatly, many people only see the external signifiers, and think that those signifiers are an intrinsic part of, or worse, the cause of, affiliation to a particular school of thought. And that by supressing and demonizing the signifier, they can keep their communities from what they reagrd as a deviant philosophy.

I hear that the Sneetches are different than OJ becuase they are all essentially the same, except for the stars. Signifiers like yarmulka type really do reflect differences in hashkafa. This is silly, though, not because the differences aren’t there, but because the hashkafic differences are implied to be intrinisic to the material. As if leather is somehow a less valid material from which to make yarmulkas (themselves a recent invention), and wearing a leather yarmulka makes someone modern. That is, the not only will a modern perosn tend to wear a leather yarmulka, but wearing a leather yarmulka will in itself make a guy attending a yeshivish school modern.

Or the corallary, that velvet is a holier material and wearing a velvet yarmulka makes the person more religious.

Which is, as I keep saying, silly.