Kiss This, Not That

Are you a kipah-kisser?

We’ve all seen it countless times. You’re wearing a kipah in temple—it falls off your head and onto the floor. You bend over, pick it up, give it a little kiss, and replace it on your head.

Please, in the name of everything that is holy in this world, stop kissing your kipah.

In fact, that’s precisely why you should stop—because we save that specific action only for items that we consider holy. And within the Jewish tradition, that’s usually limited to anything that contains the printed name of God, like a Siddur or Prayer Book.

Where did this strange custom of kissing a head covering come from?

I would assume it gets passed around by well-meaning Hebrew school teachers who are making the effort to instill a sense of respect in their students. I suppose the reasoning is that when kids come into the synagogue building, they put on a kipah—which then takes on the aspect of a ritual or holy item.

But it’s not even close.

A kipah (sometimes called a yarmulke—there, that really cleared it up) is nothing more than something used to cover your head. Period. Jews are instructed to keep their heads covered as a sign of respect—to symbolize that as important as we think we are, there is always something even more powerful and in control over us. So whereas the general public is trained to remove their hats as a sign of respect, we Jews do the exact opposite.

Kipot come in many forms—whether it’s the colorful satin ones that you can use as bar mitzvah trading cards (“Look, I got Sidney Goldblatt, November 1972!”), or the old standby black ones. But those are just provided for people’s convenience. Any hat would do—whether it’s a fedora, baseball cap, or sombrero (go ahead, I dare you). Could you imagine how silly it would be for a kid to drop his baseball cap in temple, and then kiss it before putting it back on his head?

But the bigger issue is that when we treat everything as holy, then really nothing is. It’s as if we’re putting a ratty shmata on the same spiritual plane as the Torah. Reserving our reverence exclusively for ritual items that contain the name of God helps us put our actions and thoughts into a larger context.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below…