A lot of Jewish people wear yarmulkes. Do they specifically have to wear them? Or may they substitute another head covering? Like, could they wear tuques (knit caps/watch caps/beanies/whatever), fezzes, kofias, or something else?
I have a business partner who is quite Orthodox. He sells industrial equipment, and wears a baseball cap when on business calls…
Any head covering will do.
Jack Abramoff was famous for wearing a several-sizes-too-big fedora.
My Orthodox friend tells me, any head covering will do. His wife wears a sheitl (wig) or snood, depending on the occasion. Many women wear a scarf or hat to cover their hair.
Yup, anything. My 6-year-old son has steadfastly refused to wear a yarmulka, he says they’re not comfortable, so we tell him to wear a baseball cap, and no one in school or synagogue says it’s not Jewish enough.
As a fedora wearer, I don’t think it looks several sizes too big. Fedoras do have a brim, and since they go all the way round (as opposed to the traditional American ball cap), and since a lot of hipsters prefer to wear stingy-brim pork pies and trilbies perhaps it just seems too large.
cmkeller: Not being Jewish and never having worn a yarmulke, they do look uncomfortable. Are they held on with bobby pins? (I haven’t looked.)
A little more on-topic, when is a non-Jew expected to wear a head covering in a Jewish setting?
Anything that covers the head, same as the answers above.
When?
It depends on the Jewish crowd you’re talking about, more than at what function. An Orthodox group generally won’t expect non-Jews to cover their heads at all at a religious function such as a wedding, because among the Orthodox, head-covering is something that one does that relates to one’s being Jewish, not to the setting one is in. On the other hand, IME, Jewish groups that only cover their heads at religious functions identify head-covering with being at a Jewish function, and as such, consider it polite for non-Jews to also cover their heads at such events. So if you aren’t Jewish, and going to be at anything held in a non-Orthodox synagogue, or any overtly religious event such as a wedding ceremony, funeral, or bris (made by non-Orthodox Jews), you’re probably going to be most appropriate wearing something on your head. It’s not that Orthodox Jews would be offended if you opt to cover your head at their stuff also, FWIW, it’s just unnecessary. (And you’d be wearing that yarmulke wrong anyway [insert old Happy Orthodox Man smiley here.])
To add to what GilaB said, virtually all of the Reform synagogues I’ve been to expect all males – Jewish and Gentile – to cover their heads as a sign of respect. OTOH, women are not expected to cover their heads, although virtually all female rabbis do. Again, this is Reform, so YMMV.
Robin
True. If anything, to hat-wearing me, it looks a touch small.
My Jewish acquaintances tell me a kind of unofficial uniform code has developed around religious wearing of the fedora. This stipulates a hat that’s black or dark blue, wide-brimmed, with a definite taper to the crown, and worn dead level on the head, with no tilting back or to either side. They tell me that not too many years ago, all that mattered was that you wore some kind of hat of a modest style.
When don’t you have to wear something? At home? At night at home? In bed? In the shower? In the pool? When no one’s looking?
As it was explained to me, the yarmulke represents the minimum acceptable head covering for a man. That’s from the Orthodox side of my family. Anything that covers at least that much skull is an acceptable substitute. I don’t know about other families, but the Jews in mine do use bobby pins and wear them pretty much all the time. I assume they would not be worn in the shower. While swimming, a standard swim cap would do.
Head covering rules for women are slightly different, but since you asked about the yarmulke I’ll still to just the man-rules.
When my paternal grandmother was buried it was an Orthodox ceremony. Everyone, without exception, was asked to wear head covering and the rabbi and funeral director had brought extra yarmulkes, being aware that half the family was gentile. My Catholic brother-in-law wore one with no one being at all unhappy, we women wore various hats and scarves, and my mother gave my father a tongue-lashing for forgetting something to cover his head - but then, daddy, despite being raised Orthodox, was non-Jewish enough to marry a Catholic girl.
It has been my experience that MOST people are willing to make reasonable accommodations for other cultural standards. My brother-in-law might have hesistated under other circumstances for fear of disrespect or unintentional offense, but since it was the rabbi offering the skullcap and bobby pins (and with a mention that if he preferred any hat covering at least that much head would be entirely acceptable, if that was BIL’s preference) the issue of offense by appropriating someone else’s headgear was not a problem.
I hasten to add that Judaism is a diverse group of folks with customs varying considerably from one sub-group to another. In other words - some Jews wouldn’t care if gentiles walked around bare-headed under any circumstances while, in other cases, they will asked gentiles to please adopt at least a minimal covering out of respect.
That YMMV - what’s that line? Ask four Rabbis, get five answers? It varies from congregation to congregation. Orthodox friends tell me a lot of “it depends” when I ask about specific traditions and customs.
Just a further note - I have also seen Jewish men wear a yarmulke under another hat, such as a fedora. I have heard that this is in part to accommodate gentile customs requiring removal of hats - the fedora could be doffed as appropriate (and clearly the man is taking off his hat) while the minimal covering is maintained. I can not, however, confirm or deny the veracity of that.
Orthodox men and yarmulkes: don’t wear one in the shower, the pool, or any other likely-to-float away situation. They are worn in private, and at night when one is up and about. Most don’t wear one to sleep, although I just had a conversation this weekend with a friend whose father, apparently, wears a ‘shluf [sleep] yarmulke’, which is a practice only in certain communities, and to my knowledge, I’ve never met someone who wore one before. The black-hat wearing crowd has varying customs around when/how to wear a black hat, and how big and angled it ought to be. The latest trend among teenagers is to wear them several sizes to small, propped up at a sharp angle on the head. (I am not from a ‘black hat’ background although there are a few hat-wearing members of my childhood synagogue, my husband owns one but almost never wears it, and many but not all of my male cousins and uncles do wear them.) The reasons for wearing a yarmulke and a black hat (Orthodox-speak for those fedoras) differ, and black hats aren’t worn all the time by anybody, and are a far more recent practice. Anybody wearing a black hat will have a yarmulke on underneath it for when they want to take off the hat.
Orthodox women: most cover their hair after marrying. (Women who have never been married do not cover their hair, including in synagogue, while married women who don’t cover their hair in most settings will cover it in synagogue and in overtly religious settings.) Customs vary as to what to cover with, how much hair is covered, and a bit in terms of where. Overall, married women cover their hair when they are likely to be seen by unrelated men; a minority, including me, do not cover their hair in their own homes even if there are unrelated men over. Most of the Orthodox women I know don’t cover their hair at home unless there’s company over. Some cover their hair at pretty much all times, other than in the shower, unless their husbands ask to see it, although my friends and family don’t fall into this category. Hair coverings include pretty much anything you can think of to cover hair. Personally, I tend to wear scarves in the summer, hats in the winter, and fancy hats to synagogue, although I have a (very nice, expensive) wig that I wear to formal events such as weddings, occasionally to synagogue, and career-related things (I am graduating from a master’s program shortly and am job-hunting.)
I teach at an Orthodox Jewish private school. At one of the continuing ed sessions held in the synagogue, I noticed the gentile men had been given yarmulkas to wear while in the building.
I haven’t seen many black hats since I left L.A., so I don’t remember them well. I don’t recall them being fedoras though. Are they fedoras? Or are they Homburgs or something else?
The picture of Jack Abramoff linked to above is (sadly, considering the circumstances) pretty representative of the style. I’m pretty sure that’s a fedora. After doing an image search for homburgs, that looks like more of an older man’s style of black hat to me, so perhaps the community you saw in LA was older, or a while ago.