Culture, Religion

Out here on the fringes, we wear the fringe

by David A.M. Wilensky of the Reform Shuckle and the RJ blog.
When the early Reform Jews of Germany set out to begin their Jewish Reformation, one of the first “arcane rituals” they tossed out was the practice wearing talit. They didn’t just stop a talit katan during the day, but the ceased to wear a talit gadol when they prayed. Tzitzit, in essence, left their lives completely.
The symbolism here is not lost on me. Tzitzit are a meta-mitzvah. The Torah tells us, once in Bamidbar and once in D’varim, to affix fringes to our four-cornered garments. The reason? We should see these fringes and be reminded of all of the other mitzvot that we must follow. And so, as the Reform Jews began their trek into the world of autonomy, abandoning mitzvot left and right, they saw fit to discard the most mitzvah-y of all mitzvot, the mitvah that reminds of all the other mitzvot.
I, however, wear tzitzit. And I am a Reform Jew.
I run, these days, in two Jewish circles. On the one hand, I write for RJ.org, the official blog of the Reform movement and I’ve spent the last two summers and will spend the next one working at a Reform summer camp. On the other hand, I run in the pluralist, trans-, multi-, post- and non-denominational Jewish, working for LimmudNY and exploring groups such as my usual prayer circle, the non-denominational Chavurat Lamdeinu and the Upper West Side’s Kol Zimrah.
And in both of these circles, I see tzitzit in increasingly shocking numbers.
David Singer, a blogger and friend of mine, once incite a whole slew of participants at a Reform summer camp to make their own tzitzit, charging them with the responsibility of making choices as Reform Jews, even if the choices aren’t the most popular choices within the movement. A few months later, I was in Israel and donned my first talit katan. I haven’t stopped since. A few months after that, I was a participant of NFTY’s nation biennial convention. There, I counted, amongst over a thousand Reform high school students, no less than fifteen wearing tzitzit. Two of them were girls. At that convention, NFTY elected its first tzitzit-wearing president.
And in the non-denominational world, tzitzit seem to have caught on as well. In the halachically liberal worlds of Reform and non-denominational Judaism, choices are made all the time. We must confront the fact that we have decided to find ourselves bound by only some of the mitzvot. That fact is one of the central struggles of my life.
Which brings us to the reasons I’ve been wearing tzitzit every day for nearly two and a half years. The first brings us full circle to the idea of tzitzit as the meta-mitzvah. I once declared that tzitzit are my anti-asshole fringes. I can be a mean person. I often say things without considering how they will impact the people around me. To that end, I think that on my best days, tzitzit keep the mitzvot about how to construct interpersonal relationships in the front of my mind. On my most thoughtful days, tzitzit encourage me to confront the challenging fact that I see myself as partially bound by mitzvot and to continue considering what that means and what its implications are.
On my most provocative, angry days, I revel in the act of putting on a garment that is a giant thumbed nose in the face of the Reform establishment that I’m still struggling to have a relationship with. I like being asked about my tzitzit, which happens to me daily, no matter where I go or who I’m around. I like giving liberal Jews something chew on. Many have never considered the idea that liberal Jews might wear tzitzit at all.
And on my worst days I worry that I’m wearing them only to get a rise out of people or only to let people know that I’m Jewish, reasons I see as superficial and false to the very notion of tzitzit.
I have been fascinated to bear witness to the slow rise in wearing tzitzit that both the Reform and non-denominational worlds have experienced in recent years.
But I’ll take my love affair with the fringe a step further: This obsession with kipot has got to end. The idea that keeping your head covered is universal amongst Jews and a normative sign of respect toward God is peculiar to European Jewry. Syrian, African, and even the Israeli communities late antiquity did not see keeping the head covered as normative. The Talmud itself commends the practice as an outward sign of piety, but does not require the practice.
Conversely, tzitzit are universal amongst Jews. All Jewish communities saw tzitzit as normative from antiquity and all understood and continue to understand their meaning in the same way. While kipot are some nebulous sign of respect for God, tzitzit remind us to follow God’s law and remind us of our connection to our desert-wandering ancestors who first donned them.

31 thoughts on “Out here on the fringes, we wear the fringe

  1. B.BarNavi, I’m not objecting to kipot from an aesthetic perspective (though some kipot do look ridiculous). Telling me that some other sort of hat would suffice is beside the point. I don’t want to cover my head as some sort of outward sign of piety, no matter what the damn hat looks like.

  2. David,
    You’re missing a MAJOR point on the difference between a yarmulke and tzitzis. Yes, they are both ‘normative’ and ‘accepted’ ways of projecting faith, but more than that, for Jews, one is a mitzvah and one is not. Done. It might not matter to you, I don’t know, since you affiliate with the reform movement, but the reason that tzitzis are universal Jewish worldwide is because it is a mitzvah. A yarmulke is a minhag.
    You said “I don’t want to cover my head as some sort of outward sign of piety, no matter what the damn hat looks like,” but why? What’s interesting to me is that you focus on kippos when there are so many minhagim that are not universally practiced and utilized to show “outward piousness” Why are you harping on the yarmulke? Do you reject bowing in prayer and covering your eyes for the shema?
    I’m not saying this of you, personally, but I’ve encountered tzitzis wearing reform and non-denom Jews who are completely m’halel shabbos (desecrating shabbos) or eat treif and keep their tzitzis on and out while doing so–this is incredibly problematic. I’ve known ‘frum’ people who keep up the costume and don’t have the faith any more, and even they remove their tzitzis before breaking shabbos or eating treif.
    Piety is not about what clothes you wear in public, but about how you act in public. If a yarmulke helps someone remember to eat kosher food or give tzedakah or just be a mensch, what’s the big deal? We have a hiyuv (obligation) to wear tzitzis, but those who wear them and then break the commandments intentionally that they represent, that I don’t get–again, I’m not saying this is you.
    Thanks for sharing the post, I enjoyed reading it. If you like tzitzis you should try tefillin, that’ll give your reform communities a jump in the chest.

  3. By the way, Jews cover their heads to remind them to have fear of heaven, not as a sign of outward piety- at least not necessarily. I don’t dig kippot much either, but I have to say, it’s way easier to put on tefillin over a kippah than over a beret.

  4. David writes:Conversely, tzitzit are universal amongst Jews.
    Head covering may not have been entirely normative in Talmudic times – but that hardly makes it a modern “obsession.” I wear a Kippah. But I take it off, or wear a hat, in situations outside of Israel where I feel less than comfortable. Why is wearing a Kippah seen by you as “obsessive?”
    And Tzitizit customs vary and are far from “universal”.
    Many only fulfill the Mitzvah of Tallit after marriage. For some it is at the age of Miztvot. For others children wear a Tallit.
    And the Torah does not even require that one wear either a Tallit or a Tallit katan. One only is obligated if wearing a 4 corner garment. Tziztit became normative in order to allow one to fulfill the otherwise non-obligatory Mitzvah.
    Some have Tchelet-most do not.
    Most women do not wear Tzitzit-some do.
    You seem to scoff at the notion that the head was covered in public in Talmudic times. Yet, in long ago days some wore a Tallit all day, and most did not. The Tallit Katan does not seem to have been universal in all times.
    So why is head covering a modern obsession and Tzitzit universal?

  5. Yehuda:
    You said:
    “You’re missing a MAJOR point on the difference between a yarmulke and tzitzis. Yes, they are both ‘normative’ and ‘accepted’ ways of projecting faith, but more than that, for Jews, one is a mitzvah and one is not. Done. It might not matter to you, I don’t know, since you affiliate with the reform movement, but the reason that tzitzis are universal Jewish worldwide is because it is a mitzvah. A yarmulke is a minhag.”
    I didn’t address that, but I know that and it does matter to me. Let us not assume that Reform Jews have no regard for and no interest in mitzvot.
    You also said:
    “What’s interesting to me is that you focus on kippos when there are so many minhagim that are not universally practiced and utilized to show “outward piousness” Why are you harping on the yarmulke? Do you reject bowing in prayer and covering your eyes for the shema?”
    I don’t reject those things. (I actually do those things!) And I don’t reject kipot completely. The reason I bring up kipot in this post is that I’m talking about two Jewish customs (one traditional and one legal) that both serve partially to identify one outwardly without have to take any actual action to identify yourself. I also think of them together because it’s the way other’s bring it up to me. People always ask me “Why tzitzit, but no kipah?”
    You further said:
    “Piety is not about what clothes you wear in public, but about how you act in public. If a yarmulke helps someone remember to eat kosher food or give tzedakah or just be a mensch, what’s the big deal?”
    What I don’t get is using kipot as a tool for that. If you need to wear something to be reminded of those things, why not wear tzitzit? That is their express purpose.
    And:
    “If you like tzitzis you should try tefillin, that’ll give your reform communities a jump in the chest.”
    Tried it. Didn’t like it. But it does put a smile on my face to see the odd Reform Jew wearing tefilin!

  6. Meir Enayim:
    You said:
    “Why is wearing a Kippah seen by you as ‘obsessive?'”
    It’s not the act of wearing them that is obsessive. It is the fact that upon entering a synagogue I’m often asked to put one on. It’s that you can tell, at least in Israel, someone’s sect by what’s on his head. It’s the fact that I can’t wander around with tzitzit on without someone immediately wondering where my kipah is. And it’s the fact that through our insistence on it, it’s become an outsider’s shorthand for Jews.
    You also said:
    “And Tzitizit customs vary and are far from ‘universal.’ Many only fulfill the Mitzvah of Tallit after marriage. For some it is at the age of Miztvot. For others children wear a Tallit.”
    But, regardless of when we begin wearing them, it was normative (pre-Reform) to do so beginning at some point in one’s life.
    You further said:
    “And the Torah does not even require that one wear either a Tallit or a Tallit katan.”
    And we lose so much in not wearing them! As noted, they are a wonderful meta-mitzvah!
    And:
    “So why is head covering a modern obsession and Tzitzit universal?”
    Perhaps I mis-wrote. Tzitzit have a universally-recognized meaning and a legal basis. Head covering does not. All communities would regard the laws surrounding tzitzit similarly. Not so for covering one’s head.

  7. “Jews cover their heads to remind them to have fear of heaven, not as a sign of outward piety.”
    Statements like this remind me of why it’s important to distinguish between the ostensible origin of a ritual and the current reason for a ritual. I’m going to go ahead and make the broad (over)generalization that Jews who wear a kipa today do so for a couple of connected reasons: 1)tradition and 2)it’s what you do if you want to send a message to the world that you’re (some kind of) frum. Other reasons are, for the most part, secondary.

  8. yehuda writes:
    I’m not saying this of you, personally, but I’ve encountered tzitzis wearing reform and non-denom Jews who are completely m’halel shabbos (desecrating shabbos) or eat treif and keep their tzitzis on and out while doing so–this is incredibly problematic.
    Is it problematic for Sephardim to wear tzitzit while eating kitniyot during Pesach?
    If these Jews hold different stances on Shabbat and kashrut, such that whatever they’re doing isn’t prohibited in their view, then engaging in these non-prohibited actions while wearing tzitzit does not involve any hypocrisy or internal contradiction.

  9. “It is the fact that upon entering a synagogue I’m often asked to put one on.”
    You can at the VERY LEAST respect Minhag haMaqom, right? You know that minhag is a more powerful force than halakha, and normative practices, no matter how tenuously based in halakha, count as binding. Despite your distaste for wearing kippot or any head covering, at least respect the community’s desire that everyone (even non-Jews) should wear one in a holy space during prayer.

  10. B.BarNavi wrote:
    Despite your distaste for wearing kippot or any head covering, at least respect the community’s desire that everyone (even non-Jews) should wear one in a holy space during prayer.
    And by “everyone (even non-Jews)” they often (though not always) mean “men”.

  11. BZ, well said as usual on both counts.
    B.BarNavi, I don’t like being asked to put one on, but in (non-Reform) communities where I’m asked to put one on, I do so.
    And yeah, BZ, nothing pisses me off more than being asked, in an ostensibly egal community, to put on a kipah. Because I’ve never ever in my life seen a woman asked to do so.

  12. As an aside:
    I just walked into the dorm room of my next door neighbor. Our friend, Josh, was over. Josh, a normally entirely non-religious Jew, was wearing a garish American flag kipah.
    “Josh,” I said. “Do you wear a kipah now?”
    “Ummm. When I want to.”
    “OK.”

  13. BZ-
    I think the kitniyos example is poor, because that is a minhag, not a halakhah. But, your point that different groups of Jews define for themselves what shabbos observance is is well taken. Very astute.

  14. David – you reply: It’s the fact that I can’t wander around with tzitzit on without someone immediately wondering where my kipah is.
    I wish to say most clearly that one is not necessarily dependent on the other. But since almost all who wear Tzizit also wear a Kippah – you ought not be surprised.
    If someone were to only put Tefilin on their arm – would it not be expected that people would ask why?
    If one were to refrain from drinking on Yom Kippur but not eating – would it not arouse curiosity?
    Maybe it is those very comments you are intentionally inviting?
    I recall speaking to a group of rabbinical students at HUC in Jerusalem. One student with both a Kippah and Tzizit took out a Big Mac (with cheese he later told me) and proceeded to eat it.
    At the time I thought it strange.
    These days I understand that one may perform one Mitzvah (or Jewish act) which is personally meaningful and ignore others.

  15. yehuda, by everyone’s admission here, any minhag practiced as widely as the practice of not eating kitniyot during Pesach carries the weight of law in Ashkenazi communities.
    Meir Eynaim:
    You said: “you ought not be surprised.” And I am not. Yet, it does get obnoxious from time to time.
    “If someone were to only put Tefilin on their arm – would it not be expected that people would ask why?
    If one were to refrain from drinking on Yom Kippur but not eating – would it not arouse curiosity?”
    These analogies don’t quite work. First of all, there is no minhag amongst these analogies, while we all agree that wearing kipot is a minhag, not law. These customs also detail individual laws. The rule on Yim Kipur is that one should not consume, not two separate laws that one should not eat and another law that one should not drink. And no one is arguing that there is one obligation to put tefilin on your head and another law regarding tefilin on the arm.
    What we are talking about are two completely unrelated customs, one halachic, one customary.
    “Maybe it is those very comments you are intentionally inviting?”
    Somedays I like answering the questions. Some days I just wanna go about my day.

  16. You throw around the terms “minhag,” “custom,” “the rule” and “Mitzvah” with too much ease and from a Reform perspective (not that there is anything wrong with that- as Seinfeld once said).
    Do not forget that many sources hold “Minhag K’Din.” So it is not so clear where custom becomes law. You can call something “only custom” but it may take on the force of law after long practice.
    One could assert that one is only obligated to light one candle on each night of Hannukah. But few of us would do anything but light an additional one each night. Custom has become law.
    You write: The rule on Yim Kipur is that one should not consume, not two separate laws that one should not eat and another law that one should not drink. And no one is arguing that there is one obligation to put tefilin on your head and another law regarding tefilin on the arm.
    Why would you say that no one is arguing that arm and head are two separate Mitzvot. Indeed, since many see them as such, we have 2 separate brachot.
    Not eating, and not drinking, on Yom Kippur are also seen as separate prohibitions.
    I respect your struggle -but be careful with your terms and your assumptions.

  17. What’s wrong with a Reform Jew using those terms? I see that you say there’s nothing wrong with it, but your previous phrasing (“with too much ease”) tells me you feel otherwise.
    Many sources do hold that minhag k’din. And that’s fine. And I accept that such is the case. But surely we can recognize a difference between law and minhag that has become like law.
    Though no one is arguing that there are two separate laws regarding tefilin (one for the arm and one for the head), I was merely pointing it out to show that the analogy was false.

  18. Interestingly enough, the Rambam does count the head and hand tefillin as separate mitzvot (they are number 12 and 13 of the positive commandments. To my recollection, most if not all of the other Sifrei mitzvot count them separately as well.

  19. I find much of the fine hashing of halakha personally meaningful and interesting, yet simultaneously irrelevant. I have the freedom by the power invested in me by the Creator to have a dynamic conversation with Said Bearded Dude in the Clouds and determine which halakha is best and binding for me, and which minhag are mine.
    Somewhere in here, that should be mentioned.

  20. The Beit Yosef (which I follow) says we should only make one brakha on tefillin, and furthermore, any interruption between putting on the shel-yad and shel-rosh is assur. (Al mitzvat tefillin is ONLY said when there is an interruption – otherwise it is levatala.) Now, is this minhag or halakha? One one hand, making one or two brakhot is a variance in custom. OTOH, for those who make only one brakha, there is an element of law for those who transgress the custom.
    Now you see why you can’t make a clear distinction between minhag and halakha?

  21. David asks:What’s wrong with a Reform Jew using those terms?
    There is nothing at all wrong with a Reform Jew, or anyone from any denomination, using the term.
    But sometimes we use terms and make the assumption that we all mean the same thing.
    I spoke with a group of 5 HUC students and said that I presume that we can all agree that when we use the term “Sefer Torah” it is hand written on Klaf. If printed on paper then it is,by definition, a Humash. We may disagree as to whether one can fulfill the obligation of Torah reading from a paper scroll – but we can all agree on the difference.
    I, it turned out, was incorrect in my assumption. All five charged that I was caught up in my “halachic/traditional world”
    The same discussion occurred when an HUC student suggested wearing rubber Teffilin since he was a vegetarian. I had no objection to doing so. Let each act according to his/her belief. But they are NOT Teffilin if not made of leather, square, black,etc. They would be symbolic of Teffilin.
    My own cousin had an expensive “Mezzuzah.” it had a paper “Klaf.” For her the symbolism was key. For me – without a Klaf, it was a symbolic Mezuzah – but there was not a fulfillment of the Mitzvah itself.
    For me, a “Mitzvah” implies a Metzahveh and a Metzuveh (a Commander and a commanded).If not, it is a positive action, maybe filled with meaning – but I am not sure that it is a Mitzvah.
    But I can certainly understand that many of us preform these “Mitzvot” because we find them meaningful and not because we are obligated.
    My objection was to the ease with which you decide what is custom, rule, Mitzvah,etc.
    As I pointed out, the “custom” of adding one candle for each night of Hannukah has become normative (perhaps the Halacha) although one candle/night is all that is required.
    You too easily referred to prohibitions regarding Yom Kippur and to the Mizvot of Teffilin without checking your assumptions (indeed many do hold Teffilin are 2 Mitzvot and many count the prohibition of eating and drinking on YK as sepearte prohibitions).
    __________________
    David also writes: But surely we can recognize a difference between law and minhag that has become like law.
    I am not sure that we can always do so. Is the law that Ashkenazi Jews refrain from eating Kitniyot (as clearly stated by MANY poskim) only Minhag, or is it law?
    What about lighting additional candles each night of Hanukah?
    What about covering one’s head in a synagogue?
    Certainly, deciding whether to stand or sit for Friday night Kiddush is Minhag.
    Is the reciting of Psukei D’zimra as part of Shacharit Minhag or halacha?
    What about the obligation to daven Maariv.
    I will agree that Minhag and Din are not one and the same. But I can not be too caviler in deciding where one begins and the other ends.

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