In typical Heshy fashion I had a pretty intense argument this past shabbos about which yarmulke is the most politically neutral of all. For those of you who don’t know, yarmulkes are the number one way that other Jews will judge you, I have written extensively on the subject, but it could always be expounded on some more and since we Jews love to judge I might as well throw down a little refresher course for all those who hadn’t realized how much they were categorizing themselves simply by their yarmulke choice.
Unlike most people (I am simply that unique) I freely switch my headgear from time to time, wearing yarmulkes that people like me (post denominational) shouldn’t be wearing. For instance, when my hair is short (I tend to get haircuts before holidays) I like to wear black velvet, but I don’t wear any old ordinary black velvet (there are dozens of kinds of black velvet, but the most common are regular 4 and 6 pie pieces) I wear the shiny free 4 piece black velvet that they happen to have in the yarmulke bin at the Palo Alto shul. I like to get yarmulkes from the free bins because they always have worn in ones and I hate having a stuff yarmulke on my head.
Wearing black velvet almost always places you into a frummer class of yarmulke wearer than others, but in my case it looks a bit out of place so no one really knows what to think, most commonly I hear people misjudging me as a BT. The folks I was talking to about politically neutral yarmulkes thought, incorrectly that suede (the professional yarmulke of choice) was the most neutral, but in my view black knitted is most neutral.
Black knitted yarmulkes have somehow become the most neutral of yarmulkes. If is the only non-velvet yarmulke besides for those Rosh Yeshiva/chabad style black velvet look alike yarmulkes that can be worn under a hat. Besides being able to wear a black knit yarmulke under your hat, you can wear it with or without pins/clips depending on your level of orthodoxy (pins are modernishe and clips are left wing modern orthodox)
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