Put on your Thinking Cap...

Did you know that a kosher kippah only needs to be big enough to cover one's fist? Rabbi Susan Grossman of Columbia, MD shared that teaching with me. So, let's put on our collective "thinking kippot" and  find reasons for why that could be...

The first thought that came to my mind ( and I have not run this past the venerable Rabbi), was that it is a metaphor: by saying that a kippah must cover the fist, aren't we saying that we can control  acting  upon our violent emotions? Another thought which comes to mind is that the heart is about the same size as the fist. So perhaps wearing the kippah can remind us to act only with love...And if that is not enough, covering our heads could and probably should teach us some humility. Do you remember the scenes in the re-make of  the movie Roots, in which a parent raises their newborn to the heavens, proclaiming that here was the only thing greater than that child? On the High Holy Days, we often refer to God as our Parent, and we read in the Jonah story about how God, as a Parent, chastises Jonah for mourning over the loss of a plant that covered his head, which he never grew or tended, when God was mourning the potential loss of thousands of people and animals,

"Who do not  yet know their right from their left."

At this time of national and international upheaval, let us remember that there is One greater than all of us combined, for from out of that Oneness, we came into being.