Relative religiosities

It's the last day of our three week seminar at Yad Vashem.

Today, Dan, our handsome poster-boy Jewish student leader from Australia, has appeared for the first time wearing a kipa.

I get drawn into the debate he's having with Jodie, one of the other Jewish participants, about the dilemma he feels about wearing one.

I'd like to wear a kipa as a mark of my belonging to the Jewish people, he says. But I'm not sure if my religious practice is up to it. For example, I'll go eat in a restaurant which is vegetarian, but not kosher. And I'll even eat in unkosher restaurants, but choose vegetarian or kosher fish dishes.

Well, I do both those things, I say. So I think you can wear a kipa. And back in England, I'm regarded by most of my mainstream Jewish friends as wildly religious. Because I fast on all the minor fast days that most of the mainstream middle-of-the-road religious ignore. And I think the key thing is whether you keep Shabbos or not. A strictly orthodox person would always ask, "Does he keep Shabbos?" as the defining question. If you're not keeping Shabbos, then I don't think you should be wearing a kipa. Because you'd be misleading people.

Of course, in Israel, I'd probably be regarded as dati (religious) ultra-ultra-lite. Because there's so many things that anyone Israeli regarding themselves as religious would automatically do, which I don't.

But, I tell them, I've seen Israeli religious doing things that make me question what really counts as religious in Israel. For example, in my travels around Israeli towns on this trip, I saw a man who's dati hugging a woman who wasn't his wife.

Dan's and Jodie's eyes widen with surprise. Because Jewish law forbids a religious man from doing this. For a whole load of reasons, the main one of which is that it violates the law against having physical contact with a woman you're not married to.

And what's more, I say, I gather he does this with lots of women-- it seems he's part of a world where religious and secular people meet socially and the secular Israeli habits of greeting with a hug are part of his world. But somehow, he'd rather his wife didn't know that this is what he does.

So should he be wearing a kipa?

What do you think? And would you hug him if he wanted to greet you this way?

Comments

[waterdragon52]

I remember when I was a girl, attending a cousin's Bar Mitzvah at an Orthodox synagogue. My not very religious father was a smoker. Out of respect for the practices at that synagogue, he took a walk of a few blocks so as not to offend custom by smoking anywhere near the shul. For Dan to put on a kippah on such an occasion was to show respect for the dead, not to act the hypocrit.

[DP]

You are fully entitled to your views on the relative weight of religious practices. But I think it is fair to say they are a bit idiosyncratic.

I know plenty of people who are shomer shabbat and won't eat outside vegetarian restaurants who would certainly have physical contact with the opposite sex. I don't know anyone who is shomer negiah yet will eat in a non-kosher restaurant. I would say that on the scale of frumkeit full observance of shabbat and kashrut come quite a way before shmirat negiah. That's getting into pretty frum territory.

I think it's a bit more complicated than "Jewish law forbids..." Jewish law (Shulchan Arukh) also forbids you to put your left shoe on before your right. And there are people who keep that rule. But if we saw a man in a kippa putting on left before right, I don't think our "eyes would widen with shock".

[Ben-David]

Here in Israel, a kipah signifies much less than it does in the diaspora. There is less cultural stigma against it - in fact, lately it has been incorporated into a sort of Jewish bohemian chic - and so many people who would not exert themselves overmuch to keep mitzvot will don a kipah here. So the lady-hugger may not have been as religious as you assume.

Similarly, there are many who keep kosher simply because it's easy and feels normal here - when abroad, they will eat anything, in any restaurant.

I'd also suggest to you that, were you to live here, you would also be influenced by the normalcy of Jewish practise, and might find your own level of practise shifting.

- and is there a better, less judgemental term than "level of practice"?

[Kai Jones]

No, I wouldn't hug him, but not because of the religious contradiction: I'm not willing to do *anything* with a married person that they don't want to tell their spouse about, other than planning a surprise party for the spouse.

[anon]

shmirat negia is less mainstream in israel than the diaspora, where as kisui rosh is much more universal. Shabbat observance is also not so straight forward. It's easy not to cook and turn on lights, but plenty of 'shomer shabbos' people are mehallel shabbat all the time, perhaps carrying things that are not needed for shabbat, or taking out the bad fruit from the bowl, or anything really. that said, I wouldn't wear a kippa while I was obviously not keeping a halacha, such as eating in a non-kosher restaraunt.

[marc]

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