Question & Answer With Neil Harris - A Black Knitted Yarmulke

A Simple Jew asks:

What prompted you to recently switch from wearing a black velvet yarmulke to a black knitted yarmulke?

Neil Harris answers:

I have, until two weeks ago, worn a black velvet for the past seven years. Before that I had worn a black knitted for ten years.

Since Rosh Hashana I had been debating about making the switch back. Initially I had switched to velvet when I was living in community of about thirty shomer Shabbos families. I had thought then that based on my current outlook on things and that I was one of a handful with any formalized yeshiva background (after finishing public high school) that wearing a velvet yarmulke would somehow strengthen my own yiddishkeit within a community in which my Torah observance placed me in the minority. It was, at the time, the right move, I think.

Over the past two years, though I felt that part of my personality had sort of been confined by my own doing. I had found myself restricted by the, for lack of a better phrase, image of "right-of-center-yeshivish" connotation of a black velvet. I hadn't given up part of who I was, but I could tell that I was downplaying parts of my personality. I saw myself slowly falling prey to small signs of frumkeit (emphasis on the external trapping of being frum resulting in false-piety). While this wasn't due totally to wearing a velvet yarmulke, I became aware that somewhere down the line I had begun to change. This troubled me, because that not what I'm really all about. I try to stay clear of things relating to frumkeit.

During the days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I realized that I really needed to get "back to basics" in terms of my Avodas Hashem and the things that I initially loved about Yiddishkeit when I became observant. Since then I have gone back once again read, with a new perspective, many seforim that have sat on my bookshelves, seforim that I felt I had "out grown". As I attempted to refresh my Yiddishkeit I decided that sporting a velvet yarmulke wasn't something that reflected me and I returned back to a black knitted yarmulke.

When it comes to issues of chizonius (external) and penimius (internal) expressions of our Yiddishkeit there's a time and a place for each. Each of us has to know when to make the call.