This past Shabbos I did not daven in my usual shul. From time to time, I’ve been davening at a more yeshivish minyan which offers a change of pace from my usual davening experience. While I gain certain things from davening at this shul, I’ve noticed that with the exception of those with whom I am already friends, I have not really been welcomed by those who daven there. In thinking about the reason why that is so, I think the answer is fairly clear. While I take davening very seriously, don’t talk during tefillah, and learn during the down-time, I am not a member of the team. My lack of hat, as well as my kippah-seruga mark me as other. I am welcome to daven there, but I am clearly seen as an outsider.
It’s been more than two years since I stopped wearing a hat on Shabbos. At the time, I wrote about the reasons for my decision. Recently, I’ve again been thinking about religious symbols and what they mean. I know that if I dressed the right way, certain doors in my community would open up to me despite the fact that nothing of significance would change about who I am. Of course, it is not just in the yeshivish world where symbols matter. I remember walking one Shabbos with a friend of mine, who was wearing a shtreimel. A guy with a knit-kippah walking in the opposite direction said “Good Shabbos” to me, and with an edge in his voice, “Shabbat Shalom” to my friend. Seeing the “wrong” headgear, he instantly “knew” all sorts of things about my friend. My friend told me that this was not the first time something like this had happened to him.
Of course, what we wear is a way to let others know something about ourselves. In the past year, as I’ve further evolved in my religious outlook, there have been moments where I have wanted to change something about how I dress. These days, my black kippah-seruga feels a little too confining to me, as if I am trying to make clear that I am Zionistic but not off the deep end, frum but not a right-winger, YUish but centrist, thank you very much, with a chassidish streak to boot. When I start thinking of alternatives, I think of how I’d be seen in my community, amongst my friends, and at school. I find myself wondering things like whether a guy living outside of Israel can pull off the big serugi look without seeming like a faker, which colors are simply too much, but mainly what the heck is wrong with me. Why am I making such a big deal about something so silly? Why do I need an external marker of internal change? If I don’t buy into this stuff, why I do buy into it so much?
This is not one of those posts where I finish off with a nice and simple answer, where everything is made clear. All I know is that I want these things to not matter to me and to others, although I know that they do. I’m not sure how to balance individuality along with a sense of fitting into a community. I also don’t know how to get rid of this feeling that I know someone before we’ve ever met, just because I see what they are wearing.
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