Arts & Culture

Just in Time for Purim: Yarmulkes Autographed By Celebrity Goys

Want to get a friend a gift for Purim, but running low on ideas? If you live in the Seattle area, you can go – alone or with a buddy – to check out a collection of kippot autographed by … Read More

By / February 24, 2009

Want to get a friend a gift for Purim, but running low on ideas? If you live in the Seattle area, you can go – alone or with a buddy – to check out a collection of kippot autographed by famous people. The University of Washington will be displaying some of Jonathan Chalett’s extensive collection of celebrity-approved yarmulkes.

If you’re expecting the usual round of Jewish celebrities to be featured in this exhibit, well, you’d be wrong. There’s no Adam Sandler or Ben Stein. Instead, the signatures are from such esteemed non-Jews as John Kerry, John Edwards, Magic Johnson, and Barack Obama. So far, the only Jew on the list I’ve seen is David Lee Roth. 

Look, I’m not trying to say people have no right to sign their names on kippot if they’re not Jewish. I guess what bugs me about the whole thing is that it smacks of gimmickry. Having random famous politicians and basketball players sign their names on kippot is slightly more aesthetically interesting than having them sign cocktail napkins or blank sheets of paper, but otherwise what’s the point? Moreover, what’s the point of putting them on display? The idea of going into an art gallery, seeing a bunch of kippot hanging on a wall, and then going up to them and squinting, trying to decipher the handwriting, doesn’t really sound like fun – or a worthy exhibition. Looking at people’s signatures, no matter how famous they are, is boring. Maybe if there were cool pictures of celebrities wearing said kippot, or if the kippot had been woven into some kind of giant tapestry, it would be somewhat more interesting.

Do any of you live in Seattle and want to report back? The exhibit is up until April 30. Curiously, the article made no mention of exactly where on campus the kippot were going to be displayed. That makes me suspect they’re not going to be in an art museum, but rather in a glass case in the lobby of the Jewish Studies department or something. Just a hunch. Does anyone want to check it out and let me know?

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  • ltn

    P.S. Amy Goodman and Ryan Braun makes six. So what? What difference does that possibly make? 

  • ltn

    Please apologize for your dismissal of Jonathan Chalett’s collection of yarmulkes as smacking of gimmickry. You owe yourself the courtesy of seeing the exhibit before judging it. And what difference does it make who is Jewish? By the way, I thought Matisyahu, Gould and Leibovitz sound an edge Hebraic. But who cares? And your incorrect report that John Edwards was involved, a report picked up and thus spread carelessly on the net by so many electronic sheep sharing the error, smacks of hasty, overly casual reporting. Not responsible. I sense that’s not really you.

    The exhibit contains albums, photos, souvenirs, books, bumper stickers, mugs, congressional photo-shoots, and is visually interesting, splendid, and FUN. The yarmulkes are merely the icing on the story. The message of the yarmulke is self-identification in public of Jewish pride and joy. And if there’s a God, she wouldn’t mind if we had a little fun in the process.   

  • maya escobar

    This morning I mentioned to my fiancee that I am working on a blog post that focuses on practices of Jewish modernity, as mechanisms for recreating the past- a past which is located in the future…

    and he said:

    "Its like Orthodox kids- they love baseball!  And what do they wear on their heads?"

    "Umm…  a baseball hat over their kippah?"  I replied.  

    "Yes," he answered, "or they wear a kippah with a Superman logo, something that relates to them."  

    He went on to explain that when he was becoming more observant the skull kippah was given to not to wear in shuel but to wear outside- as a proclamation of his Jewish Identity. 

     

    maya escobar

    http://mayaescobar.com

  • maya escobar

    Jewish or non, I find it incredibly problematic to sign a kippah- and then to put it behind glass?????

    But I guess to each their own, after all who am I to talk.  When my "rocker" fiancee first started becoming religious he was given a skull kippah, which he proudly wore to shuel for about a year.  This outward display of "difference"  from the frum community, was how he felt comfortable navigating his Jewish identity. 

    maya escobar

    http://mayaescobar.com