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When the Thread Tears
Everyone can find themselves under the collective Kippah, especially those
born into families with a Kippah on their heads. Those observing each and

every Mitzvah, those who don‟t take it seriously as an ideology, others who
don‟t care as a practice and even those who every connection between them
and what they‟ve learned as kids is loose and weak, but the Kippah‟s thin
thread still connects them to their family, their community and their inner
world. And this thread will never be severed. Unless the belonging expires,
unless a tear based on relationship is formed.
Extremist parents, on both ends, deal with the situation in an extreme way,

on the entire range between „tearing a shiv‟ah‟ and publicized defamations
of parents to children who became religious. In such families
(communities), it is understandable why the miserable child had to do what
he did. He simply had no choice, if he wanted to live, just live.
But when it happens in “our” families…? How can you understand children,
who grew up in “moderate”, sane homes, all to the proper educational extent
and tolerance, openness and with sacred pluralism… and still out of the blue
one day (on the last day in the Yeshiva, or the “Hesder” or the army) take

their Kippah off anyway? How do you explain it? And how do you deal
with the pain?.
It‟s hard to believe how painful it is. For we truly and honestly believe in
every child‟s right to choose his or her own path, and by no means should he
or she choose our path exactly, on the contrary. We are completely certain
that we have no problem accepting every child as he or she is.

Until he takes the Kippah off, or puts it on. Even then we believe this is his
right, accept him, honor him and love him… but the pain, the pain is also
there.
And the parental pain comes from the same place that sees the child's
disappointment with the community (hypocrites, bourgeois, mediocre,
patronizing etc.) and with the parents themselves, for the same reasons, or
very similar ones. On the one hand, this hurts (how can he not see how good
we are? How really okay we are? How doesn't he realize that this is exactly
how one should live?) and on the other hand we feel for the child's pain, the

pain and hurt which caused him to feel out of place. And this pain is greater
than its predecessor and echoes from it.
For taking one's Kippah off or putting one suddenly on symbolizes that
something in the family isn't working properly. Something in the
relationship. Something in the parenting. It has nothing to do with G-d or the
Mitzvah's (my apologies to those becoming religious), nothing to do with

the meaning we were lacking or the great light. Just to the child's sense of
belonging in the family being hurt.

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