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The Yarmulke Is Now A Fashion Item
"The New York Times, 9/23/1990"
Yarmulkes are not just yarmulkes anymore. The
traditional kullcaps worn by jewish men during studay and prayer are
turning up in designer versions on boys age 10 and under, and not just in
velvet and gold thread. Handpainted leather yarmulkes have images of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bart Simpson, Bert and Ernie of "Sesame
Street" fame, as well as logos of baseball and football teams.
"If the kids have to wear one,
they are going to look for one that is in, or has a little more to it,"
said Sandy S. Gruenberg, director of the learning center of the Solomon
Schecter School in White Plains. Her students are required to wear a
yarmulke in school.
The new designs, which cost about $20 each,
are showing up at synagogues during the Jewish High Holy Days and drawing
amused and somtimes concerned attention from adults, some of whom are not
sure if the caps are appropiate. But n one seems to deeply troubled.
Adam Steinmetz, a 3-year-old from Manhattan,
has 11 different yarmulkes, most of which were made by his mother, Sherry
a freelance graphic artist.
Adam was wearing one of her designs
representing the various Jewish holidays as he walked with his parents on
the West Side of Manhattan recently. Adam said his favorite was "Ernie and
Bert playing baseball," another of his mother's designs.
While his parents said they thought the
"Sesame Street" characters wer fine for yarmulkes, they did not like
designs of superheroes. "He doesn't have Ninja turtles; he has Ernie and
Bert, because we think its innocuous," said Alan Steinmetz, Adam's fater.
Who makes these designer yarmulkes if your
mother isn't a graphic artist? That is generally shrouded in secrecy,
because copyright laws are supposed to protect the cartoon characters and
team symbols from being reproduced without permission.
"I'm not sure I should talk to you," said
one designer who insisted on remaining anonymous. "Some lawyer is going to
see a story about it and say we should go after them. Up till now, they
think its small potaotes"
This designer, who said she had the idea of
painting on leather yarmulkes about eight years ago, would not say how
many she paints a year, but said it was her full-time job. She said she
did not immediately paint television characters on her yarmulkes, but in
fact copyrighted some of her designs of Noah's ark and the Hebrew
alphabet, only to see them proliferate in the designs of her competitiors.
After that, she expanded her repertory to include the television
characters and baseball teams, and those have become her best sellers.
Those who study the trend, including Sylvia
A. Herskowitz, director of the Yeshiva Univeristy Museum in Manhattan, say
the painted leather yarmulkes are an extension of the colorful knitted and
crocheted yarmulkes that beame popular in Israel in the early 70's and are
increasingly common here.
Wielding paint and brush and using the
five-ince circle of leather as a canvas, the yarmulke designers fit their
colorful creations onto a semisphere that tapers upward in the center. The
yarmulkes are sold in Jewish gift shops all over the nation.
The proliferation of the yarmulkes has led
some Orthodox Jewish groups to complain about the intermingling of the
secular and sacred. Some schools have even forbidden their students to
wear yarmulkes with television characters on them. But most educators say
they tolerate it because the attention-getting designs encourage children
to wear yarmulkes.
During a visit to Sesame Place, an amusement
park in Langhorne, Pa., devoted to the "Sesame Street characters, Sherry
and Adam Steinmentz said they were stopped repeatedly by other visitors
who saw Adam's yarmulke and asked; "Can you buy that here?"
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