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Since When Do Jews Wear Yarmulkes?

2/27/2025 • 677 views

Open any Jewish children's Bible, and you'll see Jonah wearing a kippah in the whale's belly. King David's composing psalms with a neat little yarmulke on his head. There's just one problem—none of them actually wore anything like the modern Jewish skullcap. In fact, we have a fascinating manuscript from 15th-century Italy showing Jews in a synagogue, and surprisingly, only about half the men are wearing any head covering at all. This wasn't some radical congregation—it was just normal for the time. Let's go even further back. We have clear evidence that in Talmudic times, most Jewish men went about with uncovered heads. One of our best proofs comes from a fascinating story in the Talmud (Shabbat 156b) about Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak. When astrologers told his mother that her son would become a thief, she insisted he keep his head covered to instill "fear of Heaven." One day, while studying under a palm tree, his head covering fell off. When he looked up and saw the dates above him, he was overcome with an urge to climb up and bite them off with his teeth! The very fact that this was presented as something unusual tells us that head covering wasn't standard practice. Later texts reinforce this. The 8th-century Masekhet Sofrim (14:15) records a debate about head covering during prayer—some said you could recite the Shema with an uncovered head, while others objected only to pronouncing divine names uncovered. This debate only makes sense if bare heads were common. So how did we get from there to today's practice? During medieval times, Jewish men who did cover their heads wore whatever was locally common—turbans in Muslim lands, berets in Western Europe, and various other styles. In the 14th century, Rabbenu Yerucham of Provence declared that men should cover their heads in synagogue—but note this was just in synagogue, not all the time. The real shift came in the 16th century, when Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575), author of the Shulchan Aruch, ruled that Jewish men should keep their heads covered constantly. Even then, this wasn't universally adopted. Many Jews continued to cover their heads only during prayer and study. The small round cap we know today emerged even later. In 19th-century America, Jews often wore what were called "Chinese-style" skullcaps—large dome-shaped caps much bigger than today's yarmulke, not the conical hats you might imagine. Over time, these caps got smaller and smaller until they evolved into the familiar modern form. Even the words we use have surprising origins. "Yarmulke" appears in Polish documents as early as the 15th century as jarmułka—we even have a record from 1617 mentioning "pearl and gold-headed jarmułki." The word itself likely comes from either Medieval Latin almutia (meaning a hood or cowl) or from Turkish yağmurluk (meaning a hooded raincoat), which entered Polish through other Eastern European languages. And kippah, meaning "dome" in Hebrew, only became the standard Hebrew term in the early 20th century. What started as an individual practice for extra piety gradually evolved into one of the most recognizable symbols of Jewish identity. But like many traditions, its familiar form is much younger than most people realize.