Thursday, January 22, 2015
Kippa made of hair allows Jews to don religious headgear without revealing identity
The history of Jews in Europe is one of a balancing act between assimilation into the local culture and preservation of the unique Jewish identities, an issue galvanized in recent terror attacks which targeted easily identifiable Jewish targets.
Trust the "Yiddishe Kopf" (literally, a Jewish head) to find an ingenuous solution: An invisible kippa.
Recent events in Paris, which saw a four killed in an attack on a Jewish supermarket attack, and which followed a year of record high anti-Semitic attacks and incident targeting Jews in the streets of Europe, have recast Jew's historical struggle as one of managing visibility in the public arena.
State of Jews in Europe
The new 'Magic Kippa' addresses the issue of Jewish visibility by allowing religious Jews to don the mandatory skullcap without running the risk of being visually identified as Jews.
The product, which was being developed even before the attack on the Paris kosher supermarket which saw four people killed, is made out of synthetic hair and seamlessly blends in with the believer's hair, rendering it indiscernible to the untrained eye.
"Because we cannot put on a kippa in these days, he have created a kippa made from natural hair and which can be washed," the creators Haim and Shalom said in a YouTube video in French.
The two further claimed the product is already being used by Jewish businessmen wishing to move freely without being hindered by anti-Semitism.
They also offer potential clients to send in a few strands of hair and they will match you original hair color and send you a customized invisible hair-kippa.
However, for all its pragmatic ingenuity, the 'magic kippa' also entails a problematic position regarding anti-Semitism, and shifts responsibility on to the Jew himself, as many commentators pointed out.
"We need to be proud of our Jewish identity, not hide it," lamented one; "An invisible kippa! What are we ashamed of," wrote another.
Others took a more lighthearted approach, simply commenting: "This is ridiculous."
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