Boca Raton, FL – Pin-free Yarmulke Closes Safety Flap for Jewish Athletes

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    Boca Raton, FL – In South Florida for decades, it was an annual pre-season ritual that South Florida’s several Orthodox Jewish high schools wrote to the Florida High School Athletic Association, seeking permission for their male athletes to wear the kippah, or yarmulke, worn at all times by Orthodox Jews. And for all those years, the FHSAA sent back its bureaucratic blessing.

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    But before the 2006-07 school year, state officials informed the Jewish high schools that they had deemed the pins or clips that keep yarmulkes in place a potential hazard.
    Rabbi Perry Tirschwell, head of the 185-student Weinbaum Yeshiva High School in Boca Raton, was alarmed by the development.

    During the latest FHSAA legislative session in Tallahassee, some private schools proposed seceding from the organization, which has been characterized as arrogant and biased against religious schools.
    Tirschwell offered to fly to Gainesville to make his case. “I asked the director, ‘Has there ever been a case of death by bobby pin?’ They told me no, not in 40 years and 30 teams,” he said. Tirschwell knew it would be easy enough to argue religious discrimination by the FHSAA, but he decided not to go down that road.

    Then Jon Kaweblum, the school’s athletic director, got an inspiration that can only be called divine: Why not attach small plastic hair combs to the inside of the kippah to secure it? His inspiration was the combs that secure the wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women, who must cover their hair in public.

    It was a tangle-free solution to a hairy problem.

    He did his own field testing, wearing the Klipped Kippah for several weeks while playing basketball. “It worked great, so in October I started making a couple for my players,” Kaweblum said. “They loved it. We sent the prototype to (the FHSAA) and they accepted the compromise.” “Once you use them, you can’t go back.”

    The basic model starts at $10, with the price varying based on materials and quantity purchased. Kaweblum says he has sold about 1,500. [Palm Beach Post]


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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    16 years ago

    there is nothing new under the sun. Judge Richard Posner of the seventh circuit (chicago)(one of the most influential federal judges in the country) already decided that there is no constitutional right for a jewish basketball player to wear a bobbypin in his yamulka and the players should try to find some other way to keep it in place.