Yarmulkes on the Basketball Court
By Allison Yarrow
College basketball may madden March, but high school players are making some news of their own — pioneering the latest craze in Jewish headgear. The Boca Raton-based Weinbaum Yeshiva High School Storm are wearing Klipped Kippahs at a Jewish basketball tournament in New York this week. Invented by their coach, Jon Kaweblum, the Klipped Kippah uses two sheitel clips — the kind normally sewn into wigs — on the inside of the kippah, so it stays put courtside.
The idea was born when local basketball officials in Boca Raton outlawed kippah-wearing during games, due to the danger of its accompanying hardware: angular bobby pins and hazardous metal clips that stick up as if gunning to gouge out an eye. Klipped Kippah solves this dilemma, but the trend’s functionality is further reaching than the sports arena.
“People will order one or two kipas online to try it out. Then, three weeks later, they’ll empty their drawers and send in 15 kipas to be ‘klipped,” Kaweblum told The Jewish Week.
The 18th annual Red Sarachek Tournament for Jewish high school basketball teams runs from March 26–30 at Yeshiva University.
Live broadcasts of the games can be found here.
November 27, 2007, 5:56pm
Yarmulkes for Geeks
By Aram David
Yesterday Douglas Vos, founder of Facebook’s Designing With Web Standards Group, rallied his troops, urging supporters of better Web standards to show their unity by donning blue beanies for a day.
His post:
Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.… Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr.
While his word was “semantic” not “semitic,” Standardistas share something with religious Jews — beyond the distinctive headgear.
Like Jews, they have a moral vision, and they can be sticklers when it comes to following rules. Adhering to the strictures of the Web Standards movement can entail many extra hours of behind-the-scenes work — much of which will never be noticed by the average user — to make a site more usable for those with visual disabilities or technical limitations (sometimes related to income levels, as the less well off sometimes don’t have the latest software). Indeed, Web Standards has been likened to a religion by some designers and developers, with accessibility becoming almost a spiritual goal.
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