Is This $1,400 Crocodile-Skin Kippah Kosher?
Image by Facebook
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Curious locals and journalists rushed to a Judaica store in Jerusalem’s Old City to marvel at the new luxury-marketed crocodile, python and cowhide Jewish head coverings. An ostrich edition was said to be coming soon.
But as the hype grew, so did public backlash, and last week, the government confiscated the kippahs as illegally imported wild animal products.
Store manager Shaun Nathan called opponents “ridiculous lunatic fringe.”
The Fifth Quarter Judaica store owner Eli Mordechai gamely showed off the kippahs, which are sold in fabric-lined oak boxes for as much as $1,400 each. They even come with built-in hair clips. Mordechai touted them as must-have headwear for observant Jews seeking that Russian oligarch look.
“These kippot were born out of the desire to provide people who live in a world of luxury and brands a kippah befitting their lifestyle,” he told Israel’s popular Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper. “A person wearing a $10,000 Gucci suit won’t be caught dead wearing a $50 off-brand kippah.”
Typical kippahs are made from cloth, cotton yarn, velvet or leather.
Yedioth noted that the exotic kippahs are made from unkosher animals. But Mordechai assured the newspaper that unlike teffilin, mezuzahs or Torah scrolls, kippahs can be made from any material according to Jewish law.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
