…Wear A Yarmulke?
What a question! Sometimes, we don’t think about the things that are right in front of us. Everyone wears yarmulkes, yet we don’t even give it a thought! A Yid once asked the heiligeh Rayatz this question. He answered, “We say “Shema” before “Vihaya.” “Shema” speaks about Hashem being one. The paragraph of “Vihaya” speaks about what happens when we do His mitzvos.” This is just like we said at Har Sinai, “Naaseh Vinishma.” We will do what Hashem says, and then we will try to understand it! We don’t do mitzvos because they make sense to us, or because they sit well with us. We do them because we understand that Hashem knows more than we do! The Baal Shem Tov famously said, “The ikkur of knowing things… is to know that you DON’T know!” This means that while Hashem made us very smart, the Torah He gave us is even smarter. When we say we don’t know, but we do the mitzvos anyway – we grow and we connect to Hashem.
A yarmulke says exactly that. Although my brain is very smart, that’s not why I do mitzvos. I am smart enough to know that there is something ABOVE me: Hashem. So we wear our yarmulkes over our heads, where we think, to show that there is something much higher than our thoughts.
“Yarmulke” is said to come from two words: “Yarei” and “Malka,” fear of the king. Our yarmulke reminds us we don’t do things only because we understand them. We do them because we listen to Hashem!
In Chassidus this is called bittul: When I hold back from what I want to do and instead accept what Hashem wants, I accept that Hashem is above me, and He knows what’s good for me! This is the basics for living like a Yid, something that we work on throughout our lives!
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 38.
