Baruch Hashem

The Way You Wear Your Hat

by Steve Lipman

Staff Writer

12/08/2009

It was a small kipa, satin white and sky blue, and it was supposed to make a statement about my Jewish identity. I bought it at a Judaica shop in Jerusalem on my first visit to Israel, a 10-day trip for American journalists in late autumn of 1975. Not religiously observant then, I was 25 and not a kipa-wearer outside of synagogue. I decided to wear the yarmulke as a sign of pride, as a statement of Jewish identity, during the time I was in Israel. I clipped it to my head then forgot about it.
In Israel, no one notices someone wearing a kipa. On Shabbat, someone noticed.

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Dwindling Days Of Awe

09/08/2004

by Steve Lipman 

Staff Writer

On Rosh HaShanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created, who will live and who will die …
From the Rosh HaShanah liturgy
On these summer days in the late autumn of his life, on the mornings when he feels strong enough, Harold Dubow opens a siddur. Waking late in a living room on the edge of Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, he takes some pills, eats a small cereal breakfast and recites Shacharit from a large-print prayerbook he keeps nearby on a small table.

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Going Through Hoops

01/22/1999

by Steve Lipman 

Staff Writer

Even by Tamir Goodman’s standards it has been an unusual two weeks. There’s the all-day studies at a Baltimore yeshiva, some basketball after school, homework and Gemara review — and the interviews with CBS Sports, Fox Sports, ESPN and all the local TV stations.
Goodman, a 17-year-old bochur, is becoming a basketball star.

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