Loose ball, firm kipa: A Boca Raton yeshiva player wearing a Klipped Kippah splits two defenders.
by Tamar Snyder
When they arrive in New York to compete in Yeshiva University’s Red Sarachek Basketball Tournament this Thursday, members of the Weinbaum Yeshiva High School Storm in Boca Raton, Fla., will be sporting a new type of kipa: the Klipped Kippah. Invented by Weinbaum Yeshiva basketball coach Jon Kaweblum, the Klipped Kippah stays put during pounding for a rebound or diving for a loose ball. Instead of bobby pins or metal clips, the kipa sports two sheitel clips — heavy-duty, one-and-a-half-inch clips with combs that are commonly sewn into the cap of women’s sheitels.
At the basketball tournament, named for beloved former YU basketball coach Bernard “Red” Sarachek, the Weinbaum players won’t be the only ones who have been “klipped.” In the recent years,
dozens of day schools in the tri-state area have ordered Klipped Kippahs for their students, generally as fundraisers. And this year, Yeshiva University ordered 600 gray knit Klipped Kippahs, which they’ll give out to players from 20 high school yeshiva teams across the U.S. and Canada.
Kaweblum, a 28-year-old full-time architect, came up with the idea three years ago when the local basketball league denied his request to allow students to wear kipot during basketball competitions. The reason? The clips used to secure the kipot were considered dangerous since they could poke someone’s eye out or be used as a weapon.
Searching for a solution, Kaweblum drew inspiration from his wife’s sheitel. “I wondered, ‘How does she keep it on,’” he told The Jewish Week. He went to a wig store and bought “sheitel clips,” sewed them inside a few yarmulkes, and gave them to his players. “They loved it,” he says. And the league approved. The difference between a sheitel clip and a bobby pin, Kaweblum says, is that the sheitel clip is designed specifically to hold a foreign object to the hair. “It’s much more efficient,” he says.
Since January 2007, KlippedKippahs.com has been selling the patent-pending kipas on the Web. The company boasts the largest selection of kipas online, from knit to suede to cloth. Customers can also send in their own yarmulkes, which the company will “klip” for $5 each.
There’s a trend, Kaweblum says: “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.’”
Klipped Kippah’s customers include a few Jewish cops and a boy scouts troop in Houston. Back at home, Kaweblum’s 3-year-old son, Jake, loves wearing his Lightning McQueen and Thomas Klipped Kippahs. “When Jake sees a kipa without clips, he says it’s broken.”
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