Yarmulkes on the Basketball Court
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.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
