Not a Mitzvah to Wear a Yarmulke

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/oh-that-i-could-take-off-my-kippah/
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%204%20Rabinowitz.pdf

Nathan Lopes Cardozo is one of the intellectual heavyweights of the Modern Orthodox movement. He is a shining example of Torah-u-Madda (Torah combined with secular studies), and teaches comparative religion to non-Jews. He is also a famous Modern Orthodox rabbi.

He writes: "There are enough opinions to allow me to walk around bareheaded without ever needing to put on a kippah."

He continues "True, the great Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488-1575) rules in his famous Shulchan Aruch (1) that one should not walk more than four amot (2) with his head uncovered. But none other than the Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797) takes issue with this ruling (3), basing his view on the fact that the only reference in the Talmud for covering one’s head is the personal pious practice of Rav Huna (4), who never walked more than dalet amot (four amot) with his head uncovered. The implication is, therefore, that this was never legislated as a universal halachic obligation (5). It should be one’s personal spontaneous expression, out of reverence for God."

The practice of wearing a yarmulke is never mentioned in the Bible, nor anywhere in Second Temple Judaism, nor in the Mishnah. Only the priests are required to have their heads covered. In fact, 2 Maccabees speaks of Hellenized Jews wearing Greek hats as a sign of assimilation.

The Talmud has a few passages regarding covering one's head. Tractate Shabbat 118b has Rabbi Huna declaring that he may never walk 4 paces with an uncovered head. However, as Tractate Nedarim 30b states, men sometimes pray with their heads covered and sometimes not.

The practice of wearing a yarmulke was not adopted by the massed until the fifteenth century, where Rabbi Israel Bruna issued a statement that wearing a skullcap is mandatory. Bruna issued this edict in order to turn laws persecuting Jews (similar to the star of David on holocaust victims) into a mandate by Jewish law.

Still, this was only one rabbi's opinion, and the practice was not considered mandatory until Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch, which is a summary of Jewish law. This did not mean that wearing a yarmulke was considered Jewish law, but that some sort of headcovering had to be mandated.

The yarmulke was not commonly worn by Jews before the modern era, as pictoral evidence shows. The yarmulke itself became popular first as an Orthodox reaction to Reform Judaism. Rabbi Shlomo Kruger ordered Ukranian Jews to wear a yarmulke at all times for this reason. Some of his more devout followers actually altered paintings of Orthodox clergy in order to rewrite history.

As Rabinowitz writes, the effort to promote the rabbinic opinions that one must wear a head covering has resulted in both the censorship of legitimate rabbinic sources as well as outright forgery of other sources.

Such censored sources include the Gaon of Vilna, R. Yehuda ben Asher, the Gra, and R. Moshe Hefez Gentili, who all argued that one is never required to wear a headcovering at all.

The Mishnah in the tractate Yoma indicates that priests would hold a lottery to see which priests had which duties. During this ritual, priests would take off their headcoverings to indicate who had already been counted. In fact, if a priest were to wear a yarmulke under his hat, he would be adding to the priestly garments and guilty of a capital crime!