In a recent column published by Tablet Magazine , Rabbi Avi Shafran purported to explain the "true story" of "how the yarmulke got its name." I'll excerpt the entirety of his discussion of the "yarmulke" term here. If you have ever heard and accepted the contention that the word [yarmulke] is a contraction of the Hebrew word for “fear/respect”– yir’ah , and the Aramaic word for “king”– malka –and that the word signifies the wearer’s fear of Heaven, well then, you have been had. Yarmulke ’s etymological pedigree is undeniably Polish, in which language the word jarmułka (with the stress, though, on the second syllable) still exists, and which originally referred to a skullcap worn by priests. (In Turkish, yağmurluk means a raincoat, which role a sufficiently expansive kippa , one supposes, might fulfill in a pinch.) That's it. For those counting, that's 77 words. (96 if you count the side-comment referring to the Turkish word for
There is an oft-told Hasidic tale of the Baal Shem Tov's holy fire and special prayer in the sacred forest. A concise version, borrowed from Noa Baum , follows: It is told that in every generation there are times when hope threatens to leave this world. At such times, the Baal Shem Tov, the great Jewish mystic, would go into a secret place in the forest. There he would light a special fire and say a holy prayer speaking the long-forgotten most sacred name of God. The danger was averted and hope stayed alive. In later times when disaster threatened, the Maggid of Mezrich, his disciple, would go to the same place in the forest and say, "Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, I do not know how to light the fire, but I can say the prayer." Still later, his disciple, Moshe Leib of Sasov, would go to the same place in the forest and say, , "Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, I do not know how to light the fire or say the prayer, but I found my way to thi