Inmates at San Quentin prison celebrate a b’nai mitzvah. The ceremony, held in July 2026, was the culmination of more than a year of study for the nine participants, who ranged in age from late-30s to mid-60s. The multiracial group included men who were raised Christian or without religion, one who identifies as an Israelite, one who has been studying Kabbalah for more than 20 years, and one who wanted to learn Hebrew but became fascinated with Judaism. Rabbi Paul Shleffar, San Quentin’s Jewish chaplain, said the men had deepened their connection to Judaism while doing a form of teshuvah for their crimes.

According to an article in the July 13 New York Times, Hungarian Holocaust survivors are trying to sue entities in the country for losses suffered during the Holocaust, citing the following account that had occurred at the time: Iren Gitta Kellner was a teenager when her parents, eight siblings and hundreds of other Jews in their Hungarian town were ordered to the train station with suitcases and crammed into cattle cars by national railway workers who looted their bags on the platform.

She was sent to Auschwitz, among the more than 400,000 Jews in Hungary who were deported to the concentration camp in German-occupied Poland over six weeks in 1944. It was a notoriously brutal period of the Nazi campaign to eliminate European Jewry in World War II. Ultimately about two-thirds of Hungary’s 800,000 Jews were killed.

Ms. Kellner survived, making her way to the United States. She spent her final years fighting, unsuccessfully, for some justice, suing Hungary’s national railway for its participation in the genocide. Now a group of other survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust are hoping that American judges will hear their claims against the national railway in U. S. courts. It is not their first attempt, but it may well be one of their last, and could represent the final hope for relief for a dwindling number of living victims of the atrocities in Hungary.

Whatever happens in the U.S. courts, Ms. Kellner will not get relief. She died late in 2017. “She never lived to see a measure of justice in this case, but her courageous lifetime is a reminder that we must never forget the millions whose intentional slaughter she did survive to recount,” said Richard Weisberg, one of the lawyers representing the survivors.

Growing up, we had a rule of thumb about yarmulkes: The closer yours was to your forehead, the more strictly religious you were. The frum bochurim placed theirs practically on their noses; the boys from Conservative families bobby-pinned their kippahs on the back of their heads. The cool kids, of course, stuffed theirs in their pockets.

The Jewish skullcap, in other words, was a signifier of much more than the religious precept it embodied. Over the years, not only a yarmulke’s positioning but also its style, size and material have come to place its wearer somewhere on a continuum of Jewish identity. Trends in yarmulke wearing, then, may tell us a story about where Judaism is — forgive me — headed.

So what kind of Jew wears an $85 yarmulke, and what kind of Judaism demands it? These questions gnawed at me when I first learned about Rubenstein Paris, a new kippah couturier whose ads found me on Instagram. Available in a range of expensive-looking solid colors (copper, cream, sapphire) and fabrics (velvet, corduroy, even horsehair), “…these kippahs are here to replace your tattered souvenirs,” the ads said. “Everybody’s just walking around with their kippot from — I don’t know, Mendel and Rachel’s wedding, 2019,” Jonathan Hirsch, Rubenstein’s German-Israeli founder, told me recently. “It’s such a sacred item. Why aren’t there beautiful yarmulkas?

He’s onto something, I thought. Even as an image-conscious, Shabbat-observant millennial, I had largely neglected the yarmulke; when I wanted to look sharp, I ditched it. But when I had to clip up, I made do with whatever I had lying around. Hirsch offered to send a freebie, but at $85, accepting it felt compromising. The loaner we agreed to instead came in a branded drawstring bag, which was accompanied by a sleek black storage box. Although I’d secretly hoped for the horsehair model, the kippah Hirsch sent was more utilitarian: Ribbed velvet, golden brown, with the rise and structural integrity of one of those dome-houses you see in Architectural Digest. Velvet piping twisted around its circumference; its cloth inner lining depicted a globe and a shofar. I put it on.

The story of the kippah begins in the Talmud, when 3rd-century sage Rav Huna proclaimed that he never walked more than four cubits without his head covered to symbolize that the divine presence was always above him. After rabbinic law codified the practice in the 1500s, the kippah evolved into a marker of Jewish cultural mores. For example, 20 years ago, most Modern Orthodox boys wore black suede kippahs, but today, suede is disappearing, replaced by black velvet.

But it’s a fraught moment to be displaying any marker of Jewish identity. Wearing a kippah in public makes you subject to a certain type of attention these days: The glare of being Jewish at a time when antisemitism is on the rise. Hirsch, who is 29 and lives in Berlin, knows this firsthand — these days he doesn’t feel safe wearing a kippah in public. And yet there is a Renaissance in Judaica today driven by new designers and younger consumers finding joy in their heritage. First, ironically, then with some resignation, I found that the Rubenstein was the only kippah I wanted to wear — my fancy kippah became my everyday kippah. Putting it on was a daily treat — I was humored by the upgrade. I began picturing how gloomy and shallow life would be without it. I debated the unthinkable — ponying up to keep the loaner.

I was still conflicted about the idea of this object with sticker-shock. I put the question to Hirsch. There are very few ritual objects, he pointed out, from the kiddush cup to candlesticks to one’s tallit, that we pride ourselves on buying cheap. Why should kippot be the exception?

Hirsch was right, and I expected others to acknowledge my commitment and my sophistication. Only one person complimented me on it — my mother. Everyone else, I’m certain, was stealing covetous glances at my designer yarmulka. But I’m going to return it soon. The premium fabrics, the shofar in the lining, and the devotion it all symbolized were between me and Ha Shem.

By Lewis Keene