Walking into the Judaica shop, I was filled with a wave of anxiety. The older man behind the counter stared me down as I walked in, my eyes darting from kids books about challah to the embroidered tallitot. I wandered around for a few minutes, working up the courage. After a while, I asked “How much is this?” I felt very out of place in this store full of Hebrew letters I couldn’t read and very aware that I was being seen as a girl buying a traditionally “masculine” item—a kippah. Eventually, I paid and left the store clutching the knit, blue head covering between my hands. As I walked back to the subway, my nerves were replaced by a sense of pride and accomplishment. 

I anxiously secured my kippah to my head with bobby pins as I walked into shul the next week. I kept reaching up to check it was still there, as if I was afraid that it would spontaneously disappear, taking with it the symbolism of my identity as a queer Jew. Even though women frequently wore kippot at my synagogue, I couldn’t help but be nervous at taking what felt like a huge step for me. I was surrounded by a variety of people from different genders wearing kippot, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that, to me, this piece of clothing meant something different.  

Around this time, I had just become more comfortable with my trans identity and was starting to present myself in more masculine ways. I’d bought a binder, a suit, and an array of ties, but I felt like I was missing something. I wanted a piece of clothing that highlighted my ties to my Jewishness as well as my ties to my queerness and gender. This felt especially important because I was at a pivotal moment of reflecting on both my gender and Jewish identities.  

I wasn’t raised in a very observant household. We always lit Hanukkah candles and talked about the history of Judaism, but other than that we didn’t really engage in any religious practices. However, during my sophomore year of high school, I began participating more in the cultural and social aspects of Judaism. I went to Friday night and Saturday morning Shabbat services at synagogue with my dad for the first time in my life. I also discovered what it was like to participate in Purim and Sukkot activities with my friends through the Chabad by my school in the Bronx. I started engaging in more discussions about religion and tradition with my Jewish friends and educating my non-Jewish friends on different holidays and customs. I even attempted to learn Hebrew by using Duolingo. I was becoming more outwardly Jewish at the same time I was becoming more outwardly trans, and I felt like I needed something that symbolized both of those aspects of myself.  

To me, a kippah represented this perfectly. Traditionally, kippot are only worn by men—although that’s not true anymore—and are important for many aspects of everyday Judaism. They’re one of the most common ways that people (men, specifically) are identified visually as being Jewish. Even though I didn’t grow up in a very religious environment, I still grew up with the men in my family wearing kippot on important occasions—candle lighting on Hanukkah, Passover seders, my dad’s wedding—and having one myself felt like taking a big step into my new identity. This was the declaration of what kind of boy I was going to be, of what kind of Jew I was going to be. This one item of clothing was a bridge between these sides of my identity, bringing together two of the most important parts of myself. 

Although I have acquired other kippot, I still wear my first kippah most frequently. It looks a little weathered now, worn out in places from being scrunched into my pockets and accidentally impaled with bobby pins, but it’s by far my favorite. It’s the one I wear on holidays, the one I brought to the Rising Voices Fellowship retreat, and the one I packed in my suitcase when I had a Speech and Debate tournament in Kentucky over Passover. Even though I’ve had it for two years now, I still feel that sense of pride every time I put it on, along with a wave of gender euphoria. I feel most sure of my gender identity and presentation when it melds with my Jewish cultural identity. It’s almost as if my identity as a transmasc person and my identity as a Jew are inseparable—two halves of myself that couldn’t exist without the other, held together by a small blue circle of fabric neatly pinned to the top of my head.