Deir Abu Meshal, West Bank - Of all the cottage industries you might expect to find in the Israeli- occupied West Bank, the crocheting of Jewish skullcaps by Palestinian hands seems one of the oddest.
But creating the colorful cap, known in Hebrew as a "kippah," keeps hundreds of women busy in villages like Deir Abu Meshal, which have been making the religious headgear for their Jewish neighbors for some 40 years.
Almost every house in the village of 3,000 west of Ramallah makes the little caps. It's a social event as well as a helpful cash-earner. Women bring their wool and needles to each other's home to crochet and chat.
"We make qors (the Arab name for kippah translates as 'disc') while having a gossip," said Umm Ali. "We meet each other and we make money at the same time," added the mother of three, whose husband is unemployed.
The women make around five caps a day, worth about 12 shekels ($3) each.
My friend wrote me:
"Tom Friedman wrote about this in his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" (pp. 326-327) and our oldest son S, 13 at the time, was mentioned as being a high school kid who had a partnership with an Arab youth, son of the local mukhtar, to sell them in his high school."
So, voz iz neias - what really is new?
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(*) That should be not knitting but crochetting, like in the first sentence of the story
(Kippah tip: RA)
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UPDATE
Just realized what was new.
The Jews are still, after all these years, buying the kippot from this village after all the violence and terror.
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3 comments:
Nothing new here at all. In fact, it is the reason that 33+ years ago I stopped wearing the knitted ones and wore the cloth ones. All the cloth ones are made by Jews, mainly relegious ones at that and the knitted ones by Arabs. I just could not bring myself to give them even one Agurah.
"That should be not knitting but crochetting, like in the first sentence of the story"
well, if you wanna get picky, they don't use real wool for the most part either.
Aryeh Zelasko,
Check out Albert Zara's "Zara Mart" (a-zara.com). I've heard that they employ people from the FSU. Although many FSU immigrants aren't Jewish, many nevertheless are.
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