When I was in high school, I stopped wearing my kippah.
I felt myself drifting away from the ultra-Orthodox community of my childhood and the Modern Orthodoxy my parents tried to model for me at home. I stopped wearing my kippah because I wanted to disaffiliate from the Orthodox Jews that filled New York City — I wanted to be anonymous. Faced with the sudden realization that I didn’t want to be Orthodox, I made the decision to ensure that, unless I was in school or with my family, I would try and pass as not Jewish — or, at the very least, as not Orthodox. I did not want to be associated with the people who made fun of my cousins at my bar mitzvah for not wearing kippot, who made fun of me for attending a coeducational high school, or who looked down upon other Jews as lesser.
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