InAshkenazi Jewish tradition, akolpik is a type of traditional headgear worn in families of someChassidicrebbes (Hasidic rabbis) ofGalician orHungarian dynastic descent, by their unmarried children on the Sabbath (Shabbat), and by somerebbes on some special occasions other than Shabbat ormajor holidays.[1]
The kolpik is made from brown fur,[2] as opposed to aspodik, worn by Polish Chassidic dynasties, which is fashioned out of black fur.[3] Ashtreimel, another similar type of fur hat worn by Hasidim, is shorter in height, wider, and disc-shaped, while a kolpik is taller, thinner in bulk, and of cylindrical shape.[3]
It is seen as an intermediate level garment between Shabbat and weekday dress.[2]
The days that somerebbes don a kolpik include:
It is often thought that Jews adopted wearing fur hats from the Eastern Europeans,[4] possibly from the nobility.[5] In his memoirA World Apart: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Nineteenth Century Galicia,Joseph Margoshes (1866–1955)[6] writes regarding RabbiShimon Sofer's election to theImperial Council of Austria:
The election of the Krakow Rabbi to the Austrian Reichstag made a tremendous impression on the entire Jewish world, ... It gave them enormous pleasure to see even a single Rabbi achieve the major honour of sitting among so many great personages, clad in a finecalpac amid such esteemed gentlemen. The poor things did not know that thecalpac was part of historic Polish dress, and that many Poles, especially extreme nationalists, would wear these samecalpacs at their meetings.[7]
Media related toKolpiks at Wikimedia Commons