Oxymoron

It's a figure of speech which is incongruous and/or self-contradictory, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”  Something that shouldn't exist but does.

Here's an example.  I have no idea why I thought of this but I decided today that I need a lady's kippah (yarmulke) for the High Holidays.  I think it came from reading my friend Jill's blog on a pretty lace doily she found.  It looked like it would make a great lady's kippah, much better than the scrap of white lace or (gasp!) the dishtowel I wear on my head when lighting the Shabbos candles.

So I searched and bought this lovely beaded and lace kippah on eBay.  By my deep seated early training, such a thing should not exist.  But I am a modern woman, willing and able to change, adapt, or at least bend a little.  Of course it helps that it is beautiful and I will get beaucoup compliments when I wear it to shul.

There is a story that a man supposedly told Professor Susannah Heschel that "a woman belongs on the bimah (in a leadership position in the congregation or reading from the Torah) as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate."  There are oranges on many seder plates in recent decades (must remember to have one on mine next year) as a gesture of solidarity with women, gays, lesbians, widows and others who are sometimes marginalized in the Jewish community. 

An oxymoron?  No.  A beautiful change.