Like everything else right now, it’s complicated

It sometimes might seem that we’re living in a binary world; Jew or non-Jew, Democrat or Republican, Mets or Yankees, Starbucks or Dunkin’, Zionist or hater. How important what you care about sometimes seems less important than the intensity you lavish on it.

Others see the world as deeply complex. Even the most straightforward actions can be nuanced, and it is possible to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. Life is not a middle-school algebra equation.

Alex Sinclair is one of those people who can hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in his head — or on his head — at the same time.

Even his identity is complex. Dr. Sinclair is a British-born Israeli whose story fits logically in our local section because he and his wife lived in Caldwell for nearly six years when he taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary. During that time, he was an active member of Congregation Agudath Israel of Caldwell; its rabbi — now Rabbi Emeritus Alan Silverstein — encouraged him to move there. Two of his three children were born there, and he both taught and did research at the school that’s now the Golda Och Academy.

Dr. Sinclair is a Jewish educator, a lecturer at the Hebrew University, and a consultant for many Jewish educational organizations. He writes both nonfiction and fiction. The nonfiction, unsurprisingly, is about Jewish education, and his two thrillers combine dizzying plots with observations about Israeli life and offer glimpses into his hopeful politics.

He grew up in north London, in the bustling New North London Synagogue; it’s Masorti, as the Conservative movement is called outside North America. He made aliyah in 1997; he’s 53 now.

He’s been in the news because of his kippah, a small tangible symbol of his nuanced beliefs.

“I didn’t grow up wearing a kippah,” Dr. Sinclair said. “I decided to start wearing one many, many years ago, when I was in my early 20s, for all sorts of reasons. Part of it was that I got more serious about my Judaism, but it’s always been complicated for me.” That was because wearing a kippah broadcast a message that he thought was partly true and partly untrue. It was true that he was wearing it as an outward token of his Jewishness, and his acceptance of the burdens and the promise that it symbolized. But it wasn’t true that his Jewishness was exactly consonant with the Jewishness that people would assume it would be his when they saw him.

It’s complicated.

He told a story. “I was in Israel in 1995. That was the November when Rabin was assassinated. I remember walking around the streets of Jerusalem shortly after the assassination. I was wearing my regular kippah,” which bore the Peace Now logo. “Somebody stopped me and said, ‘How can you wear a kippah with a Peace Now badge on it? They contradict each other.’

“That was one of the first times that I had a conversation with someone where I was able to talk about how I don’t feel that they contradict each other, but I know that most Israelis do.

“At that point I got increasingly ambivalent about wearing a kippah, because of the kinds of political and religious assumptions that people make about you when you wear one. I’m not Orthodox, I’m egalitarian, I’m not pro-settler.”

But he still wanted to wear a kippah.

“So then I came up with this idea,” he said. “I’ll have a kippah with both flags on it — an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag — and that’s a way of saying, listen, I’m wearing a kippah for religious reasons, and I’m not quite who you think I am.”

He drew the design, took it to a kippah shop in Jerusalem’s Old City, and soon had his bespoke item. That one eventually wore out, so he went back to the shop and ordered another.

The kippah often starts a conversation with people who see it. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they argue, sometimes they leave the conversation slightly changed. Sometimes people get angry, but Mr. Sinclair is not a brawler. There have been no fights. He wore it almost all the time, except on Shabbat — a time to put aside all politics — at airports — because flying is fraught enough without any extra complications — and in hospitals or doctors’ offices, because the Israeli hospital system is famously apolitical, safe, and welcoming for both Jews and Arabs.

So, “it’s been a complicated thing to walk around with, but overall, it’s been a significant part of my life,” Dr. Sinclair said.

That gets us to what happened last week.

Dr. Sinclair lives in Modi’in, close enough to the center of town to walk there. That’s what he did that day. “I was sitting outside a café — I’d had coffee with a friend, and he’d just left — when a guy starts shouting at me,” he said. “‘Your kippah is against the law!’ I tried to engage him in conversation, but he stormed off, and he yelled, ‘I am going to call the police!’

“I thought nothing of it. But then, five minutes later, the police came. They said that the kippah is against the law, because it is a hasatah. An incitement.”

It is not illegal to display a Palestinian flag, Dr. Sinclair said; the Supreme Court has been clear on that. “But under the direction of Ben-Gvir, the police have said that displaying the flag can be illegal if it’s incitement.” (Itamar Ben-Gvir is Israel’s right-wing minister of national security.) “That’s the legal loophole they use — that it might not be against the law, but incitement is against the law, so therefore this is incitement. It’s a code word.

“So the police came over, and they said, ‘We’re detaining you.’

“They take me in a police car, bring me to the police station, and they take all my stuff. I say that I want to make a phone call, I want to call my wife, and they said that I could do that later.”

Dr. Sinclair had never been arrested before, all he knew about the process was from television and movies, but this didn’t seem quite right.

“They put me in a cell, and I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. He didn’t have his phone, or anything else. He didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t know how long he’d be there. He was unnerved.

“After about 20 minutes they took me out of the cell, and they gave me all my stuff back — except my kippah. I said, ‘Can I please have my kippah back? It’s my property.’ And the policewoman said, ‘No. Either you go now, without it, or we will put you back in the cell by force.’

“They said that a lot, either you come with us quietly or we will take you by force.

“So I simply said, ‘I don’t want to go back in the cell, and I don’t want any force, but I do want my kippah back. That is my kippah.’

“She said, ‘You want it back?’ And then she goes into the police station and comes out again in like 10 seconds, having cut the Palestinian flag out of the kippah. Then she gives it back to me and sends me on my way.”

How did Dr. Sinclair feel then? Outrage? “No, what I felt then was relief,” he said. “I was stuck in that cell. I had no idea for how long. I had no idea what was going on. Was I going to be there overnight? Was I going to be put in a different prison. What the hell is going on?

“When I was back in the street, walking, with my mutilated kippah, I felt a lot of relief. But then, mixed up in it, was anger and outrage. And also determination. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, I have to speak to a lawyer. I have to file a complaint. I wasn’t going to take this lying down.”

Dr. Sinclair has consulted with a lawyer, and he still is deciding what his next step might be. There are some laws that the police seem to have broken, he said, but the first recourse is to complain to the police department, although that route rarely gets anyone anywhere. But he talked to a journalist, and he posted the story on Facebook.

“I’m not a big social media person,” he said. “Usually, I post on Facebook once a year, when I release a book, and three and a half people give me a thumbs up, and that’s it.

“But the whole thing went crazy. It went viral. There have been memes about me, and cartoons and comedy skits about this thing. And somebody made a video game out of it, ‘Cut the Kippah.’ It’s going nuts. It’s nuts.”

Dr. Sinclair plans to get another kippah. He doesn’t know if the shop that made him his first two-flag kippot will do it again; he’ll try there first, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll look elsewhere. He’s not worried about being able to find someone who will make the kippah.

He is struck by how raw a nerve his story seems to have struck. He is grateful for the opportunity to explain what the kippah means to him.

“I am a Zionist,” he said. “That is the first thing that I’ve been stressing. I am a Zionist. I believe in Israel’s right to exist and to thrive and to flourish. I want that. I chose to live here. I have three children in the army.

“I am unapologetically a Zionist. I believe that the Jewish people has a legitimate historical connection to this part of the world. I believe that we are a people who have the right to national self-determination. That’s why I chose to move here and live my life here.

“And I also believe that the Palestinians are also a people with a right to national self-determination. Through the ironies of history, they also have a legitimate historical connection to this part of the world.

“History has played a trick on the Israelis, on the Jewish people, and on the Palestinian people. Through the ironies of history, we both have a connection here. We both have a legitimate right to self-determination. Being a Zionist does not contradict also believing in Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”

He is fully, painfully aware of the opposite ways that belief plays inside and outside Israel.

“In America now, in the U.K., in other places around the world now, it is controversial to say that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination. On the progressive left, they say that the Palestinian people have that right. They have a historic connection to the land. But the Jews — no. They don’t.

“So in Israel having those flags together is a statement against the right wing, and outside it’s a statement against the anti-Zionists. It’s saying, guys, you need both of those flags. It’s a powerful message.”