A tembel hat (Hebrew: kova tembel, כובע טמבל) is a hat which is an Israeli national symbol. Unlike the bucket hat, used as a heavy duty hat by the Israeli military, it has no loose edge for shadowing the face and the neck. Like the bucket hat, it is easy to fold it into one's pocket but, since it is smaller, one does not need the big pockets of the military uniform in order to put it in the pocket. It can fit into any pants pocket.
The tembel hat was commonly worn by Jews in the Holy Land from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s. In Israeli cartoons it is still used to symbolize the typical Israeli (e.g., the cartoon character Srulik).
In Hebrew slang, tembel means silly or fool[1]. However, it is not known whether the slang term was named after the hat or the hat after the slang term. There is a theory that the tembel hat was originally the heavy duty hat of the Templers Christian movement that was active in Palestine at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century. By this theory the hat's first name was "Templers' hat," but it was changed to "tembel hat" by the Arabs who could not pronounce the P and the correct vowels.[2] However, it is more likely that the name "tembel hat" derives from the Turkish or Ottoman word "tembel" which means lazy.[3]
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