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Embracing their place on ‘the fringes,’ queer artists reimagine Jewish ritual garments for all bodies
(JTA) — Binya Kóatz remembers the first time she saw a woman wearing tzitzit. While attending Friday night services at a Jewish Renewal synagogue in Berkeley, she noticed the long ritual fringes worn by some observant Jews — historically men — dangling below a friend’s short shorts.
“That was the first time I really realized how feminine just having tassels dangling off you can look and be,” recalled Kóatz, an artist and activist based in the Bay Area. “That is both deeply reverent and irreverent all at once, and there’s a deep holiness of what’s happening here.”
Since that moment about seven years ago, Kóatz has been inspired to wear tzitzit every day. But she has been less inspired by the offerings available in online and brick-and-mortar Judaica shops, where the fringes are typically attached to shapeless white tunics meant to be worn under men’s clothing.
So in 2022, when she was asked to test new prototypes for the Tzitzit Project, an art initiative to create tzitzit and their associated garment for a variety of bodies, genders and religious denominations, Kóatz jumped at the chance. The project’s first products went on sale last month.
“This is a beautiful example of queers making stuff for ourselves,” Kóatz said. “I think it’s amazing that queers are making halachically sound garments that are also ones that we want to wear and that align with our culture and style and vibrancy.”
Jewish law, or halacha, requires that people who wear four-cornered garments — say, a tunic worn by an ancient shepherd — must attach fringes to each corner. The commandment is biblical: “Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages” (Numbers 15:37-41) When garments that lack corners came into fashion, many Jews responded by using tzitzit only when wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl, which has four corners.
But more observant Jews adopted the practice of wearing an additional four-cornered garment for the sole purpose of fulfilling the commandment to tie fringes to one’s clothes. Called a tallit katan, or small prayer shawl, the garment is designed to be worn under one’s clothes and can be purchased at Judaica stores or online for less than $15. The fringes represent the 613 commandments of the Torah, and it is customary to hold them and kiss them at certain points while reciting the Shema prayer.
“They just remind me of my obligations, my mitzvot, and my inherent holiness,” Kóatz said. “That’s the point, you see your tzitzit and you remember everything that it means — all the obligations and beauty of being a Jew in this world.”
The California-based artists behind the Tzitzit Project had a hunch that the ritual garment could appeal to a more diverse set of observant Jews than the Orthodox men to whom the mass-produced options are marketed. Julie Weitz and Jill Spector had previously collaborated on the costumes for Weitz’s 2019 “My Golem” performance art project that uses the mythical Jewish creature to explore contemporary issues. In one installment of the project focused on nature, “Prayer for Burnt Forests,” Weitz’s character ties a tallit katan around a fallen tree and wraps the tzitzit around its branches.
“I was so moved by how that garment transformed my performance,” Weitz said, adding that she wanted to find more ways to incorporate the garment into her life.
The Tzitzit Project joins other initiatives meant to explore and expand the use of tzitzit. A 2020 podcast called Fringes featured interviews with a dozen trans and gender non-conforming Jews about their experiences with Jewish ritual garments. (Kóatz was a guest.) Meanwhile, an online store, Netzitzot, has since 2014 sold tzitzit designed for women’s bodies, made from modified H&M undershirts.
The Tzitzit Project goes further and sells complete garments that take into account the feedback of testers including Kóatz — in three colors and two lengths, full and cropped, as well as other customization options related to a wearer’s style and religious practices. (The garments cost $100, but a sliding scale for people with financial constraints can bring the price as far down as $36.)
Spector and Weitz found that the trial users were especially excited by the idea that the tzitzit could be available in bright colors, and loved how soft the fabric felt on their bodies, compared to how itchy and ill-fitting they found traditional ones to be. They also liked that each garment could be worn under other clothing or as a more daring top on its own.
To Weitz, those attributes are essential to her goal of “queering” tzitzit.
“Queering something also has to do with an embrace of how you wear things and how you move your body in space and being proud of that and not carrying any shame around that,” she said. “And I think that that stylization is really distinct. All those gender-conventional tzitzit for men — they’re not about style, they’re not about reimagining how you can move your body.”
Artist Julie Weitz ties the knots of the tzitzit, fringes attached to the corners of a prayer shawl or the everyday garment known as a “tallit katan.” (Courtesy of Tzitzit Project)
For Chelsea Mandell, a rabbinical student at the Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles who is nonbinary, the Tzitzit Project is creating Jewish ritual objects of great power.
“It deepens the meaning and it just feels more radically spiritual to me, when it’s handmade by somebody I’ve met, aimed for somebody like me,” said Mandell, who was a product tester.
Whether the garments meet the requirements of Jewish law is a separate issue. Traditional interpretations of the law hold that the string must have been made specifically for tzitzit, for example — but it’s not clear on the project’s website whether the string it uses was sourced that way. (The project’s Instagram page indicates that the wool is spun by a Jewish fiber artist who is also the brother of the alt-rocker Beck.)
“It is not obvious from their website which options are halachically valid and which options are not,” said Avigayil Halpern, a rabbinical student who began wearing tzitzit and tefillin at her Modern Orthodox high school in 2013 when she was 16 and now is seen as a leader in the movement to widen their use.
“And I think it’s important that queer people in particular have as much access to knowledge about Torah and mitzvot as they’re embracing mitzvot.”
Weitz explained that there are multiple options for the strings — Tencel, cotton or hand-spun wool — depending on what customers prefer, for their comfort and for their observance preferences.
“It comes down to interpretation,” she said. “For some, tzitzit tied with string not made for the purpose of tying, but with the prayer said, is kosher enough. For others, the wool spun for the purpose of tying is important.”
Despite her concerns about its handling of Jewish law, Halpern said she saw the appeal of the Tzitzit Project, with which she has not been involved.
“For me and for a lot of other queer people, wearing something that is typically associated with Jewish masculinity — it has a gender element,” explained Halpern, a fourth-year student at Hadar, the egalitarian yeshiva in New York.
“If you take it out of the Jewish framework, there is something very femme and glamorous and kind of fun in the ways that dressing up and wearing things that are twirly is just really joyful for a lot of people,” she said.
Rachel Schwartz first became drawn to tzitzit while studying at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem in 2018. There, young men who were engaging more intensively with Jewish law and tradition than they had in the past began to adopt the garments, and Schwartz found herself wondering why she had embraced egalitarian religious practices in all ways but this one.
“One night, I took one of my tank tops and I cut it up halfway to make the square that it needed. I found some cool bandanas at a store and I sewed on corners,” Schwartz recalled. “And I bought the tzitzit at one of those shops on Ben Yehuda and I just did it and it was awesome.”
Rachel Schwartz stands in front of a piece of graffiti that plays on the commandment to wear tzitzit, written in the Hebrew feminine. (Courtesy of Rachel Schwartz)
Schwartz’s experience encapsulates both the promise and the potential peril of donning tzitzit for people from groups that historically have not worn the fringes. Other women at the Conservative Yeshiva were so interested in her tzitzit that she ran a workshop where she taught them how to make the undergarment. But she drew so many critical comments from men on the streets of Jerusalem that she ultimately gave up wearing tzitzit publicly.
“I couldn’t just keep on walking around like that anymore. I was tired of the comments,” Schwartz said. “I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Rachel Davidson, a Reconstructionist rabbi working as a chaplain in health care in Ohio, started consistently wearing a tallit katan in her mid-20s. Like Kóatz, she ordered her first one from Netzitzot.
“I would love to see a world where tallitot katanot that are shaped for non cis-male bodies are freely available and are affordable,” Davidson said. “I just think it’s such a beautiful mitzvah. I would love it if more people engaged with it.”
Kóatz believes that’s not only possible but natural. As a trans woman, she said she is drawn to tzitzit in part because of the way they bring Jewish tradition into contact with contemporary ideas about gender.
“Queers are always called ‘fringe,’” she said. “And here you have a garment which is literally like ‘kiss the fringes.’ The fringes are holy.”
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What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism
The man charged with arson in the burning of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., called the institution a “synagogue of Satan” in an interview with authorities, according to an FBI affidavit.
The phrase, originating in the New Testament book of Revelation, has been used in recent years to attack Jews, making its way into graffiti on Jewish institutions, antisemitic conspiracy theories and in far-right commentator Candace Owens’ criticism of Jewish figures.
But its meaning is not necessarily consistent: “Synagogue of Satan” has been used to refer to a supposed Jewish conspiracy to control the U.S. government, as a broad indictment of Jewish people as Satanic and as a narrow critique against Jewish people perceived as behaving badly. It has been used by Christian nationalists and by Nation of Islam leaders.
It remains unclear how the term made its way into the vocabulary of Stephen Spencer Pittman, who was arrested the day of the attack. Pittman, 19, followed dozens of Instagram accounts that share motivational Bible quotes and created a website promoting “scripture-backed fitness.” But his public social media activity apparently only turned antisemitic on Jan. 10, when he shared an antisemitic cartoon and confessed to setting fire to Beth Israel.
Origin of a slur
The book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, uses the phrase twice in a message of comfort to Jesus’ followers facing persecution, castigating “the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not.” The implication is that the early Christians’ persecutors are perverting the meaning of Judaism to further their ends.
Christian scholars note that the author of Revelations was likely Jewish. Nevertheless, the phrase has come to serve as a catch-all to justify antisemitism by claiming that Jews are inherently Satanic, or out of favor with God’s plans for the world.
Its popularization as an antisemitic term may originate in the Christian Identity movement, a group of white evangelical extremists who believe that the true descendants of Adam are the white race, and the Jews are descendants of Cain — who in their view, is the offspring of Eve and Satan. The Christian Identity movement, which dates back to the early 20th century, peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, but it left a lasting impression on far-right theology.
The influential Evangelical leader Rev. Billy Graham — known as “America’s pastor” for his ubiquitous TV presence — infamously used the phrase in a 1973 conversation with then-President Richard Nixon, who at the time was complaining about Jews purportedly controlling the US media. (Graham apologized for his comments nearly 30 years later, after a recording of the conversation became public.)
Graham’s use of the term underscored a key connection between Christian Zionism and antisemitism. He told Nixon in that recorded conversation that while he supported Israel, Jewish people didn’t understand his real feelings about them, which is that there were two types of Jews: conservative ones who supported Graham and his ministry, and the “synagogue of Satan” — liberal-minded ones and especially Jews who worked in media.
Fuel on the fire
In recent years, the term has come to be applied more creatively. Controversial rapper Jay Electronica used it in a song in 2014. Nation of Islam leader Abdul Haleem Muhammad blamed the synagogue of Satan in 2016 for a supposed plot to de-masculinize American black men through marijuana. A group of neo-Nazi agitators that has flyered neighborhoods around the country with propaganda draped a banner over a Los Angeles freeway with the phrase in Oct. 2022.
If the term can be said to have a “power user” today, it would be Owens, the far-right commentator who has promoted a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Frankism and the notion that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Owens has accused Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and “radical Zionists” of being members of the synagogue of Satan.
But Owens is merely one of a slew of right-wing agitators who have accelerated use of the term in recent months.
Andrew Torba, the chief executive officer of the far-right social media hotbed Gab, posted an entire essay last fall — titled “Naming the Synagogue of Satan” — saying Christendom was under threat because the US had been captured “with AIPAC donations” and “Hollywood propaganda.”
As recently as Dec. 2025, a far-right podcaster in Colorado called for the execution of Gov. Jared Polis and other Jewish state democrats, referring to them as “Synagogue of Satan Jews.”
Just a few weeks later, Beth Israel Congregation, the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, was slapped with the moniker the day it went up in flames.
The post What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Admin Designates Muslim Brotherhood Branches in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon as Terrorist Groups
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a US-Paraguay Status of Forces agreement signing ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
The Trump administration has designated branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan as terrorist groups, the US State and Treasury departments announced on Tuesday.
“Today, as a first step in support of President Trump’s commitment to eliminate the capabilities and operations of Muslim Brotherhood chapters that pose a threat to the United States as described in Executive Order 14362, the United States is imposing terrorist designations against the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rubio said in a statement.
The announcement came nearly two months after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
Rubio explained on Tuesday that the State Department was “designating the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), and the group’s leader Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh as an SDGT. Concurrently, the Department of the Treasury is designating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as SDGTs for providing material support to Hamas.”
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has long been affiliated with the Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Rubio added. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent similarly vowed to continue targeting the Islamist network.
“The Treasury Department is taking action pursuant to President Trump’s leadership by designating Muslim Brotherhood Branches as Terrorist Organizations,” he said in a statement. “The Muslim Brotherhood has a longstanding record of perpetrating acts of terror, and we are working aggressively to cut them off from the financial system. This administration will deploy the full scope of its authorities to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat terrorist networks wherever they operate in order to keep Americans safe.”
The State Department released a summary of the recent history behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate in Lebanon — described as “LMB (also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah)” — since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, LMB (also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah) reactivated its al-Fajr Forces and launched rockets, in coordination with Hezbollah and Hamas, from Lebanon into northern Israel,” the State Department said. “In March 2024, the Israel Defense Forces launched an attack against al-Fajr Forces operatives who were preparing to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel. In July 2025, the Lebanese Army dismantled a covert military training camp that included LMB and Hamas militants.”
The State Department revealed that “under LMB secretary general Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh’s leadership, the group has pushed for a more formal alignment with the Hezbollah-Hamas axis.”
John Hurley, treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement that the Muslim Brotherhood “has inspired, nurtured, and funded terrorist groups like Hamas, that are direct threats to the safety and security of the American people and our allies.”
In November, Texas announced the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, with its Attorney General Ken Paxton taking legal action in December to defend Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision. Last week, Paxton joined Texas to an alliance of states led by Virginia and Iowa challenging the nonprofit group American Muslims for Palestine, in an effort to “to combat Hamas terrorism.”
The State Department outlined the history of the Muslim Brotherhood’s associations with terrorist activity.
“In its 1988 founding charter, Hamas described itself as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” the department said. “Hamas conducted the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, including hundreds of Israeli civilians and at least 31 US citizens, and resulted in more than 240 people being kidnapped, including US citizens. Hamas has been designated as an FTO since 1997 and an SDGT since 2001.”
The Muslim Brotherhood branches responded to the designations in statements.
“The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood categorically rejects this designation and will pursue all legal avenues to challenge this decision which harms millions of Muslims worldwide,” the Egyptian branch said.
The LMB called itself “a licensed Lebanese political and social entity that operates openly and within the bounds of the law.”
The Trump administration has not taken action against Turkey or Qatar, two other Middle East countries with long histories of steadfast support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
In December, Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, was interviewed about the increase in terrorist violence last year and noted the role of the Muslim Brotherhood as a key factor.
“I don’t think there’s any one factor, but a complicity of factors, primarily one being the rise, or the resurrection, of the Muslim brotherhood,” Emerson said. He described how the Brotherhood has “been around since 1928, but in this country, since 1964, obviously they have become very big in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, not in its form as the MB, as it’s called, but rather in front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] and about 150 other front groups operating in the United States.”
In its designation of the Muslin Brotherhood last year, Texas also proscribed CAIR as a terrorist group, describing it as a “successor organization” to the Brotherhood and noting the FBI called it a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.”
“Around the world, there are probably more than 500 Muslim Brotherhood front groups or aid organizations that operate as ‘charities,’ but in fact, proselytize or commit acts of terrorism or funnel money to terrorism,” Emerson explained. “The rise of oil prices or the proliferation of oil money, especially by Qatar, which is the primary sponsor of Islamic fundamentalism around the world and brotherhood basically continues the operations of terrorists as full-time employees.”
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Israel Announces Departure From Several UN Agencies It Accuses of Bias Against Jewish State
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Israel will immediately sever ties with several United Nations agencies and international organizations, the Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday, accusing the bodies of exhibiting systemic bias against the Jewish state within the UN system.
In a statement posted on social media, the foreign ministry said that the decision was made following an internal examination after the United States last week withdrew from dozens of international bodies which, according to the White House, “no longer serve American interests.”
The move was approved by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who instructed officials to conduct a broader review to determine whether Israel should continue cooperating with additional international organizations, potentially leading to further shakeups.
The seven organizations that Israel will remove itself from right away are: the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNWOMEN), UN Conference for Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), UN Alliance of Civilizations, UN Energy, and Global Forum on Migration and Development.
The foreign ministry argued that each body targeted Israel unfairly.
After an examination and discussion conducted following the US withdrawal from dozens of international organizations, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs @gidonsaar has decided that Israel will immediately sever all contact with the following UN agencies and international…
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) January 13, 2026
Israeli officials said the decision to sever ties with these specific organizations was the result of a broader conclusion that parts of the UN system have been politicized and openly hostile to Israel. According to the foreign ministry, several of the bodies either singled out Israel for disproportionate condemnation, ignored or minimized Israeli civilian suffering, produced one-sided and ideologically driven reports, or provided platforms for critics while excluding Israeli participation altogether.
Other organizations were accused of undermining core principles of state sovereignty or exemplifying an unaccountable and inefficient UN bureaucracy. Collectively, the ministry argued, this repeated behavior led Israel with little justification for continued engagement and necessitated a reassessment of participation in forums it believes no longer operate in good faith.
Israeli officials framed the move as both corrective and overdue, arguing that a number of UN-affiliated bodies have abandoned neutrality and instead become platforms for political attacks against the Jewish state.
Several of the organizations cited in the US withdrawal announcement had already been cut off by Israel in recent years.
Israel ended cooperation with UN Women in July 2024, after the agency declined to address or investigate sexual violence committed against Israeli women during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The foreign ministry said the organization’s silence on the issue was unacceptable, adding that the former local head of UN Women concluded her tenure at Israel’s request.
Officials signaled that additional organizations could face similar decisions as Israel reevaluates the costs of participation in international forums it believes have become politicized.
The move comes on the heels of the US removing itself from 66 international organizations which, the Trump administration argued, behave “contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty” and promote “ideological programs that conflict with US sovereignty and economic strength.”
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over US priorities, or that address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively such that US taxpayer dollars are best allocated in other ways to support the relevant missions,” the White House said in a Jan. 7 statement.