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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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Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader
(JTA) — Canada’s main progressive party aims to make a comeback under its new leader Avi Lewis, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
Lewis, a filmmaker and former journalist, was elected to lead the New Democrats on Sunday. He campaigned on principles that have energized the global left, including affordability, the environment and unapologetic anti-Zionism. He repeated his position on Israel in his acceptance speech in Winnipeg.
“When Israel commits a genocide in Gaza, we call it by its name, and we do everything in our power to bring it to an end,” Lewis said in his speech.
Lewis hopes to rebuild a party that suffered its worst losses in history during the 2025 federal election. Center-left voters who were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada flocked to the Liberal Party and elected Mark Carney as prime minister.
Lewis comes from a line of progressive royalty. His grandfather, David Lewis, was one of the founding members of the New Democrats and its leader in the 1970s. His father, Stephen Lewis, led the party in Ontario. He is also the great-grandson of Moishe Lewis, who was an outspoken member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Eastern Europe and immigrated to Canada in 1921.
Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, a prominent author and critic of Israel. Klein was among several writers who declined to participate in PEN America’s annual World Voices festival in 2024, saying the group failed to “stand firmly” with Palestinian writers. She also addressed protesters during a rally outside U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn during Passover that year, called “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel,” and urged Jews against worshipping the “false idol” of Zionism.
Lewis was formerly a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera. In a debate with other candidates in January, he described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said it acknowledged Lewis’ victory “with a deep sense of sadness.”
“Avi Lewis is himself Jewish, and we respect his family’s history in this party,” the group said a statement. “But Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability. When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate.”
On the eve of the New Democratic Party’s leadership convention, CIJA joined dozens of rabbis from across the country in an open letter criticizing the party.
“Too often, the NDP’s response to antisemitism in Canada has been inconsistent, hesitant, or clouded by rhetoric that fails to recognize how hatred manifests in today’s environment,” said the letter.
Perhaps anticipating Lewis’ victory, they added, “Even more troubling is the repeated elevation of fringe or non-representative Jewish voices to deflect, dilute, or dismiss the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of the Canadian Jewish community.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the top Catholic clergy in Israel be allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ahead of Easter, in an attempt to calm tensions that flared after police blocked their access.
Police cited wartime restrictions when prohibiting Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and three other Catholic representatives from visiting the church, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, a holy day for Christians.
Many holy sites in the city, including the Western Wall for Jews and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, have been closed or tightly restricted since the start of the Iran war last month because they lack bomb shelters for the number of people who typically gather there. Shrapnel from Iranian missiles have landed in the Old City multiple times, including near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the prohibitions on Pizzaballa’s access come at a time when some Christians are expressing concern that Israel is discriminating against them. A statement from the Latin Patriarchate on Sunday accusing Israel of having made a “hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations,” seemed to fuel those sentiments.
“For the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the Latin Patriarchate said. “This incident is a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem.”
Christians believe that the church is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, making prayers at the site on Palm Sunday, which kicks off the week leading up to Easter, particularly significant. Pizzaballa was seeking to pray privately at the site, not lead a major service as is typical.
Criticism over the closure resounded across the globe, including among allies of the Israeli government. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the closure as “an insult” and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “difficult to understand or justify” given that wartime rules prohibit only gatherings of 50 or more.
Soon, Israeli authorities were negotiating a special arrangement that would allow Pizzaballa and a handful of other Christian leaders access to the holy sites without opening them widely. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he called Pizzaballa personally to express his commitment to religious freedom.
“I reiterate the unwavering commitment of the State of Israel to the freedom of worship for people of all faiths and the importance of upholding the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Herzog said in a statement.
For his part, Pizzaballa downplayed the incident when speaking to a Catholic news channel. “There were no clashes, and we don’t want to force matters, but rather figure out what to do while respecting the right to prayer,” he said. “There were misunderstandings, we didn’t understand each other, and that’s what happened. It’s never happened before; it’s a shame this happened. This morning’s events are important, but we must consider the broader context. There are people who are much worse off than us who cannot celebrate for very different reasons. Once again, we are celebrating a subdued Easter.”
The police said the closure was justified because in addition to the lack of bomb shelters in the Old City, the area’s narrow and winding streets make it hard for emergency vehicles to reach anyone who might be injured in an attack.
Netanyahu said that while he understood the safety considerations involved in turning Pizzaballa back on Sunday, he had called for changes going forward.
“I have instructed the relevant authorities that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, be granted full and immediate access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” he said in a statement.
The dustup came as Pope Leo, in his Palm Sunday address in the Vatican, condemned the Iran war and lamented that Christians in the Middle East “are suffering the consequences of a brutal conflict and, in many cases, are unable to observe fully the liturgies of these holy days.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions appeared first on The Forward.
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While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons
You may not know the name Jimmy Grashow, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work. His psychedelic drawings have been featured in The New York Times, Ms. and Playboy. He illustrated album covers for The Yardbirds and Jethro Tull. His cardboard sculptures of people, animals and buildings have been shown all over the country, including at MoMA, the Library of Congress, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Within the first 30 seconds of Jimmy & the Demons, a documentary about the artist directed by Cindy Meehl, I recognized his cardboard sculptures of a dancing couple; a version lives in the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington in my home state of North Carolina.
The documentary follows Grashow as he works on his latest commission: an eight-foot tall wooden sculpture of Jesus hoisting a cathedral on his back, while demons, each one completely different from the other, reach out of the flames around his feet. The cathedral’s intricate exterior is matched by an equally elaborate interior: A mural of Eden decorates the cathedral wall and a figure resembling the piece’s commissioner Michael Marocco, a Catholic art collector who has several Grashow pieces in his private sculpture garden, kneels in prayer. If you look closely at the mural, you can see God’s name written in Hebrew on a painted banner. The cathedral’s stained glass windows are illuminated by an electric bulb.
Grashow’s work is painstakingly detailed and took years to complete, as the slightest error in measurement or cut could have ruined the whole thing. While the documentary doesn’t last for years the way the project did, it follows a similarly leisurely pace, spending lots of moments in silence with Grashow in his home workshop in Redding, Connecticut. It’s a close look at the mostly solitary work of an artist, although viewers also get a few moments to meet Grashow’s family, including his daughter who is a rabbi.
Meehl has profiled unconventional figures in her past documentaries, such as Buck, about horse whisperer Dan “Buck” Brannaman, and The Dog Doc, about holistic veterinarian Marty Goldstein. Grashow, who passed away in September 2025, three months after the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is no exception.
Despite his artistic talent, Grashow said that as a kid he “felt inadequate in every way.” Dyslexic and bad at math, Grashow struggled in his Brooklyn high school. At home, he felt overshadowed by his athletic brother and brilliant older sister. But he found a place to succeed at the Pratt Institute, where he studied woodworking, and received a Fulbright to study in Florence. There he fell in love with the cathedrals that would appear in many of his projects over the years.
Grashow did not view his sculpture of Christ as conflicting with his Jewish faith, noting the relationship between the word “Israel,” which means one who wrestles with God, and the meaning he saw in the piece.
“The world is full of peril and devils,” Grashow said. “And there you are trying to carry your faith and keep your faith alive. It’s a simple idea of trying to move forward in life with chaos and the possibility of chaos everywhere.”
“I’m wrestling all the time,” Grashow said. “It’s a brutal world.”
Grashow told the filmmakers that, when the idea for Marocco’s sculpture came to him, he “knew it was like a hineini moment,” using the term which means “here I am” and is also the name of a prayer traditionally chanted during the High Holidays, implying that one is showing up as their full self, with all of their flaws.
“It was God saying ‘Here’s this’ and it was up to me to say ‘Here I am. I’ll do it,’” Grashow said.
It was not a simple task. In addition to the years spent building the project, there was an emotional toll. Early in the film, Grashow says that the project feels like “the grand finale.” He asks that the filmmakers not share that information with his wife, Guzzy, although she later tells them herself that she feels Grashow’s time is running out.
Later in the film, the Museum Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut offers Grashow a retrospective exhibit of his work, with the new piece at the center. Grashow’s musings about death imbue the project with a sense of urgency and the proposed exhibit title is fittingly Man, Mortality: A Retrospective. However, when the museum refuses to fully fund the show, Grashow and Guzzy are left scrambling for a way to showcase his life’s work.
As Grashow wrestles with his own corporality, his art is both an escape from and an expression of his worries.
“When I’m doing demons, I know that it’s a little boy playing,” he said. “And an old man being terribly afraid.”
Jimmy & the Demons opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on April 3, 2026.
The post While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons appeared first on The Forward.