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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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Tucker Carlson on Israeli TV: US, Israel Are ‘Not Democracies,’ Israel ‘Most Violent Country in the World’
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson came under fire after appearing on prime-time Israeli television and accusing both Israel and the US of betraying democracy, calling Israel “probably the most violent country in the world” and saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dragged President Donald Trump into the war with Iran.
In an interview with Channel 13 anchor and senior political analyst Udi Segal aired on Tuesday night, Carlson also repeated his claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to “genocide,” while saying the wording mattered less than what he described as the killing of civilians. The country had “definitely lost its morality,” he said.
When Segal pushed back, Carlson responded, “Israel has murdered all these children, thousands of children in Gaza. But the real criminal is me because I describe that as genocide. OK, it’s not genocide. It’s killing innocents. It’s wrong. You can call it genocide or ethnic cleansing. You can call it a crime, a sin, an atrocity. I don’t really care.”
Israel treats “Arabs like animals or sub-humans,” he added, not mentioning that Arabs, who comprise about 20 percent of Israel’s population, hold full political and civil rights and regularly serve at the highest levels of the government.
“That is not an attack on Jews,” Carlson continued. “Israel does not represent all Jews, despite its claims. It does not. That is factually incorrect, and you know it.”
The vast majority of Jews globally support Israel’s right to exist, with polls consistently showing that roughly 70% to 90% of Jewish adults feel an emotional attachment to the country and believe it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. A recent Washington Post survey found that 76% of American Jews believe Israel’s existence is vital for Jewish survival.
The full, exclusive interview: @TuckerCarlson speaks with @usegal on Israel’s @newsisrael13
– What’s behind his retreat from supporting Trump?
– Responding to antisemitism claims (and why did he host Nick Fuentes?)
– The war in Iran & Gaza
– Does he think Israel is trying to… pic.twitter.com/tnFcxJmYYC— Yosef Yisrael (@yosefyisrael25) May 19, 2026
Carlson said he believed both the US and Israel were failing their own citizens.
“I would like a democracy in the United States like I’d like one in Israel. Israel is not a democracy; the United States apparently is not a democracy either. Our government keeps doing things that people don’t want, so that’s not democracy; it’s the opposite of democracy.”
“Of course, Israel is not a democracy in any sense. There are millions of people who live under Israeli control who cannot vote,” he told Segal. “These places which Israel has controlled since 1967 have people living in them who have no control over the government that controls their lives, which is true, it’s not a democracy.”
Israel “is probably the most violent country in the world,” he said.
When Segal said Israel was acting in self-defense, Carlson responded that “no country has boasted more about killing its political opponents than Israel.”
“Israel makes a public relations campaign out of boasting about killing its opponents.”
Carlson also accused Trump of yielding to Netanyahu over Iran.
“Why did Trump let a nation of 9 million people drag a nation of 350 million people into a war that would change its future, and that is bad for the United States?”
“It’s wrong that I’m paying for Israel’s actions,” he said. “There’s no reason the United States should be sending any money at all to Israel and particularly not to its military.”
The Israeli prime minister pushed the US president, he said, “who turned out to be far weaker than I understood, into a war that hurts the United States.”
The White House issued a statement to Israel’s Channel 13 on Wednesday saying Carlson “is a low-IQ person who spreads fake news for cheap publicity.”
“Long before he was elected, President Trump has been consistent in his belief that Iran can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon,” the statement said. “Israel has always been a great ally to the United States, especially through Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury that obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities and destroyed their defense industrial base. President Trump took bold, decisive action to protect the American people — something presidents have talked about for 47 years, but only this president has had the courage to address.”
Carlson’s appearance came after a lightning trip to Israel in February for an interview with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, part of an escalating feud in which Carlson has increasingly singled out evangelical Christian Zionists as a political target. The visit drew further criticism after Carlson used it to amplify a series of conspiracy claims, saying he was mistreated by Israeli authorities, while never actually leaving Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Commentators on social media pointed out that Carlson’s posting “Greetings from Israel” from an airport logistics zone, then flying out, does not amount to visiting the country in any ordinary sense.
Carlson’s brief trip to Israel contrasts with his interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024, when he spent multiple days in Russia praising the country on video and infamously marveling at the use of locks on shopping carts — a common feature in Europe.
The podcaster’s visit to Israel also differed from his trip to Doha in December, when he interviewed Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and revealed his plans to purchase a home in the country. Qatar has been a long-time backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian offshoot Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Carlson has ramped up his anti-Israel content over the last year, according to a study released in December by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), which tracked the prominent far-right podcaster’s disproportionate emphasis on attacking the Jewish state in 2025.
In September, for example, the podcaster appeared to blame the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and suggested Israel was behind the assassination of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
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Slain Security Guard of California Mosque Engaged Gunmen in Shootout, Hailed as Hero
A man places a candle on the ground as he pays his respects in front of the Islamic Center of San Diego after the vigil in a park, the day after a fatal shooting incident, in San Diego, California, US, May 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Daniel Cole
The security guard slain at the Islamic Center of San Diego was hailed on Tuesday as a fallen hero who sacrificed his life to keep 140 school children inside the mosque safe by engaging two gunmen in a shootout that deterred the teenage suspects and helped thwart their attack.
Authorities also disclosed that the 17- and 18-year-old assailants, who took their own lives shortly after Monday’s shooting, were believed to have met online and were apparently “radicalized” in hate-related ideology on the internet.
Late on Tuesday, CNN reported that it had obtained and reviewed graphic video purported to be footage of the mosque shooting recorded and livestreamed by the two suspects, including a final clip that appears to show one of the gunmen shooting his companion and then himself.
A day after the gun violence, police, FBI, and other officials held a news conference focused on the three victims, all men affiliated with the mosque, who were slain in the attack and credited with putting themselves in harm’s way to save others.
The security guard, Amin Abdullah, 51, also known to friends as Brian Climax, immediately recognized the two youths as a threat and opened fire on them as they ran past him outside the mosque, according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. The suspects then paused to return fire, Wahl said.
Abdullah wound up fatally shot in the parking lot, along with two other men who distracted the suspects after they stormed into the building, drawing their attention through a window, thus luring the two teens back outside, Wahl said.
TWO MEN LURED GUNMEN OUTSIDE
The two other victims, mosque elder Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Uber driver Nadir Awad, 57, a neighbor whose wife worked as a teacher at the school there, were cornered and shot to death in the parking lot by the gunmen when they re-emerged.
In the midst of the confrontation, it was Abdullah who transmitted the radio call that activated a security lockdown, which Wahl said also prevented further bloodshed there.
The gunfight and the security alert gave others in the building time to take shelter behind locked doors, Wahl said, while Kaziha and Awad coaxed the suspects out of the building. Kaziha also was the first person to call 911 emergency before he was shot, police said.
Minutes before officers from around California‘s second-most-populous city converged on the mosque, the two suspects fled by car. They were found dead in their vehicle a short time later several blocks away, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
Wahl singled out Abdullah for special praise of his “heroic action,” adding that at first, “I had no idea how heroic those actions were.”
“His actions, without a doubt, delayed, distracted, and ultimately deterred those two individuals from gaining access to the greater areas of the mosque where as many as 140 kids were within 15 feet of these suspects,” Wahl said.
Taha Hassane, the imam and director of the Islamic Center, called all three of the victims “our martyrs and our heroes.”
Addressing a separate news conference at a local park, the security guard‘s daughter, Hawaa Abdullah, offered prayers and paid a tearful tribute to her father as a man who doted on his family and was so dedicated to his job that he would not break for meals when he was on duty.
She called on people of all faiths to honor him by coming together and being kind. “He stood against any form of hate,” she said.
PURPORTED LIVESTREAMED VIDEO OF SHOOTING
Police and FBI have said that they are investigating the attack as a hate crime but have declined to offer details about a possible motive.
“What I can say is [the suspects] definitely had a broad hatred towards a lot of folks,” FBI special agent Mark Remily told reporters.
Although authorities have not officially named the two suspects, the gunmen have been identified as Caleb Vasquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, a Department of Justice official told Reuters.
Remily said one of the gunmen left behind a manifesto, but he declined to characterize it in detail.
CNN reported that a 75-page manifesto from the gunmen citing racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic ideology, as well as “incel” culture, was under scrutiny by investigators.
The cable network said it had obtained a copy of the document from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies extremism, along with a video the two gunmen appeared to have recorded during their attack and posted to the internet in real time.
Summarizing the video in writing according to an AI-generated description of the footage, CNN said White supremacist symbols were visible on the two attackers’ guns and clothing as they are seen moving through the Islamic Center, with one firing a rifle before they walk back outside, fire a pistol, and then appear to stand over someone lying in a pool of blood.
CNN said it geolocated the final moment of the video to the neighborhood where police found two teens dead from gunshot wounds inside the getaway car. The footage ends with the driver stopping the vehicle, then appearing to shoot his passenger before shooting himself, according to the network.
A copy of a video that appears to match CNN’s written summary began circulating online on Tuesday.
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Israel Takes Step Toward Snap Election as Knesset Votes to Dissolve
Israeli politicians react following a vote to dissolve the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, before the end of its term, at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, May 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel moved closer on Wednesday to a snap election after lawmakers gave an initial nod to dissolve parliament, with opinion polls showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose the first national vote since the 2023 Hamas attacks.
Lawmakers voted almost unanimously for an early ballot in a preliminary reading of a bill to disband the 120-seat Knesset. If it receives final approval, a process that could take weeks, Israel could hold an election several weeks ahead of an Oct. 27 deadline.
Netanyahu’s own coalition submitted the bill to dissolve parliament after an ultra-Orthodox faction traditionally close to the Israeli leader accused him of failing to deliver on a promise to pass a law exempting their community from mandatory military service.
NETANYAHU BEHIND IN POLLS
Some 110 members of parliament voted in favor of the bill to dissolve, with no opponents or abstentions. It now heads to committee where an election date is agreed, before going back to the Knesset for final approval.
The vote comes at a pivotal time for Netanyahu, Israel‘s longest-serving prime minister who leads the most right-wing government in his country’s history.
Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran, fronts that remain volatile and could have an impact on the election.
Netanyahu still faces a long-running corruption trial. Israel‘s President Isaac Herzog is mediating talks to broker a plea deal in the case, which could see the 76-year-old Netanyahu retiring from politics as part of the deal.
Netanyahu’s health could also be an issue. He recently disclosed that he was successfully treated for prostate cancer and in 2023 he was fitted with a pacemaker.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, polls have consistently shown Netanyahu’s governing coalition falling far short of a parliamentary majority.
However, there is also a chance that opposition parties will fail to form a coalition, leaving Netanyahu at the head of an interim government until the political stalemate is broken.