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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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UNC Student Newspaper Publishes Tropes About Jews and Money
In May 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine poured red paint which resembles spilled blood on the steps of the South Building, an office for administrative staff and the chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Photo: UNCSJP/Screenshot
The Daily Tar Heel, the student-led newspaper of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, recently featured commentary that some view as antisemitic.
On Feb. 26, Kyle Bublic began a column by writing, “The 2022 congressional race for North Carolina’s 4th District was puppeteered by the wallet of Benjamin Netanyahu, as he whisked away the last of our previously honest lawmakers with American Israel Public Affairs Committee money.”
The American Jewish Committee explains why it is antisemitic to allege that Jews are political puppet masters:
Myths of control portray Jews as secret puppet masters, ruling over others and manipulating the world’s economies and governments. For centuries, Jews were blamed for controlling world events behind the scenes, leading “blind” leaders into wars and debt to enrich themselves and further their own hidden agenda …
The imagery of Jewish leaders pulling the strings of politicians was featured in Nazi propaganda … Antisemitic propaganda continues to spread the idea that rich or influential Jews are behind the scenes conspiring to further their plans of world domination.
It is a serious matter to state or imply that the Prime Minister of Israel is in any way financing or directing an American election. According to Congress, “Federal campaign finance law and regulation prohibits foreign money in U.S. elections.”
I reached out to five of the paper’s editors for comment. None responded.
Later in his column, the op-ed’s author repeated the antisemitic puppet master trope, writing:
While I would like to imagine Israel’s investment into Durham and Orange County was driven by their prime minister’s love for Cosmic Cantina [a local restaurant], it seems like his motivation was more nefarious. Nida Allam, Foushee’s most fearsome competitor in the 2022 election, represented everything that makes our puppet masters shudder — a principled and young candidate fighting under a truly progressive ticket.
The student column focused on the primary election in NC’s 4th Congressional district held last week between Democratic Congressional incumbent Valerie Foushee and her challenger, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam. Israel became a major focus of this Democratic primary, with anti-Israel radicals embracing Allam.
I previously reported that in 2018, Allam tweeted, “This is the United States of Israel,” which is consistent with centuries-old antisemitic propaganda that Jews seek to dominate the world. Allam ended up issuing a public apology for her antisemitism.
The Daily Tar Heel endorsed Allam in the Nov. 3 primary. Foushee narrowly beat Allam in the election.
UNC Professor of Medicine and longtime Jewish communal leader, Dr. Adam Goldstein, told me:
It’s truly disappointing to see the UNC student newspaper endorsing a partisan description of a Congressional race in 2026 as “puppeteered by the wallet of Benjamin Netanyahu’” in 2022, with references to “Bibi’s pockets.”Such descriptions echo longstanding antisemitic tropes portraying Jews as secretly controlling political systems through money. This moves beyond criticism of a current candidate’s policies into shameful demonization of a longtime progressive Congresswoman, and those that support her, through language that is itself manipulative and corrupting.
The Daily Tar Heel’s policy page claims that it seeks “to be a leader in espousing the ethical standards of the industry [and] to serve as a beacon of journalistic integrity.” Yet, the paper fails UNC students, our community, and the people of North Carolina, by allowing these tropes about Jews and money in its pages.
Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.
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CNN Shames Itself By Shilling for Iran
Images of Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei and late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are displayed at a gathering to support Mojtaba Khamenei, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
There’s a reason why the Iranian regime, which murdered thousands of its own citizens just months ago, only allowed one American network access to the country. It picked CNN, because it thought it would get coverage either that was favorable in some way, or at least not critical.
We are no longer in the era of Mike Wallace. Not long after Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979, Wallace interviewed him in Iran. Wallace had the guts to mention that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat called him a disgrace to Islam and a “lunatic.” The Ayatollah responded by saying that Sadat was not a Muslim and was united with their enemies. He called for the people of Egypt to overthrow Sadat. Sadat was assassinated two years later.
Wallace sat on the floor during the interview, as did the Ayatollah, and asked if he could go visit the American hostages and talk to them. He was refused.
Back to now. CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen interviewed shopkeepers who said they were scared for their lives because there were bombs.
Of course, none of the people Pleitgen would interview are capable of criticizing the regime, or they’d be beaten or killed. Pleitgen himself might be killed if he reports anything the regime doesn’t want. The reports do include the line: “CNN operated in Iran only with government permission.” But that’s meaningless.
There is value to being on the scene in a war zone, but CNN, which gets much of its ratings from bashing Trump, will no doubt find citizens who will curse Trump. And no one they talk to will support the war in any way. Is simply putting in a line that you are reporting only with the permission of the government good enough? Do the ends justify the means in this case?
Pleitgen reported that “oil-filled rain” is falling from the sky. Is he able to report on what the true process was for the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new leader? Doubtful. What about the real number of its citizens they killed? Of course, they won’t get that. What about why they apologized for striking Gulf countries, and then continued to do so? If we won’t get any real answers to real questions, why is CNN really there — other than to do the bidding of the Iranian regime?
What is surprising is that I thought they’d send the CNN reporter to the girls school that was said to have been hit by American forces. Why not let him speak with some of the parents whose children have been killed? One would think this is exactly what Iran would want. That they have not done so raises suspicions. Was it a school not marked as a school, as part of an Revolutionary Guard Corps facility? Are there some discrepancies Iran doesn’t want the world to know?
It goes without saying that there is propaganda from every country in a war. It’s not always easy to get to the truth, and all countries only want certain information to be public. I’d like to know more about the Iranian ship sunk by America. Was it really unarmed when it was coming back from exercises with India? That’s what Iran says, but the US says that’s a lie. How about an interview with one of the 32 who survived? That would be an interesting interview.
If you’re going to report from an enemy country in war, can you at least have some unique and engaging content? It will be interesting to see if CNN decides to leave Iran, realizing their reputation will be hurt and it’s not worth it to aid an enemy’s propaganda war.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Self-Reliance Is Israel’s Strategic Imperative
A US Marines F-35C Lightning II is staged for flight operations on the flight deck of the US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran from an undisclosed location March 3, 2026. Photo: US Navy/Handout via REUTERS
History has taught the Jewish people many painful lessons, but perhaps the most enduring one is this: survival can never depend entirely on the goodwill of others. Alliances matter. Partnerships strengthen nations. But the responsibility for defending the Jewish state ultimately rests with Israel itself.
For decades, the alliance between Israel and the United States has been a cornerstone of Israel’s national security. This partnership has saved lives and deterred wars. Yet responsible leadership requires looking forward, not backward.
The global order is shifting. The United States faces growing domestic polarization, rising debt, and strategic competition with China that increasingly dominates its foreign policy priorities. Within parts of American political discourse, support for foreign aid in general, and Israel in particular, is no longer a consensus issue. While bipartisan support for Israel remains somewhat in place at the institutional level, the tone and intensity of the debate have changed.
This does not mean America is abandoning Israel. But it does mean that Israel cannot afford complacency.
The Jewish State was founded in the shadow of embargoes and isolation. In 1948, when the newborn nation faced invasion, it did not enjoy the luxury of dependable suppliers. Those early experiences forged a national doctrine of self-reliance. Over the decades, Israel built one of the most advanced defense industries in the world — precisely because it understood that sovereignty without military independence is fragile.
Today, Israel produces cutting edge missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow. It leads globally in unmanned aerial systems, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, and advanced battlefield technologies. Israeli defense exports reach Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including countries that once viewed Israel as an adversary. Innovation is not merely an economic asset for Israel. It is a strategic necessity.
However, critical dependencies remain. Israel does not manufacture its own fifth generation fighter jets. Its air force relies heavily on American platforms such as the F-35 and F-15. Certain precision munitions and key components are sourced from abroad. Moreover, financial frameworks tied to foreign military assistance inevitably create political considerations beyond Israel’s direct control.
If the geopolitical winds shift, even slightly, those dependencies could become vulnerabilities.
Recognizing this reality does not diminish the importance of Israel’s alliances. It strengthens them.
Israel must accelerate investment in domestic production of critical munitions, expand its aerospace capabilities, and secure independent supply chains for raw materials and advanced components. It must ensure that during prolonged conflict, it can sustain itself without waiting for external political approvals. This is not an act of isolation. It is an act of national responsibility.
Israel cannot gamble its security on the internal debates of other nations, however friendly they may be. The Jewish people returned to their homeland to reclaim agency over their destiny. That agency must extend to every dimension of national defense.
In a region where weakness invites aggression, strength guarantees peace. The strongest message Israel can send to both allies and adversaries is clear: we value partnership, but our security will never be outsourced.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.