How Fringes Are Helping Israeli Soldiers Fight Hamas

Jerusalem — In Israel, a small country roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey, almost everyone knows somebody who was killed — or has a friend or family member who knows someone who was killed — in Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 massacre. This reality, along with the countless rockets coming from Gaza and graphic videos of Hamas atrocities circulating on social media, has led mental health professionals to declare that the whole population — the entire country — is currently undergoing trauma.

Psychologists speak of many ways to cope with trauma or extreme stress, with one of the most important coping mechanisms being social cohesiveness and active volunteering. This has manifested on a country-wide scale, as it appears virtually everyone in Israel is volunteering for something. Restaurants dedicating their time and facilities to prepare food for soldiers and displaced Israelis, mental health professionals working with Oct. 7 survivors, civilians baking bread at home — these are some of the ways in which the war effort has firmly brought together a fractured country.

One initiative that has gained much traction in the capital city of Jerusalem is the tying of tzitzit — fringes on Jewish religious garments worn underneath a shirt — for Israeli soldiers.

The project putting this into action is overseen by Kehilat Eretz Chemda, a men’s study hall and community center geared towards the English-speaking community in Jerusalem that was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initiative began the morning after the Oct. 7 pogrom. Baruch Toledano, who is part of Eretz Chema, called the group’s founder, Alex Katz, and asked what they were doing to help with the war effort.

Determined, they headed both north and south with essential supplies, asking soldiers what they needed. Their response surprised Toledano.

“While I was on the army base I asked soldiers what they need, and they said they need tzitzit,” he recalled. The garment, worn daily primarily by religious Jews, was a request by religious and non-religious soldiers alike. “I couldn’t understand it. This is the one thing they are asking for,” Baruch said.

As more than 350,000 soldiers were called up for reserve duty, demand was big from the get-go.

Toledano explained that Israel’s army only supplies the tzitzit when soldiers first enlist for military service, and that they are not provided to reserve soldiers. This meant that the extremely small supply was not enough for the massive demand — and even if soldiers still had their tzitzit from their initial enlistment, in many cases that could have been more than 10 years ago and they no longer fit.

As a result, Eretz Chemda reached out to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, the top religious body in the country, to figure out how to solve the problem.

First, they were able to get the supply of 30,000 tzitzit from the military’s warehouses. This was a good start, but the problem was that tzitzit must be tied in a specific way to meet religious requirements. Word began to spread across the community and people showed up to their center and started to tie. “We became the place to tie … entire communities are coming to help,” Toledano said.

The support has been remarkable, Baruch said, noting the fundraiser they put together was able to cover the funds necessary for the project. The army has no budget for tzitzit outside the ones it gives to soldiers during their initial enlistment.

Volunteers for the project have come from all walks of life — some with children or grandchildren in the army, and others just eager to help. This has included entire men’s yeshivot (Jewish schools) and women’s seminaries. Most described the feeling of unity that being a part of the war effort gave them.

Eretz Chemda’s center is packed with hundreds of volunteers learning to tie, and then tying the knots for tzitzit for soldiers.

To date, they have tied more than 9,000 tzitzit and purchased another 15,000 for tying to go alongside the supply that has been received but not yet tied. To validate the work they are doing, Eretz Chema has been recognized as the official partner of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with a certificate to prove it.

This means the organization is responsible for all logistics on the civilian side, and Eretz Chemda has volunteers driving every day all across the country to deliver their freshly tied tzitzit to soldiers.

Asked why he thought this was such a popular request among service members, Toledano said the soldiers called the tzitzit their “spiritual body armor.”

“When you are in the field or on an army base with all these munitions around you, you process things differently,” he said. “They are not scared; they are warriors. But they know this will protect them.”

He added that the soldiers view the tzitzit as equally important to them as their weapons and ceramic vests.

What’s especially remarkable, Toledano added, is the excitement among non-religious soldiers to embrace the religious wear: “Religious, not religious, ultra-Orthodox — we are all brothers.”

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