Kamala has new products in Hebrew for the presidential candidacy

Until recently, business was slow for Michael Zorek, a retired actor who sends irreverent political buttons every Sunday to customers at the farmers market outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Some days, Zorek sold just five Joe Biden buttons. But when Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee last month, sales soared. Now, he says, he sometimes sells as many as 150 of the needles he makes on Harris in one sitting.

The uptick in sales reflects the enthusiasm Harris’ campaign has drawn and extends to one of Zorek’s specialty offerings: Harris merchandise in Hebrew—specifically, a button with a comma overlaid with the Hebrew letters “lamed” and “hay.” spelling. “to” and providing a visual primer on how to pronounce Harris’s first name.

So far, Zorek, who donates 25 percent of his proceeds to a progressive organizing group, estimates he’s sold about 30 or 40 buttons with that design. He says his rabbi asked for one, as did the neighbors in his building and even friends from abroad.

“People would send me pictures and say, ‘Oh, I think that would be a great button.’ And one of the ones we got was ‘comma-la’ with the Hebrew button,” he said. “It sells very well in our Upper West Side neighborhood.”

Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris attends a campaign event on the campus of UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., August 10, 2024. (Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN MOHATT)

Zorek isn’t the only Jewish campaign vendor who has seen massive growth since the launch of the Harris campaign. The American Jewish Democratic Council, the party’s official Jewish affiliate, says traffic to its store has increased 2,700 percent since Biden announced he was quitting. The group advertises buttons, T-shirts and tote bags with slogans such as “Momala for President” and “Kamala 2024” in Hebrew. Another, spurring Harris’s Jewish husband Doug Emhoff, says “Doug for First Mensch.”

“It just shows that there’s a lot of excitement right now, especially within the Jewish community, about this ticket,” said Jacob Spiegel, JDCA’s deputy director of communications.

The concept of the comma is an explanation of Harris’s name

The “comma-la” design that Zorek sold has been popping up all over the Jewish internet in recent weeks and mirrors a similar design that is widespread in English. Riffing on an explanation Harris herself gave in a 2019 book about how to say her first name, which comes from Sanskrit and is based on her South Asian heritage, the design plays on the discourse of how to pronounce ” Kamala” at a time when conservative activists, including the Jewish Republican Coalition, mispronounced Harris’ name.

The same comma concept has appeared on mass-produced t-shirt sites, while some creators also told JTA that they make buttons at home for their friends. Others simply share the image on social media or make it their profile picture.

No one seems to know where it came from. Katherine Falk, a web editor and designer of laser-cut jewelry, first saw the image posted on the Jewish Women for Kamala Harris Facebook group and thought it would make a great design for a pair of earrings.

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“They mentioned this guy in New York who sells designer buttons,” Falk said. “So I reached out to him and said, ‘Is that okay? Do you want to collaborate? He says, “Well, I didn’t come up with the design either! Not sure who did it! So I guess we take it as a gift for now.”

That guy was Zorek. He told JTA that he gets his design ideas via email, text and Facebook Messenger from friends, one of whom sent him a Hebrew version of the comma design.

Falk has sold four pairs of comma earrings since she started making them two weeks ago and is sending a portion of the proceeds to the Harris-Walz campaign. She also made earrings that read “vote” and “dayenu”. She created the latter, which means “enough,” to celebrate the end of Trump’s presidency.

“I’m definitely on the left politically, but I also like to do things that resonate with people,” Falk said. “And I really like the idea of saying it with earrings. I never liked wearing t-shirts with slogans on them. I love the subversiveness of having a little message on your earlobe. And I like to play with letter shapes.”

Jewish campaign products have a long history. The first known American presidential pointer targeting Jewish voters came during William Jennings Bryan’s 1900 campaign amid a wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. The button, which said, “Vote for Bryan and Stevenson,” was written in a Germanized and misspelled Yiddish. (Bryan lost to William McKinley.)

In the more than a century since then, campaign items aimed at Jewish voters have grown in variety, from buttons naming candidates in Yiddish and Hebrew to kippot and T-shirts with puns, Yiddish insults, and clever turns of phrase. A wave of Jewish products was unleashed in 2000 when the Democrats selected Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, as their vice presidential candidate. And at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton was seen wearing a button that read “Hillary” in Hebrew.

Pro-Trump vendors also sell hats, shirts, pins and stickers that say the candidate’s name in Hebrew and sometimes include the Jewish year. Other vendors sold distinctly Jewish items, such as a MAGA dreidel set with one of the four letters of the “Make America Great Again” acronym on each side. (RJC currently has only one item available in its online store, a “Proud Jewish Republican” vinyl sticker.)

For some, Harris Hebrew merchandise is falling apart. Pamela Gordon, an art consultant and historian from Canada, who also saw the Hebrew comma-la image on the Jewish Women for Kamala Facebook group, said it doesn’t quite work, in part because the two Hebrew letters can easily be misread .

“My first impression was: I didn’t recognize the comma as a comma. “I just saw ‘la’ in Hebrew, which I read as ‘lo,'” Gordon told JTA. “So for me it was ‘no.’ And since the group was about Kamala, I thought, “What does this mean? Kamala: right? To me, it doesn’t make sense.”

Gordon, who is not a US citizen, filed for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania in 2016 and moved back to Canada when Donald Trump won the election that year. She prefers a simpler Kamala item.

“They’ve incorporated the Hebrew, but there’s a bit in the Hebrew that looks like something else that’s definitely negative. So I think it’s to her detriment,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful name. I think it would be nice written in Hebrew or Yiddish, with the vowels included.”

Kamala has new products in Hebrew for the presidential candidacy

The concept of the comma is an explanation of Harris’s name

By Matthew. Jr

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Kamala has new products in Hebrew for the presidential candidacy

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