The second issue of Litushim magazine is being published just after the 500th day of the Iron Swords War and after the abduction of 251 Israeli citizens. As of this writing, there are still 63 hostages, 36 of whom have been declared dead, are still being held captive by Hamas. Grief, pain, and worry reside on both sides of the border, in the war zones and on the home front.
During these 500 days, we continue with our private lives—working, studying, loving—while simultaneously embodying the war: carrying within us pain, worry, despair, anger, and fracture. We wake up to the news and fall asleep to it; we constantly worry for our loved ones and for those we have never met, while at the same time trying to hold onto hope for the return of all the hostages, for better days than these, for peace.
We exist in a time of sorrow, a physically, mentally, and morally challenging period, and perhaps for that reason, we cling to anything that can symbolize hope and pin it on our chest.
We have all noticed that over the past sixteen months, the Israeli public space has been flooded with jewelry: around necks, wrists, earlobes, and lapels, political, national, social, and moral positions are being displayed. We are in turmoil—as a people, as a society, as individuals. We declare our stances through adornments in a variety of forms and materials.
We know that jewelry carries emotional, social, and political weight. It marks us outwardly while simultaneously functioning as a source of inner strength. Sometimes, it keeps a secret or preserves a memory. Despite their small size—or perhaps because of it—jewelry pieces hold immense emotional power (anyone who has ever forgotten to wear a ring they wear daily understands this).
Lapel pins and other jewelry have long been tied to military and wartime contexts in Israel: ranks and unit insignia are military decorations that signify belonging; war medals mark the end of conflicts, usually victories; and on Memorial Day, we save this place on our garment to a sticker with a picture of the Red Everlasting flower (Blood of the Maccabees, in Hebrew). Over the past decade, politicians from across the political spectrum have made a point of wearing small Israeli flag lapel pins. Yet, in daily civilian life, the Israeli lapel has largely remained unadorned.
Since October 2023, during an ongoing war without victory, we have clung to symbols of hope, and the lapel has become a site of action—where the national and personal, political and social, collective and individual intertwine. The symbols worn by the Israeli public are not memorial symbols (for we cannot forget what is still happening), but rather an expression of collective belonging to a shared fate, as well as a shared hope.
The first of these symbols were the yellow wristbands tied around wrists, marking public space with the call to bring the hostages home NOW.
Then came the 3D-printed yellow ribbon pins, designed and produced by Shaul Cohen, followed by solidarity soldiers tags engraved ‘Our Heart is in Gaza, Bring Them Home’, designed by Gal Pichowicz. These were distributed and sold in the hundreds of thousands within days of the war’s outbreak.
Over time, the Israeli public space became filled with an endless variety of ribbon pins, pendants of the Star of David and maps of (greater) Israel, in every possible combination. Some were mass-produced and cheap, others meticulously crafted with gold, enamel, gemstones, and diamonds. Fascinating, strange, beautiful, or ugly combinations of design languages and materials, symbols and texts, stains and lines—expressions of creativity by individuals. A pin can engage in a formal dialogue with the random fashion brand imprinted on the clothing it is attached to, as seen in a photograph taken by Esther Knobel in Tel Aviv this month.
We are witnessing the golden (and plastic) age of jewelry in Israeli public space, an unprecedented proliferation of forms and materials. Every outing into the public sphere confronts us with these clear, legible symbols, placing us within our new reality—where the lapel becomes a site of stance-taking, a declaration of intent, and an expression of national belonging.
In such a charged moment, one must ask whether these symbols are being emptied of meaning due to their widespread and massive use, as suggested by Nissan Shor in Haaretz (Haaretz newspaper, June 10, 2024). Similarly, Zehava Galon wrote in an op-ed for the same newspaper that the hostage symbol pin has become nothing more than a “yellow pin on the lapel of a thief’s suit” (Haaretz newspaper, January 15, 2025).
Esther Knobel has been observing local jewelry making for over fifty years. She describes this phenomenon as a unique moment of collective “adornment.” A brief brainstorming session between us led to the idea of mapping this phenomenon by creating a collaborative image archive. This is an opportunity to release the political and aesthetic debate and approach the phenomenon of jewelry/symbols/messages in our shared space with empathy.
From the earliest days of this war, the parents of the late Hirsch Goldberg-Polin and other families of the hostages, wore what became their identifying symbol, later adopted by protest circles in Hostages Square—a strip of masking tape marked with the count of days. Since then, they continue to wear their mourning and grief like a snake’s shed skin that refuses to detach from the body. On day 491, when three hostages were released, I met a friend on her way to the protest square—the number of days she had pinned to her coat momentarily resembled a yellow badge from the holocaust, while above it, the Pink Front butterfly pin managed to hold onto hope with a glimmer of optimism. In plastic.
We invite all members of contemporary metalsmithing and jewelry in Israel to serve as the visual seismograph of our field—to observe and document this collective adornment in the Israeli public space. You are welcome to share with us street photographs related to jewelry’s presence in our environment, and together, we will create a collaborative image archive of the jewelry of this time.
We would be happy to receive photographs of jewelry and symbols worn in public, along with the following details: photographer credit and date of capture. Please send your images to Litushim magazine at this email: litushimmagazine@gmail.com.
For better days ahead,
Michal Oren & Esther Knobel
