Until recently, business was slow for Michael Zorek, a retired actor who hawks irreverent political buttons every Sunday to farmer’s market patrons outside New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.
Some days, Zorek sold as few as five Joe Biden buttons. But when Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate last month, sales shot up. Now, he says, he sometimes sells many as 150 pins touting Harris in one sitting.
The surge in sales reflects the enthusiasm Harris’ campaign has drawn, and it extends to one of Zorek’s specialty offerings: Harris merchandise in Hebrew — specifically, a button featuring a comma, overlaid with the Hebrew letters “lamed” and “hay,” spelling “la” and providing a visual primer on how to pronounce Harris’ first name.
So far, Zorek, who donates 25% of his proceeds to a progressive organizing group, estimates he’s sold about 30 or 40 buttons with that design. He says his rabbi has requested one, as have neighbors in his building and even friends abroad.
“People would send me images and would say, ‘Oh I think this would make a great button.’ And one of the ones I got was the ‘comma-la’ with the Hebrew button,” he said. “It sells very well in our neighborhood on the Upper West Side.”
Zorek isn’t the only Jewish campaign vendor to see a massive bump since the Harris campaign launched. The Jewish Democratic Council of America, the party’s official Jewish affiliate, says traffic to its store has jumped 2,700% since Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out. The group advertises buttons, T-shirts and tote bags boasting slogans such as “Momala for President” and “Kamala 2024” in Hebrew. Another, boosting Harris’ Jewish husband Doug Emhoff, reads “Doug for First Mensch.”
“It just really shows that there’s a lot of excitement right now, especially within the Jewish community, about this ticket,” said Jacob Spiegel, the JDCA’s deputy communications director.
Comma-la concept is a riff on explanation of Harris's name
The “comma-la” design that Zorek sold has appeared all over the Jewish internet in recent weeks and reflects a similar design that is widespread in English. Riffing on an explanation that Harris herself offered in a 2019 book about how to say her first name, which comes from Sanskrit and draws on her South Asian heritage, the design plays on discourse surrounding how to pronounce “Kamala” at a time when conservative activists, including the Republican Jewish Coalition, have mispronounced Harris’ name.
The same comma concept has also appeared on mass-produced T-shirt websites, while some creators also told JTA they are casually making buttons at home for their friends. Others are simply sharing the image on social media or making it their profile picture.
Nobody seems to know where it came from. Katherine Falk, a web editor and laser cut jewelry designer, first saw the image posted in the Jewish Women for Kamala Harris Facebook group, and thought it would make a great design for a pair of earrings.
“They mentioned this guy in New York who is selling buttons with the design,” Falk said. “So I contacted him and said, ‘Is it OK? Do you want to collaborate?’ He’s like, ‘Well, I didn’t come up with the design either! I’m not sure who did!’ So I guess we’re taking it as a gift for right now.”
That guy was Zorek. He told JTA he gets his design ideas by email, text, and Facebook Messenger submission from friends, one of whom sent him a Hebrew version of the comma-la design.
Falk has sold four pairs of her comma earrings since she started making them two weeks ago and is sending part of the proceeds to the Harris-Walz campaign. She has also made earrings that say “vote” and “dayenu.” She created the latter, which means “enough,” to celebrate the end of the Trump presidency.
“I’m definitely on the left politically, but I also like to make things that resonate with people,” Falk said. “And I really love the idea of saying it with earrings. I’ve never really liked wearing T-shirts with slogans on them much. I like the subversiveness of having a little message on your earlobe. And I like playing with the shapes of letters.”
Jewish campaign merch has a long history. The first known American presidential pin targeting Jewish voters came during William Jennings Bryan’s 1900 campaign, amid a wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. The button, which said, “I’m voting for Bryan also Stevenson,” was written in a Germanized and misspelled Yiddish. (Bryan lost to William McKinley.)
In the more than a century since, campaign items intended for Jewish voters have grown in variety from buttons naming the candidates in Yiddish and Hebrew to kippot and T-shirts bearing puns, Yiddish insults and clever turns of phrase. A flood of Jewish merch was unleashed in 2000 when the Democrats ran Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, as the vice presidential candidate. And at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton was spotted sporting a button that read “Hillary” in Hebrew.
Pro-Trump vendors are also selling hats, shirts, pins and stickers that say the candidate’s name in Hebrew and, sometimes, include the Jewish year. Other vendors have sold particularly Jewish items, such as a set of MAGA dreidels, with one of the four letters in the acronym for “Make America Great Again” on each side. (The RJC currently only has one item available in its online store, a vinyl bumper sticker that says, “Proud Jewish Republican.”)
For some, the Harris Hebrew merch falls flat. Pamela Gordon, an art consultant and historian in Canada who also saw the Hebrew comma-la image in the Jewish Women for Kamala Facebook group, said the gag just 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 to me, it was, ‘no.’ And since the group was about Kamala, I thought, ‘What does this mean? Kamala: no?’ To me, it’s meaningless.”
Gordon, who is not an American citizen, canvassed for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania in 2016 and moved back to Canada when Donald Trump won the election that year. She prefers a more straightforward Kamala item.
“They incorporated the Hebrew, but it’s a bit in Hebrew that looks like something else that’s certainly negative. So I think that’s detrimental to her,” she said. “It’s such a nice name. I think it would be beautiful spelled out in Hebrew or in Yiddish with the vowels included.”