By Hadar Katsman, Features Editor
Shortly after October 7, 2023, supporters of Israel began wearing military-style dog tags — often used as identification cards for soldiers — on necklace chains. For many, myself included, it symbolized solidarity with the hostages who were ripped from our arms and the hundreds of soldiers who gave their lives to recover them and to demilitarize the Gaza Strip.
The tags are typically inscribed with Hebrew and English slogans like, “Our hearts are held hostage in Gaza,” “Together we will win” and “Bring them home now.” It’s hard not to feel the unity that silently ripples off the tags. An older American woman who was quoted in the Jerusalem Post summed up the sentiment: “I stand with you, I hold your hand in your grief. That’s what it means to me.”
I had just begun my seminary year in Israel when October 7 happened. Seeing throughout the year how widespread the tags were and that the messages they conveyed were meaningful, I purchased a tag from a kind vendor in Machane Yehuda on my last day of seminary, hoping to continue the solidarity in America. A part of my heart would forever remain in Israel and connected to the war.
Every time I felt the tag’s piercing cold metal on my skin, I directed my heart and thoughts towards Israel. At camp, the grocery store, even Six Flags, there was rarely a day — with the exception of Shabbos and yuntif — that I did not wear it.
I lit up whenever someone inquired about my tag, either out of recognition or curiosity. Once, in a Banana Republic on Staten Island, I struck up a light conversation in Hebrew with an Israeli mother and her children who had noticed my tag. I was an American college student and she was an Israeli mother — there were many differences between her and I. She did not know me, but my tag was shouting, “We may be different but we are on the same side in this war. We are in this together.” Symbols do not only display where one’s allegiances and values lie. They unite as well.
Wearing the tag quickly became my way of silently advocating, and I internally wished that strangers would approach me with questions or even to debate the war, though no one ever did. Putting on that necklace became as much a part of my morning routine as brushing my teeth.
But as time passed, the tag stopped transporting me back to that place of unity and solidarity. I could go a whole day wearing it without realizing it was there amidst my classes and social life. Part of that made me feel guilty and the other part made me feel numb, because the girl who purchased that necklace in Machane Yehuda wasn’t the same girl a year later.
I had left Israel fresh out of seminary and bought a tag in the hopes that it would safeguard my connection to the war. Wearing the tag was how I brought the war home with me. Yet the longer I was away from Israel, the less the war occupied my mind.
I reluctantly accepted that the necklace was not sustaining my connection to the war anymore. What worked was not tangible symbols but active awareness and prayer. It was hard to make time to read hundreds of notifications from my WhatsApp news outlets, but when I did, I felt much more connected knowing what was going on, even when information was painful to hear. It was reciting Tehillim (Psalms), it was reading biographies of soldiers who were killed in Gaza and Lebanon, it was singing about an ultimate redemption that I could feel was just around the corner and whose arrival I yearned for — that was what kept me connected.
It was a relief to not put on my tag one morning. When I finally stopped forcing myself to rely on it to continue my connection with Israel, I felt like I could breathe.
But it also felt unjust. I was wearing the tag as a symbol of the war and in merit of the hostages’ release, so it felt so innately wrong to remove it before the war was over.
I was caught up in a symbolic movement, wearing a tag because it was a “trend,” a “thing” to remember the hostages by, and it eventually made wearing my tag feel very performative, to the point where I began to dread wearing it. There is nothing wrong with wearing a solidarity symbol, but I believe there needs to be an authenticity behind it.
This did not mean that a year’s worth of growth and strengthened connection to Israel was automatically erased when I eventually removed my tag from my wardrobe. My tag was the vessel through which I connected to the war after seminary, but I was no longer connected to the war in that way. Perhaps I was caught up in the emotions of leaving seminary and was hanging onto any physical remnant of my time in Israel. Perhaps I knew I did not know the next time I would return and I wanted to take something back with me as consolation. Perhaps I continued to wear it because even when I did not have kavanah (intention) in the prayer Shemah Koleinu (“Hear our voice”) every time I davened, I had this necklace to fall back on, to comfort myself. You’re still thinking about the hostages. I know it’s hard to concentrate on them all the time but deep down you don’t want to continue on as if nothing ever happened. I pressured myself to wear the tag everyday, as if something were “wrong” with me if I stopped before the hostages all returned.
But, in all honesty, why I pushed away my tag went beyond the fact that it no longer connected me to the war and became performative. To put it simply, I was embarrassed to wear it. Not in front of strangers or anti-Israel supporters. No, that was when I felt like I was doing my part in activism, even if silently. I was embarrassed to wear it in front of my fellow Jews and supporters of Israel.
To my surprise, when I returned to America, most people were not wearing the tags, which led me to question why I was wearing one in the first place. I mentioned that I did not like to wear my tag on Shabbos or yuntif. It was because, deep down, I quietly admitted: it’s just a symbol, and on these holy days, I did not want to ruin my outfit with a chunky piece of metal.
Symbols wield immense power. However, wearing the tag every single day, at any place, at any event that was not an Israel-related gathering or to hear a war-related speaker, felt like I was waving a giant flag around all the time that received odd looks in return. Even though I truly believe no one was judging me, I felt like they were thinking, “Don’t be so excessive. Go to the speakers, keep praying, but what’s wearing that symbol going to do?”
Symbols can mean different things to different people. For me, the tag facilitated my connection to the war in Israel from America. But not everyone feels the need to wear a dog tag to remind them of the hostages. I understand that now because I no longer do either.
Everyone had their own ways of connecting during the war. I know girls who did not sleep with a pillow for two years to remind them of the horrible conditions of the haunting tunnels the hostages were thrown into. My love for Israel and the Jewish people was rooted in my connection to the war because the war broke out a month into my first time in Israel. The way I believed I could stay connected was through wearing a dog tag on a chain that represented all of those emotions to me and urged me to stay connected.
But when the symbol became performative, I questioned the point in wearing it at all. Wearing a piece of metal that no longer strongly impacted me was inauthentic. What used to speak to me no longer did, not in the ways I needed. And I learned to be okay with that.
Even after I stopped wearing the necklace on a daily basis, when I thought about the hostages more than usual one morning or wished to continue to silently advocate for my people at the grocery store, I donned the dog tag once more. That pressure to not wear something just because it was a widespread symbolic movement but because I wanted to, because I formed a personal tie to it, even if it didn’t work for me the entirety of the war — that pressure eased. In the last months leading up to the release of the last living hostages, I wore my tag a few times with intention, just as I had once done a year and a half ago on the end of one journey and the start of another.
I value what the symbol means to my people and what it meant to me when I first bought it, and I believe what it stands for is beautiful and purposeful.
We cried and prayed for two years. We sang and danced when so many of our brothers and sisters were returned to us over the course of this war. We still have so much more to do and to mourn for, but we have also gained back so much of what we thought we had lost. That is what my tag means to me now. It is a reminder that my nation persevered together, and as long as we have unity and the awareness and belief that the ultimate redemption will come soon, we can do anything. I no longer need to wear a tag to remind myself of that.
Photo Credit: Hadar Katsman