Pikesville native Alona Lisa Elkayam is not one to be silent when she sees injustice in the world.
In June 2024, Elkayam, a New York-based jewelry designer and founder of the Far From Timid marketing firm, launched an heirloom necklace called “Heart of David” to show support for victims of the Oct. 7th Hamas attacks and raise awareness about antisemitism. Ten percent of profits from sales have gone to such organizations as Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Jewish Women International and the Jewish Education Project in New York.
“The Heart of David just took on a life of its own,” says Elkayam. “We have customers from all over the country and now we are just starting to ship globally.”
Recently, when rapper Kanye West took to X (formerly Twitter) to post antisemitic comments and sell T-shirts with swastikas on them, Elkayam again felt compelled to act.
“When Kanye started with his antisemitic slurs a couple years ago, I just thought, ‘He’s crazy. Whatever,” she says. “But when I found out he launched this T-shirt on his website and then of course his rants on Twitter, I thought, ‘How much hatred does someone have to have to do that? Is that really the fight that you want to have? You want to try to bully .2% of the population?’
“Then I said, ‘I don’t care if he’s mentally ill.’ This really shook me because every day, we find out about another [Israeli] hostage that’s dead,” Elkayam says. “I’ve been following these hostages since October 7th. I know all their faces. I know all their names. We all do. They are part of our heart.”
Elkayam purchased a website called yelovejews.com, which redirects to the Heart of David website where the company is selling a limited number of black-and-white T-shirts with the Heart of David logo on them. Elkayam calls the T-shirt line the “Yeezy Love Jews Diss Collection.”
“It’s just as a diss on him because I’m sure he would hate to know that there’s a URL that has yelovejews.com,” she says. “Just like [his shirts] had a simple Nazi symbol, we just have a simple Heart of David and that’s it. It went a little bit viral. [Entrepreneur and marketing guru] Lindsay Pinchuk shared it, and a couple of influencers did, too.”
Heart of David’s T-shirts were produced around the same time as AI-generated images appeared on social media platforms of Jewish celebrities sporting T-shirts giving West the middle finger.
Elkayam says the images were “off-putting because [for example] Jerry Seinfeld is an ally. He didn’t give permission, and I thought that that really violated privacy.”
She says she’s also concerned that the controversy over the unauthorized use of celebrities’ images is distracting the public from more important issues.
“Now, instead of focusing on the hostages, everybody’s just talking about this AI video,” she says. “What are we doing here? We have to stay focused on what we’re trying to do. We have to get the hostages home. We have to create unity. Our Jewish pride is important and we need to speak up.
“I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and I’m not shutting up,” Elkayam says. “There’s a way to do something. Even when you ‘like’ a post, share a post, you contribute. I think we have to win the algorithm war. Wear your Jewish star; wear your Heart of David. These tiny things matter.”
For information, visit heartsofdavid.com.
The Oct. 7th Hamas terrorist attacks compelled Elkayam to create her Heart of David venture.