TEXAS – Hasidic travel blogger Shloime Zionce found himself in the middle of a social media storm this week after a picture he posted of himself went viral, garnering millions of views in just four days.
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Zionce took the selfie on board a flight to from Texas to Florida on December 19th. In the photo, Zionce is wearing a white sweatshirt showing a picture of a tefillin-wrapped arm and clenched fist.
“I’m trying to look as Jewish as possible on my flight today, because no anti-Semite is gonna make me hide my Jewish Pride,” tweeted Zionce, surrounding his statement with a Jewish star emoji on one side and a flexed bicep muscle on the other.
Within three days, Zionce’s post had received approximately 4,700 comments and over 12 million views, many of which crossed boundaries of decency.
“If you see him in your country spit in his face,” tweeted user Kav.
“How is every single one of these people so ugly? Like they hold a world record at this point,” posted a user who goes by the name “let it bring hope”.
“calls himself a jew and behaves like a nazi,” wrote user Mohammed Ansab.
“It has been pretty wild,” Zionce told VIN News. “We are living through a time where being a Jew publicly isn’t necessarily the safest thing in the world. There are people out there who want to hurt you and make you disappear.”
✡️ I’m trying to look as Jewish as possible on my flight today, because no anti-Semite is gonna make me hide my Jewish Pride. 💪🏻 pic.twitter.com/ZPNL0kpKev
— Shloime Zionce | שלומי זייאנץ (@Chusidel) December 19, 2023
“People have wished my that my plane should crash,” added Zionce, alluding to a post by a user on the X platform who identified himself by the letter T followed by a fluttering green leaf emoji. He responded to Zionce’s airplane selfie with the ominous words, “crash landing pending”.
In addition to the personal and anti-Semitic attacks, many of the responses to Zionce’s post shifted the narrative from Judaism to Israel and Zionism, referencing his November 2019 tweet saying that sections of Gaza would be transformed into parking lots, written after Hamas fired rockets at Israel.
While some X users use the four year old tweet to change the tenor of the conversation, Zionce said his words were merely a statement of fact – those who fire bombs at countries can expect a heavy military response in return.
As someone who travels regularly through the Middle East building bridges between Jews and Arabs, Zionce has many Palestinian friends. He believes that warm relationships are within reach if Hamas can be eliminated.
It was a trip to Israel several weeks ago that triggered Zionce’s viral post, when he found himself having doubts about davening Shachris in an airport, something he has done countless times on his many trips.
A video he posted to Instagram sharing the details of that personal struggle received over 130,000 views, and multiple people reached out to Zionce telling him that his decision to wear his tefillin in the airport gave them confidence to be openly Jewish, encouraging him to continue with similar messaging. Their feedback had Zionce realizing that there was a void that needed to be filled, especially for the younger generation.
“Jewish youth need to be comfortable in their own skin and in their yarmulkas and tzitzis,” said Zionce. “I figured the best way to do that was with a clothing brand that promoted Jewish pride.”
Zionce consulted with a designer and made plans to launch his brand, Candle & Strap, within a few weeks. But after seeing a Polish parliament member putting out the flames of a public Chanukah menorah with a fire extinguisher, he chose to speed things up. His product line went public within 48 hours, with a new design added to his inventory – a shirt depicting a menorah made up of fire extinguishers bearing the words “our light will never be extinguished.” Since his December 14th launch, Zionce has already received 1,000 orders, many of which include multiple items, and he has maxed out two credit cards to meet the demand.
Zionce has received significant positive feedback on the Twitter post that shows him wearing one of his Candle & Strap designs and is refusing to be intimidated by the negativity on social media.
“I want people to know that the most dangerous thing of all is us going into hiding and disappearing,” said Zionce. “If we can’t show who we are publicly, then we have no future anywhere.”
The maskilim will obviously down-vote this, but that’s okay. Jewish pride is Torah and mitzvos – meaning being Jewish – not anything else. So, the tefillin part makes sense, but the fist does not, as the fist is a reference to yadayim yedei Esav, not our kol kol Yaakov.
Coexistence with palis is a fantasy. They need to be utterly defeated and subdued until they will barely life their heads.
People shouldnt get confused and understand the difference from being openly jewish or not having to hide ones identity and to what Zionce is doing..
For people who say anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, the haters sure did seem to take a post about antisemitism and make it about Israel.
Go Shloime! You ROCK!!!!!
I like Sholomo. But this hashkafah is whacked. Great business idea 🙂
Bravo this is how we fight our enemies by being all out. Jewish not hiding at all this terrifies are enemy more than anything else…. Being proud of being a jew in public is the way we will defeat all our enemies
What if the world accepts that everyone is chosen, would people still feel special?
What a stupid fellow looking for attention. Please tell me who in their right mind goes to an Arab country and gets a ride with a random stranger. You don’t know who has bad intentions.