The necklace that refuses to stay hidden

It started with a gesture most Jewish travellers know. Tucking a Chai necklace under your shirt when you don’t feel safe.

For Tel Aviv-based artist and street-art researcher Niro Trip (real name Niro Taub), that small, automatic act of concealment became the spark for #AmIsraelGay, a project that fuses Jewish and LGBTQ+ identity into a single, unapologetic symbol you wear on your chest.

“I thought about the years I spent in the closet and the long habit of concealment, and how those fears now resonate with the worries of Jews and Israelis facing rising antisemitism and public violence,” Trip told The AJN. “My Jewish and queer identities are not going back into the closet.”

The project riffs on the Hebrew phrase “Am Yisrael Chai”, swapping “Chai” for “Gay” and transforming the familiar pendant into a bold declaration of dual identity. It launched as street art during Tel Aviv Pride, with oversized metal chains and giant “GAY” pendants strung between balconies and buildings across the city. What began as large-scale public installation has since become a wearable, and is now a limited-edition pendant designed to prompt conversation in everyday life.

A graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design’s visual communication department, Trip is known for urban art that uses humour and chutzpah to push for LGBTQ+ visibility. Earlier works, including “Kikar Malchut Yisrael” and “Anshei HaPatma”, have adorned Tel Aviv’s walls for years.

But #AmIsraelGay carries a particular urgency. Trip, who has led numerous Jewish Australian groups on youth movement trips, Taglit tours and community visits to Israel, said the terror attack at Sydney’s Bondi on Chanukah by the Sea in December 2025 forced him to ask whether hiding was still an option, even at home.

“The Sydney attack shook me,” he said. “It made me ask whether I should keep hiding, not only abroad but at home in Israel. The answer was to take it into the open: to turn the chains that once bound me in the closet into chains I wear on my chest with pride.”

The response has been warm. Models and artists volunteered to be photographed wearing the pendant, invitations for talks and guided street-art tours rolled in, and people began buying the necklace as gifts for friends and family. Trip said he takes constructive criticism about safety and accessibility seriously as the project grows.

His aim is straightforward. He wants to normalise proud visibility and spark empathy.

“I want us to be able to walk hand in hand down the street, hug our partners on the beach without fear, and express ourselves online without inviting bullying or humiliation,” he said. “This is a personal, independent project — I’m one voice trying to open doors for visibility and dialogue.”

For more information, visit amisraelgay.com or follow @nirotrip on social media