I saw this ad for American Apparel on my way to the subway today (sorry for the poor photo quality!)

I saw this ad for American Apparel on my way to the subway today (sorry for the poor photo quality!). It’s using Hebrew letters to sell children’s clothes for American Apparel, a company that absolutely nothing to do with Judaism. It’s weird because the ad uses actual letters from a different language as some kind of “font,” so that Hebrew is reduced to an aesthetic choice made by the marketing department and stripped of its very real connection to any language/religion/cultures.

Oddly, this reference to Hebrew/Judaism doesn’t really seem to relate to the image at all. But I’m still trying to put my finger on just what bothers me. Is it appropriation of the Hebrew language? Is it the exoticizing of Hebrew, and by extension of Judaism itself? What do you think?