A new emergency vehicle being used in Haredi communities in and around Lakewood, New Jersey, has attracted nationwide attention — but some commentators misunderstand how the new vehicle will be used.

After a video of the new Tesla Cybertruck spread on TikTok and Jalopnik panned its garish red, white, and blue appearance, the news outlet Futurism ran a headline saying the car “has one small problem: nowhere to put the patient.”

In an interview with Shtetl, though, Yitzchok Birnhack, the founder of Hatzulas Nefashos, the emergency response organization that owns the car, said that the vehicle is not an “ambulance.”

Despite what its decals suggest and the Futurism article claimed, the car is for “EMS, EMTs, and paramedics to get to a scene quicker” and administer aid while they wait for the ambulance to arrive, Birnhack said. 

Unlike regular EMTs which work from centralized hubs, volunteer emergency response organizations like Hatzulas Nefashos and Hatzolah have members on call distributed through the area. That means they are able to dispatch members who live, work, and pray locally to administer aid immediately, often using their personal vehicle. If needed, an actual ambulance, not the cybertruck, would transport a patient to the hospital.

According to Birnhack, the vehicle was not purchased by the organization, but was recently donated by a volunteer for Hatzulas Nefashos. The rear wing bears a dedication: “Donated in memory of the kedoshim killed on October 7th.” Birnhack declined to identify the donor. He confirmed that the vehicle cost $110,000 and together, the emergency lights and medical equipment cost another $50,000.

The vehicle could prove useful in weather emergencies because of its ability to travel through water in its dedicated wade mode. “Sometimes people get stuck in houses” in cases of severe flooding, Birnhack said. “In this case, we would just drive right through rain, pick people out of houses if needed, or we use it for boat rescue.”

There’s another uniquely-Haredi benefit to the cybertruck. Birnhack told Shtetl that a rabbi advised him it was better than a regular vehicle for lifesaving use on Shabbat because, unlike gas-powered vehicles, there’s no spark from the ignition.

There’s another reason why Hatzulas Nefashos might enjoy the momentary fame. Despite being voluntary, it’s in fierce competition with another, well-established local volunteer group. The organization whose name means “saving souls,” was founded in recent years when Birnhack and others grew concerned about long response times by the dominant Orthodox emergency response service in the area — Hatzolah of Central Jersey — for emergencies outside Lakewood proper, specifically Jackson Township, a town bordering Lakewood that has seen an influx of Haredi residents.

After the organization was founded, some rabbis reportedly criticized it in a letter, saying it would threaten Hatzolah’s ability to serve the area. After the unverified letter was published, Haredi news outlets in Lakewood also published a series of what appeared to be prank calls to Hatzulos Nefashos, largely from school-age boys.

Hatzulas Nefashos has four divisions: Lakewood, Toms River, Jackson, and Howell, which will open soon, Birnhack said. When not in use, the car is parked at Hatzulas Nefashos’s Jackson station, he added.

The Hatzulas Nefashos cybertruck video is part of a cultural moment where people are, for their own ends, trying to gain attention from Elon Musk. “The Cybertruck is very hard to separate from Elon Musk,” one expert told the New York Times. Since Musk is both CEO of Tesla and owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) he is invested in promoting cybertrucks on X.

One way of attracting Musk, who recently endorsed former president Donald Trump in his 2024 reelection bid, is to add a MAGA flavor to the video in the hope that Musk will repost it. On August 5, Musk did retweet a video reviewing the cybertruck produced by Tucker Carlson, a disgraced former Fox presenter who now hosts a show on X. And, on the same day, Adin Ross, the 23-year-old Jewish internet celebrity who has repeatedly been banned from Twitch for his bigoted comments, gifted Trump a Cybertruck. Going a step further than the patriotic colors of the Hatzulas Nefashos vehicle, Trump’s car was decorated with the iconic photo of Trump with his fist in the air after the failed assassination attempt.