As his new album debuts, the renegade religious rapper tells The Times of Israel why he drastically changed his lifestyle.

Sitting backstage at Matisyahu’s concert in Stamford, Connecticut five days before the July 17 release of his new album, “Spark Seeker,” his father Bob Miller is smiling. Warm up band Moon Taxi has left the stage (as part of the Summer 2012 “Alive@Five” Festival), the sun is going down, the Stamford Town Center is packed and the crowd is cheering.

Matisyahu dances during his set at a summer concert in Irvine, Calif., in this May 2006, file photo. (photo credit: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello/FILE)

Matisyahu, best known for performing in traditional hasidic garb — black kippa with tzitzit (ritual fringes) swinging under his white shirt — is now dressed in a white T-shirt, black faded jeans, fashionable white sunglasses and green Nike sneakers. For most in the audience this is their first in-person look at his handsome, clean-shaven face. Matisyahu, born Matthew Paul Miller, no longer looks like a Lubavitcher. And he no longer embraces a hasidic lifestyle.

On December 13, 2011, Matisyahu shocked the Jewish world by posting a beardless picture of himself on Twitter, with additional commentary on his website.

This morning I posted a photo of myself on Twitter.
No more Chassidic reggae superstar.
Sorry folks, all you get is me… no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality — not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity… to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules — lots of them — or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.
Get ready for an amazing year filled with music of rebirth. And for those concerned with my naked face, don’t worry… you haven’t seen the last of my facial hair.
— Matisyahu

Many articles and blog posts have pondered the question of who is this new Matisyahu? Many wonder if he is “still religious.” Father Bob confidently reports, “He is the same person he always was. He has always been searching, and he always will.”

Mother Rochelle was also backstage at the Stamford concert, along with their daughter and family friends which included Matisyahu’s fifth grade health teacher who danced with her former student on stage. Ms. Miller was happy that Matisyahu was performing a short 27 kilometer drive from their home in White Plains, New York.

Rochelle enjoys the concert but shares more motherly concerns: The 33-year-old Matisyahu, wife Talia, and sons Laivy (7), Shalom (5), and Menachem Mendel (1), recently moved from Crown Heights, the world headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch, to the Pico Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

“I am extremely sad. I have been to Los Angeles five times since their move in September. Maybe they will move back after two years there!”

The soft-spoken, very forthcoming Matisyahu respectfully notes, “My wife took me there. She wanted to go. She wanted the weather. She’s from New York.”

At first, Matisyahu reports, “I wasn’t necessarily interested in leaving,” but he soon realized, “I wasn’t tied to one place.” Matisyahu consented and the family relocated.

Perhaps an additional benefit of living in Los Angeles is the proximity to Hollywood. Matisyahu will appear in the horror movie, “The Possession,” set to open August 21. Ironically, the now clean-shaven Matisyahu plays Tzadok, a rabbinic exorcist. The movie, which stars Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is the story of a girl who buys an antique box at a yard sale and is unaware that an evil spirit lives inside. For Matisyahu, acting is a return to his second love — he reportedly always had a passion for acting and was in plays in college.

Matisyahu is still best known for his first love, music. His musical styles include reggae, beat boxing and rap. His current tour, which ends on September 29, will take him and his band across the United States, Canada and Portugal. He continues to play such well known songs as “Jerusalem” and “King Without a Crown,” as well as cuts from his upcoming “Spark Seeker” album.

Matisyahu spoke candidly with The Times of Israel pre-concert from the back of his van, en route from the Stamford Marriott to his tour bus outside the Stamford Town Center. The musician spoke openly about a favorite song on his new CD, his family, and his recent transformation.

How is this different from past tours? Who is your audience?

How is anything ever the same? I go for deep. I have a hard time answering simple questions. The audience is different. We are on tour with the Dirty Heights. It is a younger crowd.

Your new CD “Spark Seeker” comes out on July 17. Are you excited about the release? Do you have a favorite song?

Of course I am excited. I don’t have a favorite song but one I have been performing lately, we’ve been staring off our shows with and the one my record starts with is “Crossroads.” I don’t even remember recording it to be honest with you. And I don’t remember writing the lyrics, but I did feel that when I listened to it, especially after all the changes, and everything that has been going on — I just felt like that it really sums up a lot of what I was feeling.

On “Light,” there was that line — “one tiny moment to shine.” [he is referring to the song “I Will Be Light.”] Looking back on the record, I feel like that was the main lyric of that record and I feel like “Crossroads” every night when I’m starting to sing it. I just feel like it’s perfect, I just feel like it’s right . Sometimes you write a song and it has a certain mood in it, and a feeling in it, and you are not always in that mood. Or that lyric doesn’t always resonate. The song that’s definitely resonating for me now is called “Crossroads.” And it feels powerful every night to go out and to perform it.

How do you deal with life in the spotlight?

I don’t know. How do you deal with it? It’s pretty cool.

You change your appearance — that’s one thing! Do people not recognize you these days?

Not even at my own shows!

When I saw you at the hotel, I didn’t even recognize you. You were wearing blue gym shorts, a blue T-shirt and tennis shoes — you just looked like a regular basketball player. People always grow and change and that’s awesome. Why did you decide to make your religious transformation so public?

The question is how do I not make it anything but public? I didn’t think I wanted to mention it. I wasn’t planning on mentioning it afterwards, with the Twitter thing. But I was going through Twitter and I read that quote [“When the tide comes in I lose my disguise”] — a fan quoted that lyric from “Thunder,” and I was like, “Oh, that’s perfect!”

‘Who is to say what the disguise is?’

Sometimes you write lyrics and it can mean one thing for you and then a year later it can mean a totally different thing for you and at that moment I felt, wow, there is something inside of me even at that point that felt that I was in disguise. There was some part of me even four years ago when I wrote that song that felt one day I’m going to take off my disguise and then, on the other hand, you can say, “Who is to say what the disguise is?” Maybe the other one is the disguise. But in that moment, I felt it was time to reveal panim, the face. So then I was thinking, “People will see me at shows and they won’t get that it’s me — I’m gonna have to mention it. People are going to want to know what’s going on.”

How are you navigating your current level of Jewish observance on the road?

It’s kind of a different thing for me now. There are certain things I am still holding on to strongly, like obviously not performing on Shabbos, not traveling on Shabbos. Kosher. Kosher has been easy for me in this run because we have a chef and he is a vegetarian and he cooks just for me. So that one’s like knocked off. So that’s that. Shabbos is Shabbos.

‘There are so many rules in Judaism, and if you get into them and you get obsessed and you have the kind of life that I have, it can make you a very unhappy person’

Everything else, for the most part, I’m not holding myself to it in terms of the rule aspect of it. It is more about an ideal. Ideally I would like to put my tefillin on every morning and daven mincha and daven ma’ariv [two of the three daily prayer services]. And I would like to say brachos [blessings] and all these things. But I sort of stopped holding myself to it. It is a weight off now I do it when I have the time and it feels right. When I make the time, I am a little bit more accepting, a little more patient with myself maybe than I was in past years trying to fit in putting tefillin on with, like, in the morning when I had to be at a radio station at 8:30… There are so many rules in Judaism, and if you get into them and you get obsessed and you have the kind of life that I have, it can make you a very unhappy person. It can make everything complicated and more stressful than it needs to be, so I kind of loosened the knots a little bit.

How was the transformation for your family?

My one-year-old dealt with it. He had to get used to seeing my face. I think the first time I held him, he didn’t recognize me. But it was very quickly that he got it. I think they look in the eyes. And the feeling and the voice. Maybe more than anyone else my one-year-old son got it right away. No judgments, certainly from him. And then, my other two boys go to Chabad school (in Los Angeles), and I had to warn them and tell them that people might say stuff. We had to have a lot of conversations.

‘More than anyone else my one year old son got it right away. No judgments’

I think it’s given them a whole new take on… everything, because they will want to know. That things are not as simple; life is a little more complex. It is not so clear.

We had a conversation with my son on the way up here that was so interesting, where he was saying that… the whole thing with Jews and non-Jews and the differences and all that. I try to open them up and just give them alternatives. Basically, I just tell them, “When you are raised in a religious family, you learn that there is no alternative. That there is one ultimate truth. And you can see it might come in various shades and colors. At the end of the day there is one truth and that one truth is this.”

I’ve had to talk to my kids and explain that maybe that’s not so. Basically what I tell them is that no one can ever be sure of anything — and in this life, your teachers, parents, yourself — you can have your own ideas, your own opinions, intuitions feelings, etc., whatever it is. But never to be too sure of yourself, and never to be too sure of anyone because, at the end of the day, we don’t know. That was a new idea for them. But amazing conversations — me and my sons.

 (Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com

Read more

Our Tikvah participants joined the whole camp for a trip to Six Flags. Every year, I wonder if this is the best use of our time. It is a fun day, but it is very taxing. We assess the campers and their needs (Which rides? How much supervision? Water park?) and we assign two or three staff members to each group. For me, the main reason to go is to be part of a camp-wide trip. All campers and staff walk the park proudly displaying their Camp Ramah shirts and high-fiving fellow campers as they cross paths in the park. I am sure campers would notice that Tikvah was missing if we opted out of the trip.

How do I know how integral Tikvah is to camp? The trip took place the day after the Amitzim Play. NEVER is the camp so quiet, focused, attentive and respectful as when the Tikvah campers act, sing and dance up on stage. Each camper has a part, well-suited to his or her needs or abilities. The lines are projected on the wall so audience members can follow along (in case they can’t hear the words). One staff member, in camp for the first time and at the play with her young children, had tears in her eyes as she came up to me afterwards to tell me this was the best moment of camp so far. Some audience members chanted names of campers; others clapped. All will return to the world more sensitive to people with special needs.

Our various buddy/peer mentoring programs also help assure that campers will have comfort around and appreciation for people with all abilities and disabilities. Every day, our Bogrim Buddies join our Tikvah group at job sites and the Machon Buddies join our Amitzimers in sports. And the Nivonim MiNis (Madrichim B Nivonim counselors that are Nivonimers) are working with us in many capacities as they develop their leadership skills. Nearly every day, a bunk of campers joins us for tefillot. They sit with our campers and co-lead with our campers. This, too, will go a long way towards feeling comfortable with people of all abilities.

To conclude: When people ask about Tikvah’s role in camp, I often say having Tikvah at Camp Ramah in New England is as natural as having
swimming or Shabbat at camp. Shabbat Shalom!

Read more

Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, running in Amherst, focuses on klezmer tradition – and innovationWoodstock 1969, meet Yidstock 2012.

Back in the day, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair in Bethel, New York, may have featured such acts as Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, but today’s Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, running July 11-15 in Amherst, Massachusetts, will present a who’s who of musicians from the klezmer and Yiddish music worlds, on the grounds of the National Yiddish Book Center.

“The idea behind the festival is to build on what the Yiddish Book Center has been doing and take it to a whole new level — to program a festival of contemporary Yiddish and klezmer music that draws upon both tradition and innovation,’says festival programmer, Seth Rogovoy, music critic and author “The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover’s Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music” and “Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet.”

Priceless Yiddish books that had survived Hitler and Stalin were being discarded and destroyed

The Yiddish Book Center grew out of the work of Aaron Lansky, a 24-year-old graduate student in Yiddish literature who, in 1980, learned that thousands of priceless Yiddish books that had survived Hitler and Stalin were being discarded and destroyed. American-born Jews were unable to read the language once spoken by their parents and grandparents. Lansky organized a national network of zamlers, volunteer book collectors, to save the world’s remaining Yiddish books.

“We weren’t collecting books for too long before we realized it was just the tip of the iceberg,” recounts Lansky, the founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center and the editor of its magazine, PaknTreger. “We didn’t just lose books, but we lost the constellation of Jewish life — language, literature, music, film and theater.”

The Yiddish Book Center has helped ensure the preservation and rebirth of Yiddish language and culture. The 49,000 square foot center is home to more than 1,500,000 volumes of Yiddish books. More than 11,000 Yiddish titles are now available free of charge online through the Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library, and undergraduate students interested in becoming the next generation of Yiddish language speakers and translators spend their summer learning Yiddish language, culture and history.

‘Through the course of the festival you get a picture of where the music has been, where it is now, and where it is headed’

Yidstock, a more popular front of the center’s activities, will feature such top names in klezmer and Yiddish music as Hankus Netsky and the Hebrew National Salvage, Grammy Award winners the Klezmatics, Josh Dolgin aka “Socalled,” Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars with Eleanor Reissa, and the Michael Winograd Trio. Yidstock will also include a film festival, a klezmer instrumental workshop and a klezmer brunch. Rogovoy will deliver a talk entitled “Rockin’ the Shtetl: The Essential Klezmer.”

“Through the course of the festival,” notes Rogovoy, “you get a picture of where the music has been, where it is now, and where it is headed.”

Hankus Netsky, scion of a klezmer dynasty, one of the original klezmer revivalists, and founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, shares Rogovoy’s appreciation for the Yiddish Book Center.

“The Yiddish Book Center exists because the mainstream world neglected, then discarded, Yiddish literature and everything else too. The revival and revitalization is a major triumph of the last 30 years — this festival celebrates that.” Netsky, who holds a PhD in ethnomusicology and is director of the Itzhak Perlman “Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul” Project (to be released in the Fall of 2012 on Sony), speaks passionately about the themes of “salvage,” rescue and revitalization (he will be performing with a group known as Hebrew National Salvage).

The Klezmatics (photo credit: courtesy)

“We found Jewish culture discarded in the dumpster and are doing what Jewish business people have always done — we are finding a new use for it. My father was in the rag business so I am familiar! We are putting it back into circulation. We are reclaiming it.”

Netsky refers to his work as “salvage ethnography.”

He adds, “Jewish music is the same as Jewish literature — it builds on what came before it and is eminently creative.”

Netsky relates that the entry for klezmer in the 1975 Dictionary of Jewish Music read, “The klezmer tradition died out in the 19th century.”

“Huh?” asks Netsky, “That’s interesting! All my grandfathers and uncles were klezmer musicians!”

In a summer, 2011, PaknTreger article entitled, “But Is It Klezmer?” Rogovoy explores this latest wave of Jewish music, which continues to borrow from many sources. He playfully reports on the types of comments he hears when he exits concerts by performers like the ones who will play at Yidstock.

‘Klezmer has always spoken in the idiom of its time. And that time is now, and the fusion of hip-hop, funk, and jazz is our musical currency’

“If I had a dollar for every time I hear someone saying ‘I don’t know what you call that, but that’s not klezmer,’ I’d be, as the saying goes, a rich man,” says Rogovoy. “I hate to disappoint you, but yes, it is klezmer. And not only is it klezmer, it is part and parcel of the klezmer tradition. Indeed, it is traditional klezmer, because klezmer has always spoken in the idiom of its time. And that time is now, and the fusion of hip-hop, funk, and jazz is our musical currency.”

(Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com)

Read more

Book review: “Esau’s Blessing: How the Bible Embraces those with Special Needs” by Ora Horn Prouser, Ben Yehuda Press, 2011 Teaneck, New Jersey. Reviewed by Howard Blas.

All rabbis and educators have incorporated the story of Moses and his speech difficulties (aral sfatayim) into divrei torah and lessons about overcoming obstacles, achieving greatness (despite being imperfect in some way), and being created b’tzelem Elokim, in the Image of God. With God’s backing, Aaron’s support, and with Moses own ability to compensate for his weaknesses, Moses became a great leader of the Jewish People. But as Ora Horn Prouser points out in Esau’s Blessing: How the Bible Embraces Those with Special Needs, there are other biblical models besides Moses (who we only meet in chapter 6) and his speech impairment. Prouser discusses biblical characters with ADHD, mental retardation, giftedness, gender issues, conduct disorder, physical disabilities, and depression.

Prouser begins both the preface and chapter one with a most unlikely biblical figure, Esau, noting, “I have always felt great compassion for Esau.” Prouser acknowledges that traditional interpretation paints Jacob as the “wonderful son and Esau as the black sheep.” How did Prouser discover her interest in Esau? A lecturer in a Genesis class described Esau as impulsive, which fit right in to literature Prouser was reading at the time on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She leaned over to a friend and whispered and chuckled that perhaps Esau had ADHD. “Seen in this light, Esau no longer appeared an evil man with misplaced priorities, but rather…as someone with learning issues who had never received the gift of being understood.” This November 17th, when you are sitting in synagogue listening to the reading of Parshat Toldot, you will never see Esau, Jacob or their parents in the same light as before; you will bring new found understanding and compassion to the text and to its characters.

Prouser has spent her life studying and teaching bible. She holds a PhD in bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary of American, is the executive vice president and academic dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, and she happens to be both the wife and daughter of rabbis. Prouser points out that biblical interpreters and midrashim have developed a critical picture of Esau and view him “as a man with nefarious motives and an evil character.” Prouser views him ‘through the lens of special education,’ and sees a different Esau-a hunter with both intense concentration and easy distractibility (“qualities of good hunters and also symptoms of ADHD”), impulsive decision making without thought to long term consequences (he was hungry and wanted stew), inability to understand proper and appropriate social behavior (he didn’t understand the problem of marrying two Hittite women), and a person in need of special accommodations. Prouser, deals with Esau’s father, Isaac in her next chapter, shockingly titled “Isaac and Mental Retardation.” She notes that Isaac, perhaps intuitively, “seems to understand Esau’s deficiencies and makes an attempt to accommodate his son’s special needs.” For example, Isaac takes Esau’s learning and behavioral style into account by giving him explicit, detailed directions for his hunt. Prouser feels the Esau story is here “to sensitize us” and serves as “a cautionary tale about the improper approach” (to ADHD).

Prouser sensitively views other biblical characters through the similar, compassionate lens of those with special needs and challenges. Calling Isaac “mentally retarded” is a fresh, somewhat radical view. I have heard Isaac referred to as a “transitional figure;” I have never heard him called “retarded,” a term which has generally fallen out of disuse in favor of such preferred terms as “intellectually disability” and “cognitive impairment.” Some advocates of people with disabilities find the term “retarded” to be so offensive that they monitor what they consider the unacceptable use of the “R word” on Facebook and other places on the internet.

Prouser builds a case for Isaac’s mental retardation: “he is born to older parents, who are close relatives, a genetic heritage than can result in birth defects.” His mother, Sarah, picks up early on Isaac’s limitations and uses her “ferocious maternal attempts to shield Isaac from pain and trouble,” (namely Hagar and Ishmael). Further, Isaac was docile (during the akedah), passive (when it came to marriage and the only patriarch requiring the help of others), and he exhibited “poor social acuity and communication skills,” especially in his dealing with the Philistines. This may also account for how he was so easily tricked by Jacob over the blessing. Despite Isaac’s limitations, which God and Rebecca, his wife accept, he succeeds in agriculture, and he continues the patriarchal line an important reminder that people with special needs often have extraordinary strengths.

While readers may disagree with Isaac’s diagnosis of mental retardation (or even with Esau’s diagnosis of ADHD), Prouser makes a tremendous contribution to the field of biblical commentary. Perhaps Prouser’s greatest insight is in viewing the bible through the lens of special needs. It is unlikely that most readers have considered the possibility that Jonah, Hannah, and Naomi all battled depression. And readers will now be forced to consider the Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son and Saul’s grandson, as a person with a physical disability (he lost both legs). Prouser notes David’s simultaneous pact to show kindness to Mephibosheth and his clear “distaste for the disabled.”

Other chapters address issues of gender (Miriam), conduct disorder (Samson) and an often forgotten special need, giftedness. Joseph exhibits two qualities of giftedness–an ability to generate original ideas and solutions to problems (dream interpretation) and a gap between his intellectual and emotional maturity; for that reason, he came off as showing superiority with his brothers.

Prouser’s unique book is the only one I know which is noted as Bible/Special Education on the back cover, meaning that it is equally “at home” in both the bible and special education sections of libraries and bookstores. And Esau’s Blessing deserves this designation; Prouser draws from classical commentators, such modern day bible scholars as Nahum Sarna and Everett Fox, modern psychological literature, and from her own experience; in her conclusion, Prouser discloses her own personal connection to disabilities. Esau’s Blessing will forever change the way we read familiar bible stories.
Esau’s Blessing is available at Amazon.com

Read more