Shabbat shalom. And a tip of the kipah and happy birthday this week to the hip-hop music genre which turns 50 years young this week. Not that yours truly would have known that musical factoid without the plethora of essays all over the main stream media and various other sources of cultural enlightenment that have made me a much wiser idiot. After all, being over 60 makes me a cranky old timer stuck in the 70’s, still spinning a vinyl collection of classic rock, folk and fusion jazz. So, in honor of this musical milestone, I am ditching the usual rants on the depressing and headache inducing headlines in favor of a focus on culture and other “news that does’t suck”, as fellow blogger/journalist Jessica Yellin likes to say.
My good friend Perry and I have had a running debate about musical decades, with Perry taking the position that the 60’s was the penultimate decade for rock music while my position was leaning more in the 70’s camp, that being the decade when rock matured and spawned many new genres such as Funk, Punk, Disco, Progressive, New Wave and various offshoots. I think we are both right. During the 60’s, music mattered more, and fueled a generation of politically progressive ideas that helped inspire change in a country that desperately needed it. Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones helped drive the counter culture movement of the 60’s and along with Woodstock and the Summer of Love, helped define the decade. Then the Beatles broke up, Elvis died, and the world of rock was rocked, but in a good way. While some music legends clearly broke out in the 1960s, many of their best albums were made in the 1970s (Sticky Fingers, Blood on the Tracks, to name a few). And the 70’s was a decade that launched many legends of the music world including Springsteen, Billy Joel, Queen, Eagles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Elton John, and the list could go on and on.
And to bring this decade debate full circle, it was on August 11, 1973, at a party at an apartment building at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx, where hip-hop was born. According to many sources, the host of that party, Cindy Campbell, a black immigrant teenager from Jamaica who wanted to earn some extra cash to buy back-to-school clothes, convinced her 18-year-old brother Clive to DJ. Known as DJ Kool Herc (a shortened version of his nickname, Hercules), Clive was locally famous for his physical size and strength and for a style of DJing that involved using multiple turntables and records to stitch together short, percussive passages of R&B music called “breaks” into extended loops of sound, a technique that he called “The Merry-Go-Round”. At his sister’s party, he cued up two copies of James Brown’s Sex Machine album and went back and forth, extending the break from “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” while exclaiming street phrases over the music to encourage the dancers. And so, hip-hop was born. Fast forward to 2023, and hip-hop is ubiquitous — not just on Spotify and TikTok, but across pop culture, from television to fashion.
Full transparency here, I appreciate the Hip Hop genre but I am not a big fan. I have often said to my nieces and nephews that this genre will not have legs, and you won’t find many people years from now humming Eminem songs or radio stations offering “classic hip-hop”, which might be a good thing. However, the one thing I respect and admire most in the music is the absolute freedom of expression it represents and its resiliency vs today’s era of wacky “woke-ness” and insidious “cancel” culture. I can even see a slight analogy to the Beat generation in the 50’s whose poets and literary artists were interested in challenging main stream culture and conventional writing styles and techniques. (Notorious B.I.G. = Jack Kerouac?)
As a cultural phenomenon, the genre certainly has cred. I just can’t get into it, but of course that could be because I am a cranky old Jewish white guy who still plays Dylan and Rolling Stones vinyl on his blue tooth enabled turntable. What makes the genre even more interesting to me (and The Jew News Review) is its Jewish lineage and the role Jews have played in it’s development, both on the artistry and business sides of the genre. Of course The Forward, a publication that can find a Jewish angle on virtually anything, had a long essay on this topic which you can link to here.
Over the last five decades, many Jewish rappers from different backgrounds and nationalities have left their mark on hip-hop culture, from Drake to Doja Cat to Mac Miller to Nissim Black, to name just a few. In the early 2000s, religiously-observant artists such as Y-Love and Matisyahu carved out a niche for rap infused with Jewish wisdom and spirituality. Today, there are a number of rappers who make Judaism a prominent part of their stage personas, from Kosha Dillz to Lil Dicky to BLP Kosher; the latter dropped an album on Aug. 4 titled “Bars Mitzvah.”There is also a vibrant, multilingual hip-hop scene in Israel.
Now, it’s time to hip-hop over to more of the Jewy journalism. Your standard smorgasbord of superbly selected semitic stuff from sources such as The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Nosher, Kveller, and Jewish Boston to name a few. Enjoy!
- World’s Scrabble champ? A jew of course! – He can spell “Schlep” 4 different ways, and is now the first repeat winner of the World Scrabble Championship. Using words like zep and fyce, an Australian Jew named David Eldar became the world Scrabble champion last month in Las Vegas. He was also world champ in 2017 and is now only the second player in history to win the title twice. Click here for more.
- Forget Barbie and Oppenheimer – The new movie everyone will be talking about is Adam Sandler’s comedy, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which debuts Aug. 25 on Netflix. Based on a popular 2005 novel, the film stars Sandler’s real-life daughter Sunny as the bat mitzvah girl and was shot over six weeks last summer at Congregation Beth Tzedec in Toronto. Watch the trailer below.
- Shiva Call: Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist for the Band, passed away this last week – In the new documentary film, “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band,” Robertson, The Band’s main songwriter and guitarist, tells the story of how he finally learned of his Jewish heritage and how his Jewish relatives in Toronto embraced him and opened a whole new world of “vision” to him.
- A neo-Nazi is building a training compound in Maine. Bangor’s Jews are not afraid – A prominent neo-Nazi plans to build a training camp for his followers on 10 acres of woods in Maine. More than 90% of Maine’s 1.3 million residents are white, making it the whitest state in the nation. Christopher Pohlhaus has been photographed waving swastika flags and chanting “Sieg Heil” at anti-LGBTQ+ protests. His followers have talked about destroying or vandalizing Jewish cemeteries. The state is also home to 15 Jewish congregations and several Jewish summer camps. Brian Kresge, the president of Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and a Maine National Guardsman, was defiant when asked about Pohlhaus. “I am not afraid,” he said. “With the High Holy Days looming, all of Bangor’s three congregations have great security systems and practices — and more than a few armed congregants.”
- Kosher certified pork-flavored potato chips to be discontinued: When the Orthodox Union approved the chips earlier this summer, complete with a cartoon pig on the packaging, some consumers complained. “It’s not coming into my shul,” said Rabbi Howard Buechler. The blowback caused the OU to reconsider its decision, a rare step to remove its certification from a kosher product. In the end, the potato chip company stopped selling the product on Tuesday, saying it was always intended to be a limited-run snack. Read the story ➤
- Opinion | Our parents shunned Volkswagen and Mercedes — is it time for Jews to give up their Teslas? YES! Elon Musk, who heads both Tesla and Twitter, has posted and retweeted statements that many regard as antisemitic. He’s allowed neo-Nazis back on the platform. According to an ADL analysis, only around 25% of antisemitic tweets reported to Twitter are taken down. “I’m not sure I’d buy a new Tesla today,” writes Rabbi Jay Michaelson, who has been driving one since 2017. Read the essay ➤
- Her father documented the devastation at Nagasaki and Hiroshima — now she’s considered an honorary second-generation survivor – Leslie Sussan calls herself “a loudmouth New York Quaker Jew.” With Oppenheimer in theaters and the anniversary of the atomic bombs this week, she recalls the decades-long effort to declassify the footage her father took. “Why did he see the suffering and human pain where most of his compatriots saw only well-earned victory?” she asked. Read the story
That’s all folks! Remember to be careful out there, because as Eminem once said, “The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed”
Brad out.
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