Another Rabbinical Music Ban: “Rap is Disgusting” September 9, 2008

The newly convened Committee for Jewish Music, created to address the “non-Jewish influences” on Jewish music in the Jewish world today, has officially come out and banned all urban music, as well as other “foreign pop”:

Musicians who use rock, rap, reggae and trance influences will not receive rabbinic approval for their CDs, nor will they be allowed to play in wedding halls under haredi kosher food supervision, according to a new, detailed list of guidelines drafted with rabbinical backing that differentiates between “kosher” and “treif” music.

The guidelines, which are still being formulated, also ban “2-4 beats and other rock and disco beats;” the “improper” use of electric bass, guitars and saxophones; and singing words from holy sources in a disrespectful, frivolous manner.

So now all rock, hiphop, disco, “Michael Jackson-style” (rabotai, you’re really dating yourselves with that one), and electronic music is assur. And since “all 2/4 beats” are included, this throws out not only reggae, but reggaeton, salsa, calypso, and Latin. Add in the “improper usage of” electric bass and saxophones, and jazz and fusion are also out.

And, let’s not ignore the gigantic Congolese elephant in the room:

“Michael Jackson-style music has no place in our community,” says Mordechai Bloi, a senior member of the Guardians of Sanctity and Education, an organization based in Bnei Brak that enforces what it sees as normative haredi behavior.

“We might be able to adopt Bach or Beethoven, music with class, but not goyishe African music and beats. We haredim want to protect ourselves from what we see as negative foreign influences.

Nothing but plain old racism, a charge I’m sure that Bloi himself would probably deny while standing in front of a non-white face. After all, what kind of logic would permit one of Hitler’s favorite composers (who he identified himself with), but forbid “goyishe African music” — which, depending on the region, may be actually made by Jews? (Then again, perhaps he wouldn’t consider Ethiopian Jews to be Jewish.) African music has no class? African beats have no “class”? What is class, then, but European origin? And what can be more intrinsically goyish than “Germanic ancestry” that Hitler himself praised?

And, the piece de resistance:

[Rabbi Efraim Luft of Bnei Brak] admitted that listening to all the discs on the market would be a formidable challenge.

“The main aim is to focus on new songs before they get to the recording studio So far there have only been two cases in which discs have been banned by rabbis, said Luft. “There are certain types of music, such as rap and reggae, that are disgusting and have no place in our community.”

This thinly-veiled jab at Matisyahu (and me) shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is not about any violation (real or perceived) of Yoreh Deah 178 (the section of the Code of Jewish Law which deals with non-Jewish items/influences), this is an opinion. And let’s be brutally honest — R’ Elyashiv is assuredly not sitting and listening to hours of CDs — this is an opinion of a non-Gadol, delivered to a codifier of Jewish Law by an infathomable network of gabbaim (and/or hearsay). An opinion tainted by racism and fear — fear of not only the straw-man threat of losing Jewish souls to his invented goyish bogeyman, but also the age-old dilemma of being caught on the wrong side of “too old”:

Luft has already issued a list of “kosher” and “non-kosher” bands and musicians. He said that dozens of yeshiva heads have agreed to refuse to come to the wedding of a student who hires a non-kosher band. Halls with haredi kashrut supervision who host non-kosher bands run the risk of losing their supervision, and hence their clientele. Companies that help promote haredi concerts expose themselves to the danger of a consumer boycott.

Luft said that music is just part of a much larger problem in haredi society.

“We see that the same people who are involved in the treif pop scene are also the ones in the unapproved news media, in the so-called religious radio stations, in film and in advertising,” said Luft. “All of these things come together to demoralize haredi society and to lower the spiritual level of our youth.

“This is an issue that people over 30 understand very well what I am talking about and those under 30 have more difficulty understanding,” Luft continued. “This music is pushing into our community a generation gap similar to one created by the rock music of the ’50s in the US. The whole idea is that there are types of music that have no place with respectable people. Respectable people listen to decent music and immoral people listen to indecent music, and it does not make sense that a community that has high moral standards should be listening to this type of music.”

Anyone literate or with a memory lasting longer than the fire on a matchstick knows that this has happened before. Once upon a time it was Avraham Fried who was introducing the newfangled trends, before that it was Mordechai ben David and Shlomo Carlebach. Today, for the first time in American history, frum Jews have been shown to be viable commodities in mainstream media and this has the self-styled “old guard” shaking in their mud-covered boots. On a purely quantitative level, more people will see a Matisyahu DVD in one year than will attend most rabbis’ classes in their lifetimes (whether for good or for bad) — to not even attempt to harness this unprecedented exposure for holy purposes is virtually to deny the Torah’s universality. Who could have the audacity to say, “to hear the word of G-d you must come to Brooklyn and sit in my beit midrash?” Is a mitzvah inspired by a Matisyahu concert any less pleasing to G-d than a mitzvah whose beginning is on 13th Avenue?

King Solomon asks rhetorically in Ecclesiastes, “What gain, therefore, is there…in toiling for the wind?” Is there any action more futile, any more “toiling for the wind”, than creating a ban that exists only for the sake of invalidating itself? I can tell you personally that there are yeshiva kids right now at prominent Brooklyn yeshivas who are listening to my music, a student of a prominent Rebbe here showed me just today that he “is still rocking the Y-LOVE sticker” on his car. The other night a group of yeshiva kids passed me on Avenue J — with one of them slyly shouting me out, “Y-Love!” as he rode by on his bicycle, careful not to let his friends hear that he knew me. Dozens of kids at Jewish schools have downloaded my ringtones. Kids who feel their Rosh Yeshiva would not approve of hiphop already know how to keep their musical tastes on the DL. These Pyrrhic attempts of zealots to recreate Poland will have no impact on them.

Who will be impacted by this racist ban of no value? The “good kids”. The “good kids” from “good families” who used to be able to channel their creative energies and passions for urban/digital music in good ways will now be left devoid of a kosher alternative.

Do you know how many Emails I get on MySpace saying “hi, I’m MC Moshe, this is my brother DJ Chaim, this is our new hiphop track about Shabbos”? Would these kids have gotten the same inspiration to write a track extolling the virtues of the Sabbath after listening to Soulja Boy? T.I.? What will Moshe-leh be doing in class — when he’s not being paid enough attention — next year? Will he be becoming “MC Moshe” writing about how much he loves Shabbos? Or will he be wondering how to spell “bitch” and daydreaming about the “bling” he wishes he had? Is it not easy to sit and adjudicate about such things theoretically from Bnei Brak?

A quick message to the ban-happy chevra intent on forbidding everything short of oxygen: this is your garbage disposal speaking. The souls you are throwing away will eventually end up at one of my events. Or Matis’ events. Or a Shemspeed event. Or a JDub event.

And we will be actively trying to undo the damage that you are doing right now. We will be explaining to them why Judaism is still for them, and why it is the G-d-given medium of connection that the Torah says it is, and not the oppressive backwards culture you are trying to make it into. We will be telling them why the Torah is relevant in 2008, and not trying to recreate 1800.

And maybe we’ll help some of them come back, and help keep some of them from leaving.

And with G-d’s help, you’ll get to thank us later.