• A children’s treasury of white supremacist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and bizarrely paranoid statements in Ron Paul’s old newsletters. [TNR]

• Israel will not prosecute Israelis who were involved in the 2010 flotilla. [AP/WP]

• Israel canceled a lucrative defense deal with Turkey given the status of relations. [AP/WP]

• Matisyahu attacked a photographer! [Paper]

• One of the guys Bernie Goetz shot on the subway was found dead—27 years to the day after the Goetz incident. Eerie. [NY Post]

Fans of Zorn’s work, which includes an exploration of new Jewish music known as the “Radical Jewish Culture,” must have at least been scratching their heads at the news. A Dreamers Christmas is now airing on NPR, not merely its songs but also a live interview, during which Zorn spins a few tracks from the album and other holiday songs that have inspired him over the years. The composer has a reputation for shunning the press—at times, abrasively. But in this segment with NPR’s David Garland, he’s warm, perfectly charming, and really accessible—quite like the album itself.

Indeed, the album’s accessibility is perhaps more surprising than the fact of its existence. As Zorn puts it in the interview, this is one of his most user-friendly projects ever. “My message is joy to the world,” he says. “This is a record to play while you’re trimming the tree.” A subversive thinker and composer, Zorn has often gravitated toward subversive sounds—of screeching free jazz, punk, hardcore, and noise. This project is nothing like that: Playing at the supermarket before and after other traditional carols, it might not raise any flags to an average shopper. A connoisseur, however, will discern the difference, since the date includes, among others, art-rock and avant-jazz giant Marc Ribot, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Jewish Radical Culture phenomenon, along with Kenny Wollesen on vibes and glockenspiel, and the Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, a frequent Zorn collaborator. Everyone in the band is a tremendously accomplished musician who at some point or another gravitated toward aggressive, thrashing music—of which, on this project, there’s hardly a trace.

So, what’s going on here?

Before I even listened to the tracks and the interview, Lenny Bruce’s classic routine came to mind: “Count Basie’s Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor’s goyish. B’nai Brith is goyish. Hadassah, Jewish. Marine corps—heavy goyim, dangerous.” And so then, Christmas may be goyish, but writing Christmas carols is very Jewish. Based on Zorn’s chat on NPR, however, this project appears a much deeper and more intriguing affair. In the interview, Zorn talks about growing up in a largely Jewish neighborhood but being the only Jewish family there to not observe Hanukkah and hoist a tree instead. Zorn’s grandparents had been down the route of assimilation, and they’d passed this attitude on to his parents, who understandably thought their son crazy when he began to not only rediscover his Jewish roots but also grow into the face of the New York Jewish avant-garde in the early 1990s.

Needless to say that Zorn is no Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae musician, nor Danny Zamir, the religious soprano sax player who got his start on Zorn’s Tzadik label. He did not “return” to institutionalized Judaism, or publicly commit himself to a prescribed praxis. Instead he forged a new identity, informed by the encounter with a number of things Judaism had to offer him—particularly, what he referred to as the “radical” side of it.

“Radical,” a good Latin word, means something pertaining to the roots, something originary. And our roots always grow—usually, in opposite directions to the way we grow. A few decades ago, Zorn engaged his mythic Jewish roots: mysticism, protest, social justice, and above all, ideas about Jewish otherness, which resonated with his own eccentric approach to art. Perhaps, then, with this Christmas album, the composer is addressing his actual roots: his family traditions, including the manner in which they observed the December holidays. Who is to say that this true bit of his family history is any less Jewish than someone else’s memories of celebrating Hanukkah? The content may be different, but both are actual, lived experiences of equal value.

Zorn’s experience speaks of a complex reality of the Jewish identity in this place and time. His Jewishness is informed by his family’s customs, and these customs aren’t merely a form of rebellion but a component as vital as a body part. The album contains no religious tunes but lots of classics: “Winter Wonderland,” for example, and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” which, in the great jazz tradition of transforming simple pop tunes into complex explorations, roam far and wide—be it in Ribot’s spectacular guitar work or in Jamie Saft’s endlessly exciting piano solos. There are also two Zorn originals, “Santa’s Workshop” and “Magical Sleigh Ride,” which both feature rhythms and textures that will be familiar to a Zorn listener, and a mellow feel reminiscent of some of Miles Davis’ fusion albums as well. But there’s also an unmistakable hint of caroling, especially in Wollesen’s festive chimes and vibes and Baptista’s percussion work.

Whether or not these originals will become part of the American carol canon remains to be seen, because music as complex as Zorn’s is a highly personal, subjective experience. When I first listened to these songs, I found myself getting defensive, then tried hard to like it, then tried hard to dislike it, then got lost in the music because it was very good, and perpetually came back to a feeling of pleasure laced with dismay. And then I realized that I was really thinking about my own memory of a decorated tree in my parents’ home.

When Zorn says, discussing his Christmas music, that he misses “the tree,” I know what he means: When I pass by a street vendor in New York with rows of evergreens the smell immediately brings back a recollection: growing up in a Russian Jewish family in the still-Soviet Ukraine, where a tree was less of a novelty than it might have been for an American Jewish family in New York. In fact, I didn’t know of any Jewish families who didn’t celebrate the holiday for ethnic reasons. The holiday was for everyone. Celebrations, with gifts, were held on New Year’s. While over the past 16 or so years I made no secret of this in my Jewish circles—even at the time when I was committed to a largely Orthodox milieu—it felt like something of a dirty little secret. Very quickly, my memories of the holiday became marred with disdain, and over the years, when I’ve called my parents on New Year’s Eve, hearing their cheerful voices laced with festivities, I’ve had to squelch a certain disaffection. But listening to Zorn brought back a surge of positive memories: family-time, days spent cooking, gifts, and decorations. As a child, the only night I was allowed to stay up past midnight was also the first time I tasted champagne.

This is not to say that suddenly now I have any desire to run out and get a tree. I live a traditional Jewish life, and a Christmas tree no longer has a place in it. Frankly, I don’t even know if I’ll listen to this album again. The point, really, is that I have a whole lost world inside of me, and Zorn’s engagement with his lost world reminded me of that and brought that world back to me. Buried memories suddenly surfaced against the backdrop of my life’s trajectory. It feels like a catharsis, and only real art is able to engender that.

Zorn’s Christmas album is not a practical joke or a jest. Zorn is a serious composer, and he approached this album with the seriousness he brings to all of his music. As he says in the interview, when working with a specific style, his goal is to make it into “more what it is.” That is, he seeks to summon the style’s essence and spirit. In this case, that’s to avoid celebrating the consumerist hype or drunken stupors of the holiday season, in favor of the national, nearly secular festivity. As Bob Dorough sings on a record with Miles Davis—which Zorn brought for Garland’s listeners—“When you’re blue at Christmas time/ You see through all the waste/ All the sham, all the haste/ And plain old bad taste/ It’s a time when the greedy give a dime to the needy.” Zorn’s album takes its name from his band, the Dreamers, but maybe there’s also a bit of an actual dream in its concept: That of a holiday time for everyone.

To come back to Lenny Bruce: “Celebrate is a goyish word. Observe is a Jewish word.” Christmas most certainly will not be celebrated at the Sixth Street Synagogue this Saturday night. That’s why the event—which, in addition to Zorn’s own Aleph Trio features three other top-notch Jewish bands, two of which include the synagogue’s rabbi, illustrious sax player Greg Wall—is billed as “Nittel Nacht.” That’s how Jews named this day in the Old Country. The evening is not about celebration, but the act of observing—looking around and inside, riffing and transforming, revealing and questioning.

New York: Hanukkah is in the air at the Jewish Museum, where author and illustrator Maurice Sendak has curated a selection of 32 Hanukkah lamps (through Jan. 29, $12 museum admission). The New York Historical Society is celebrating A New York Hanukkah, displaying a Hanukkiah designed by Bronx-based silversmith Bernard Bernstein (through Jan. 8, $15 admission). For something more crowd-sourced, head uptown to Grand Army Plaza Tuesday evening (and each subsequent night of Hanukkah) for the lighting of the world’s largest menorah—it’s 23 feet tall and weighs 4,000 pounds. Or pick up Israeli designer Laura Cowan’s more portable slide magnet menorah from new Brooklyn design store Module R and arrange the candles any way you like (Module R, $225). Trust us, we know menorahs.

Newly shorn reggae singer Matisyahu brings his annual Festival of Light to the Music Hall of Williamsburg Monday night for four nights of concerts. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll eke out eight nights (Dec. 19, 20, 21, 8 p.m.; Dec. 22, 7 p.m., $35). For those equally ambivalent on facial hair, perhaps this beanie hat with detachable yarn beard is just the ticket (Moderntribe.com, $35). The National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene brings their old school charm to the Arts World Financial Center Sunday with My Yiddishe Chanukah, a festive showcase of holiday songs and klezmer melodies (Dec. 18, 12 p.m., free). On Tuesday, The Sephardic Music Festival presents popular musical acts Nuriya, Pharaoh’s Daughter, and Haale at Le Poisson Rouge (Dec. 20, 7 p.m., $18), while the band Girls in Trouble, led by Alicia Jo Rabin, takes the stage Wednesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (Dec. 21, 7 p.m., $15). After their set, head to the museum’s gift shop and pick up these awesome-looking eco-friendly dreidels made from recycled newspaper (Pickman Museum Shop, $10-$15).

The third annual Latke Festival takes place Monday evening, with attendees sampling the potato-pancake offerings of local restaurants like Kutsher’s Tribeca and Veselka and judges choosing the winning recipe (Dec. 19, 6:30 p.m., $30). For that vain latke enthusiast in your life, how about the I’m So Flippin’ Hot mirrored spatula? They’ll thank you later, we promise (Fred Flare, $24). If you’re shopping for more of a foodie, we recommend this mildly offensive Ah Choo pepper mill—shaped like a giant nose. Form and function! (Fred Flare, $22). Or take them to Shelsky’s Smoked Fish in Brooklyn and enjoy the holiday menu, which boasts five different potato latke items. Christmas envy? Not on our watch.

Girl-power aficionado Gloria Steinem joins the activism-inclined five-piece pop rock band Betty for their late show on Tuesday (Dec. 20, 9:30 p.m., $25), while the Schlep Sisters host the fifth annual burlesque holiday show, Menorah Horah, tomorrow night (Dec. 15, 8 p.m., $15 general admission). Since the somewhat disappointing Nice Jewish Guys 2012 calendar just might not do it for most of your gal pals, support female graphic artists and instead gift Kate Beaton’s new book, Hark! A Vagrant (TopatoCo, $19.95). Another option for the superheroes in your life—the more Jewish, the better, some say—is Peter A. David’s new book, The Spider Man Vault (Amazon, $28.30). And if you’re still up for more partying after Hanukkah ends, you can always celebrate New Year’s Eve with the riotous Sandra Bernhard at Joe’s Pub (Dec. 31, 11 p.m., $150).

Elsewhere: Nextbook Press deputy editor Wayne Hoffman will discuss his new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, on Sunday at congregation Oseh Shalom in Maryland. An exhibit on Chicago’s Jewish history runs through the end of the month (through Dec. 29, free). In San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum plays host to a Houdini-themed Hanukkah concert on Thursday, with Leonard Cohen tunes performed by all-male musical group, Conspiracy of Beards (Dec. 22, 6 p.m., $5). On Monday, the Klezmatics perform a holiday concert Monday at the L.A. Philharmonic (Dec. 19, 8 p.m., $38 and up).

At the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, New York Times reporter Diana Henriques discusses Bernie Madoff—the grinchiest Grinch of all—whose case she reported on extensively, visiting Madoff twice in jail (Dec. 21, 7 p.m., $20). On a lighter, less scandalous note, the San Francisco MOMA offers a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi creation, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Dec. 29, 7 p.m., $5). Bring these trippy Dreidel Vision Goggles for full viewing effect (The Jewish Museum, $3). But please, don’t spin and drive.

Abroad: London’s Jewish Community Centre hosts a three-day-long, family-friendly Hanukkah party (Dec. 18, 2-4 p.m.; Dec. 19, 20, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free). Groovy, baby? Jerusalem’s Encore Educational Theatre Company tackles yet another Gilbert and Sullivan musical, putting on seven showings of H.M.S. Pinafore (Dec. 27-Jan. 5, see showtimes, NIS 100). For the younger relatives in Israel, children’s game Bananagrams is now available in Hebrew (Modern Tribe, $20).

Happy holidays. Agenda returns in January, 2012.

Tips: culture@tabletmag.com

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.

Hopefully he did not have a Samsonite relationship to said hair.

Note From Matisyahu [Matisyahu]

The man who breaks in is Ean Seeb; his hop-stepping elicits whistles and claps from the crowd. While some brace their kippot and dance, Seeb cuts loose beneath a crop of hair that stands somewhere on the border between a brohawk and a fauxhawk. In a sea of clubbing attire and business casual, Seeb, who sports both a pierced ear and a bristly mustache, stands out in his uniform: a green T-shirt that designates him as a member of “The Green Team,” the volunteer wing of Denver Relief, the medical-marijuana dispensary that he runs across town.

A few more participants join him in the center. Two women in their early thirties, who will likely have the spins on the bus ride home, begin to pump their arms wildly and make fish faces. Sensing his work is done, Seeb withdraws to check up on the upcoming meet-and-greet between the Federation VIPs and the Orthodox reggae-rock star Matisyahu, who performed for the crowd earlier in the evening. Seeb, co-owner one of the most successful medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver, is also an owner of E-3, a Jewish nonprofit event company he runs with two friends. E-3 has been hired to coordinate nightlife events for the 2,000-plus participants at the General Assembly.

***

At 36, Seeb is a man at the right time and place. A former hip-hop dancer, high-school mascot, actor, software tester, real-estate foreclosure mogul, and a kibitzer extraordinaire, Seeb has carved out a niche in the Rockies that couldn’t have existed a decade ago.

In 2000, Colorado passed Amendment 20, which legalized medical marijuana. The initiative received 54 percent of the vote—or about three points more than the 51 percent that delivered the state to George W. Bush that day. The amendment created the state’s medical marijuana registry, a database of patients approved to use pot. To join the registry, a potential patient has to secure a prescription from a doctor. Once the patient has that prescription, they are granted a license by the Department of Public Health, which allows them to purchase up to two ounces of marijuana. In January 2009, more than eight years after the passage of Amendment 20, only 5,000 people in the state had medical marijuana licenses. One of them was Seeb.

“I had had a bad skiing accident in 1996, sprained my back, dislocated my shoulder. My arm was temporarily paralyzed, it still has permanent nerve damage, I still have permanent muscle spasms in my arm,” Seeb told me last week. He tried to medicate with pain pills, but they made him sick, he said. After he cut off the tip of his pinkie finger in a 2005 accident, Seeb decided to apply for a pot license.

“Nobody really knew how to get their medical marijuana license,” he recalled. “I realized there could be a business out of this. So, just word of mouth I started telling people ‘Hey, I could help you get your medical marijuana license,’ and I charged them a lot of money just for helping them meet with a doctor. A lot of money.”

This is where Seeb, who graduated with a degree in business administration from the University of Northern Colorado, became more than your average marijuana enthusiast. Using his license and his official legal designation as a “caregiver,” which allowed him to carry another two ounces of marijuana per patient, he started small with a delivery service. Then, in 2009, Seeb opened Denver Relief with two partners. Meanwhile, between January 2009 and January 2010, the number of patients on the state medical marijuana registry rose from 5,000 to 53,000.

Denver Relief is hailed as the vanguard of the dispensary explosion. In 2009, Seeb and his crew won the inaugural Colorado Medical Marijuana Harvest Cup, a contest for the best pot in the state, sponsored by NORML. They garnered first-place finishes in five of six categories for Bio-Diesel, Denver Relief’s signature strain. The entries were judged on smell, taste, medicinal value, potency, smoothness, and overall quality. Bio-Diesel, which is characterized by an essence of whole bean coffee, is one of the most popular medical marijuana strains in Denver. More recently, another Denver Relief strain, Dopium, was given top-10 honors by Will Breathes, Colorado’s lead marijuana critic. Breathes also praised Denver Relief’s medicinal candy, an accolade that Seeb credits to his childhood lollipop business. Denver Relief now serves several thousand patients.

***

Seeb is a third-generation Jewish Denver native. Ean, his first name, comes from his grandmother’s name, Estelle. Like many others, his last name bears the hallmark of unintentional immigrant reinvention.

“The story is when my great-grandfather got off the boat, he didn’t speak English,” Seeb told me. “He was a tailor. They asked him his name, he told them what he did, which was ‘zip,’ so his immigration records show Zipp. Just over time Zipp became Seeb.”

Like his great-grandfather’s, Seeb’s name, at least in Denver, is synonymous with his work.
Denver Relief emphasizes social action and community service in part out of a genuine sense of mission and perhaps also to distinguish itself from other dispensaries. The Green Team aids in clean-up following Denver’s massive marijuana festival held each year on April 20, the highest of holidays for habitués of the marijuana community. One Saturday a month from April to September, the dispensary offers bicycle and wheelchair repair, selling the parts at cost and providing free labor. Inside the dispensary itself, there is a canned-food drive, which benefits the food pantry at the Jewish Family Service and needy patients. And in a move that perhaps best encapsulates how pervasive marijuana culture is in Colorado, on Veterans Day Denver Relief offered a 10 percent discount to vets. (Some took the dispensary up on the offer.)

“In order to be treated like any other industry, we have to act like any other industry,” Seeb said. “We just want to run our business and not have all of these crazy legal hurdles and not have all these problems with taxes and banking. By following a model that says ‘Look, we’re doing something that any other business would do,’ hopefully we’ll get rid of some of that stigma.”

Seeb’s longstanding affinity for marijuana certainly hasn’t stigmatized him in Denver’s community of about 80,000 Jews. He’s on the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League and has held various leadership positions in the Federation. Nowhere was the community’s embrace of Seeb more discernible than at the General Assembly. Throughout the conference, he could be seen coordinating with the leadership, talking with local participants, and engaging passersby to promote the nightlife events. He was a frequent fixture at a booth where a few of his friends who had made aliyah were raising funds for Israeli lone soldiers.

“I don’t feel threatened by the community at all,” Seeb said of his seeming embrace by Denver’s Jews. “If they are making fun of me, it’s certainly not to my face. I feel that I could walk up to some of the top businesspeople or leaders in the Jewish community, and I can consider them my contemporaries; I sit with them in board meetings once a month. Now, I’m not going to say that everything is beautiful and lovey-dovey. But I really don’t feel like they’ve ever said, ‘We can’t use him ‘cause he’s that pot guy.’ ”

Perhaps that’s because Denver Relief is particularly popular among Jews. Seeb estimates a quarter of his customers are Jewish, in a city with a population that’s only 13 percent. “There’s a ton of overlap,” he said. “Obviously I’m not going to say who my patients are, but yes. I see people that I know in my medical marijuana center on a regular basis.”

Drake’s main beef is with Kanye. (Jay-Z picks his fights much more carefully; his status as a hegemon has been brilliantly analyzed by the tastefully named international relations blogger Marc Lynch). It can be traced back at least to last year, when Drake was dropped from Kanye’s “All of the Lights,” a song whose gigantic cast of guest vocalists included Rihanna and Elton John. Drake sounded disappointed but understanding: “Kanye’s creative process is ever-changing,” he said. “That’s completely OK.” But this year, Drake was starting something: He accused Kanye and Jay-Z of stealing his and Lil’ Wayne’s idea to join up. “We still gotta do that album,” he told a radio host. “I heard some other guys are coming out with an album together. … I don’t know where they got that idea.” Drake threw down in the opening verse of Lil’ Wayne’s recent single “I’m On One,” rapping, “I’m just feeling like the throne is for the taking, watch me take it!” (“The throne,” “watch,” etc.) And in his own “Dreams Money Can Buy,” Drake rapped: “Oh, I never seen the car you claim to drive,” in presumable reference to the $1.7 million Mercedes-Benz Kanye drove in Cannes. He added: “S**t I seen it, you just ain’t inside.”

Flash forward to late last week, when Jay-Z and Kanye—excuse me, the Throne—dropped their second single, “Otis,” so named because it samples Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” In what is being interpreted as a response to Drake’s “never seen the car you claim to drive” line, Kanye retorts, “They ain’t seen me cause I pulled up in my other Benz/Last week I was in my other other Benz.” (Nice.)

So, will there be further disses on the rest of the album? Will Hova deign to get involved? And how will Drake respond? As long as this is between Kanye and Drake, Tablet Magazine can safely back Drake. But if Jay-Z gets involved, we are going to have to recuse ourselves. Jay-Z may not be Jewish, but he is … Jay-Z.

“Otis”:

Highly Anticipated Kanye West and Jay-Z Album Set for Release [ArtsBeat]
Subliminal Beef: Kanye vs. Drake [This Is 50]
Related: Jay-Z vs. the Game: Lessons for the American Primacy Debate [Foreign Policy]
Earlier: Matisyahu ‘Feuds’ With Drake

A perfect way to describe what makes JDub so great is to explain what is so wrong with this post on Commentary’s Contentions blog. Instructing us to “Shed No Tears for the Death of JDub,” author Matthew Ackerman lazily lumps it in with Heeb, the alternative Jewish magazine that recently lost most of its funding was forced to scale back significantly due to financial difficulties, and crows, “The turn against these outfits by their funders should be welcomed as a potential indication of growing seriousness in American Jewish priorities. It is no doubt true there is nothing wrong with innovation in itself. Yet we should be wary of the enthusiasm generated by unsustainable appeals to passing whims about the nature of Jewish commitment.” I know what Ackerman is saying. I’m inclined to agree about Heeb, which too frequently places its highest premium on shock and defines Judaism so broadly that it defines it out of existence. But that is not what JDub was ever about. It was about using media—primarily music, but Jewcy, which it owns, is also a good example, as was its consulting with Birthright’s alumni organization—to connect to Jewishness young Jews who would otherwise have no day-to-day, or week-to-week, or even year-to-year link to this aspect of their identities. While I’m sure JDub would be happy to have, say, Baby Boomers listening to Balkan Beat Box, Girls in Trouble, or any of its acts, that was never the demographic that JDub spoke for, or to.

When you are growing up in a Jewish household, it is easy to feel Jewish and participate in Jewish activities and institutions; once you are old enough to create your own household, if you have managed to make it there while maintaining a connection with your Jewishness, then this is once again easy. JDub aimed for that middle spot, a time of life when it is very easy for young Jewish people, living perhaps far away from where they grew up and in a very different milieu, to stay Jewish. Bachman notes that JDub brought “together countless young Jews in the altneuland of their own identity project,” and the reference to Theodor Herzl’s novel of Zionist utopia feels apt.

But how to answer Ackerman’s concern about JDub’s lack of “seriousness”? By asking in turn: Would it be better if young Jews just had no connection with Judaism at all? Better there be fewer of them who, when they get older, are members of congregations and other Jewish institutions? Fewer who marry Jews and raise their kids Jewish? If this is a trade-off Ackerman is willing to make, that is his right, but to my mind it makes him the only slightly more lenient (and much more secular) cousin of the ultra-Orthodox. More likely, though, this is just a case of lazy thinking, and in an honest, sober moment, Ackerman and Commentary would admit that they would gladly have 20-somethings relate to Judaism through indie rock bands so that these same people, when they are 40-somethings, relate to Judaism via more traditional—Commentary would say “serious”—institutions. They’d never admit it, but the fall of JDub means fewer future Commentary subscribers.

JDub To Close Up Shop [JDub Records]
JDub and Aaron Bisman [Water Over Rocks]
Shed No Tears for the Death of JDub [Commentary]
JDub Records, A Music Video Eulogy [New Voices]

The original Taboo, a word-guessing game much like TV’s $25,000 Pyramid, except that each word to be guessed is accompanied by a list of four that cannot be given as hints, was introduced by Hasbro in 1989. Like many best-selling games, it has spawned several spin-offs, like Taboo for Kids and Christmas Taboo.

Jewish Taboo began to take shape when Seth Burstein and Ian Framson, friends and business partners (they founded Trade Show Internet) living in San Francisco, were playing Taboo one night in 2008. In the middle of the game, they realized they were giving each other clues that had some sort of Jewish connotation—and that they were communicating effectively. What better way to win at a classically cryptic game than to rely on religious-based clues equally cryptic to outsiders?

“Dude,” Burstein recalled his friend saying, “we should make a game called ‘Ta-Jew.’”

Burstein was on-board. He grew up in a game-playing family of four kids where Risk and Monopoly matches would rage for days. Video games, he explained, are no match for the deep pleasures of board games. The young tech entrepreneurs decided to go old-school.

They turned to the 25-year-old gaming company Jewish Educational Toys for assistance with a prototype. It turned out that Jewish Educational Toys had always wanted to develop a Jewish version of Taboo. The biggest challenges, company president Abe Blumberger said, had been securing a license from Hasbro and finding someone to write the clue cards. Fortuitously, Taboo’s original developer, Brian Hersch, contacted Jewish Education Toys around the same time to suggest the same thing. He agreed to pave the way with Hasbro, Burstein and Framson would provide the manpower, and the game was on its way.

It took three years, but eventually Burstein, now 29, and Framson, 28, reached their goal of creating 1,008 words—the same number as in a standard Taboo game—canonizing centuries of Jewish history and consciousness into small colorful cards. “Anything and everything I know about Judaism is in there,” Burstein told me. Grandmothers were consulted (“schmuck” was deemed inappropriate for mass distribution), the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia was procured, and Burstein’s older brother, a Reform rabbi in New Jersey, was called upon for his expertise.

Blumberger and his team at Jewish Educational Toys worried that too many of the clues drew on secular knowledge. “Adam Sandler,” for example, got vetoed. Burstein and Framson, meanwhile, nixed items they felt were too religious. “You have to appeal to people who are culturally Jewish or religious Jewish, people who know culture and liturgy but not everything from the Torah or Bible or Talmud,” Rabbi Burstein, the New Jersey rabbi, explained. A compromise was to put different kinds of clues on each side of a card: The blue side gets an easier word (like “pastrami”) and the green side a harder one (“Orthodox Union”).

Taking the game for a test-play reveals an unsurprising Zionist streak, as you try to get your teammates to guess terms like “promised land,” “Diaspora,” and “aliyah.” “Birthright,” “JCC,” and “Hillel” (also, not unrelated, “dues”) appear, too. People whose names appear include usual suspects, like Spielberg, Wiesel, and Mel Brooks, along with younger-skewing ones like Marc Cuban and Matisyahu. Barbra Streisand shares a card with Dustin Hoffman, though the Rain Man actor is on the green side, for harder words.

And then there’s the card that seeks “gentile” or “goy.” You’re not allowed to use “Muslim,” “Christian,” or “other,” which seems like a recipe for ethnocentric disaster.

Last year, Drake appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and said some things that, if one was trying really, really hard, might have come off as disparaging: Talking about Matisyahu’s outfit, Drake giggled when Kimmel said the black hat and peyes were almost like a costume. Could such a semi-slight go unanswered? Of course not. Waiting a few months for good measure, Matisyahu retaliated this week: Caught on the streets of Los Angeles by the gossip Website TMZ, he was asked about Drake, and responded, cuttingly, “Drake is pretty good.” Snap! Pushed further, the reggae star lost all inhibitions. Drake, he hissed, “happens to be Jewish, but he’s not representing Judaism.” Which, of course, is a statement with which Drake himself is very likely to agree.

To fans of the genre, this is a very troubling state of affairs. If we’re going to have more Jewish hip-hop stars, we might as well learn how to do this whole feuding thing right. Might you help? In the comments, drop us some verses dissing either one of the combatants. Let’s get something started …

Matisyahu: Drake Can’t Compare to My Jewishness [TMZ]

• Jewish Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Carl Levin petitioned AIPAC to support the Obama administration’s START missile defense treaty, on the grounds that it would strengthen ties with Russia and thereby help deal with Iran. [Ben Smith]

• Palestinian Authority President Abbas called for the release of Gilad Schalit. It is part of the rising tensions between him and Hamas due to the WikiLeaks revelation that the P.A. was consulted before Operation Cast Lead. [JPost]

• So the Tehran airport has a gigantic Star of David carved into the outside of its roof. Seriously. [Atlantic Wire]

• Natalie Portman compares learning to dance ballet (for Darren Aronofsky’s new film) to putting on tefillin. [NYT]

• Prominent Bay Area Jewish philanthropist Richard Goldman died at 90. [JTA]

Because you asked for it (or even if you didn’t): Matisyahu does Hanukkah.

• Speaking of! Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan thinks the U.N. tribunal probing former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination should postpone its indictments for a year lest its findings lead Hezbollah to be startin’ something. [JPost]

• As of now, Israel’s top strategy vis-à-vis Iran is to convince the United States to take a harder line, not to prepare for its own military action. [Politico]

• Murdoch, Cheney, oil, and Israel: What could possibly go wrong? [Fast Company]

• Tablet Magazine books critic Adam Kirsch considers Günter Grass’s novelistic memoir The Box. [Slate]

• Matisyahu loves Reb Nachman (who is the subject of Rodger Kamenetz’s Nextbook Press book). [New Voices]

• Contributing editor Joan Nathan on young Jews cooking hardcore Ashkenazic dishes. Cholent-chic! [NYT]

So this is why peace is impossible.

Now Safar has produced a Sephardic Music Festival compilation album, which captures the sounds of the festival even for those who couldn’t be in New York for it. It includes songs by well-known musicians Matisyahu, Yasmin Levy, and Galeet Dardashti, along with less-familiar artists, like DeScribe and Shmoolik, who team up for a reggaeton-meets-Middle East pop track in French and Hebrew.

For Vox Tablet this week, Rob Weisberg, the host of WFMU’s Transpacific Sound Paradise—“New York’s peerless world music show,” according to Time Out—took a look at the album. [Running time: 15:33.]

• Yet rumor has it that the U.S. offered a deal whereby Israel would lease the Jordan Valley from the Palestinian Authority, perhaps for seven years. [Arutz Sheva]

• Israel’s housing market is booming … too much. [LAT]

• A Labor Knesset member has demanded that more women be involved in the peace process, as per one U.N. resolution. [Arutz Sheva]

• Adam Levin offers an apologia pro novel sua. [Jewcy]

• Matisyahu does Moses. [Jewlicious]

Computer issues have forestalled our weekly NFL post; please consider this The Scroll’s bye week, and enjoy this video of Donovan McNabb before he was benchable.

• Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen argues that Hamas is inflicting more harm on the people of Gaza than Israel is: “Maybe the blockade ought to end—but so, too, should anyone’s dreamy idea of Hamas.” Mr. Cohen, are you trying to take away my lovely Hamas dreams? What’s next, bunnies? [WaPo]

• The AP takes a look at Mahmoud Abbas’ new strategy of cozying up to American Jewish leaders. [AP]

• As we noted this morning, the Three Weeks begin tonight, which means, for many observant Jews, no music. Do Simon and Garfunkel get an exemption?

Oh, you may recognize his sparring partner.

The Jewlicious Main Event: Yuri Foreman vs. Matisyahu [JTA]
Related: In Training [Tablet Magazine]
Barney Ross [Nextbook Press]

Matisyahu, hip-hop artist

All are related to consciousness and health:

1. I would like to only put healthy things in my body. This includes eating more consciously, cooking my own food, and buying locally grown veggies, organic products, etc.

2. Exercise. I would like to have one consistent exercise. Not go crazy or anything, just simple stuff: ride a bike, take a hike, etc.

3. I would like to visit the Hasidic rebbes’ gravesites in Europe and spend time at each one, learning the teachings of that rebbe.

4. I would like to continue working on being present in whatever I am doing. To do things with truth, whole-heartedly.

Daphne Merkin, writer

To try in my personal habits to be more like Benjamin Franklin and less like Courtney Love. Early to bed and early to rise, that sort of thing. (Right now I stay up late, watching Iron Chef and Lock Up, when I should be reading Chekhov at the very least; and I get up near noon, by which time Christopher Hitchens has already produced 1,500 words on the issue of the day.)

To try and enjoy the little things; to stop looking for a blaze of light followed by a loud bang, or the transformative phone call, or the email that arrives out of the blue and will change everything. To be happy with my share instead of envying everyone who has a larger apartment. To appreciate that I am alive even though I’m not as thin or young or productive or, well, anything, as I had hoped to be.

To love where I am loved instead of pining after the unreachable or ungettable person (meaning man) without whom my life is incomplete. To accept that most couples are compromised arrangements at best and “the lion’s share of happiness,” to quote my beloved, never-married Philip Larkin, doesn’t necessarily belong to them. To remember that a woman without a man is like a woman without a man—pathetic in a noble sort of way.

To find some route back to the Jewishness I have cast off—not lightly, I might add—and for which I harbor great nostalgia. Not enough to make me actually seek out a shul that might suit me or to return to keeping separate kitchens in my apartment, but enough to hanker after Friday night invitations. To find some way of inserting it in my life in a meaningful fashion—whether it be taking a class or learning how to make gefilte fish from scratch.

Michael Showalter, comedian, star of Comedy Central’s Michael and Michael Have Issues

1. Improve backhand.

2. Learn to speak cat language.

3. Understand meaning of life.

4. No more ice cream every single night.

Naomi Alderman, author of Disobedience

I’m not generally big on New Year’s resolutions; I feel that being in therapy ought to cover my self-improvement needs for the year. Why improve yourself when you can outsource and have someone else do it for you?

However, as the festive season approaches I have been thinking that next year I really want to try to be more forgiving. It’s a very Christian-sounding resolution, I know. It’s not about “turning the other cheek,” though, but a more pragmatic approach: I’ve noticed that individuals who are unforgiving end up coming across as bitter and annoying. So for the sake of my soul or maybe just for the sake of appearances: more forgiveness this year.

Otherwise, there are just the constant ongoing resolutions of the battles one can never win. Answer email more promptly. Do not allow the washing up to sit around for several days. Go to the gym more often. Set a writing schedule and stick to it this time, goddammit—think of Trollope in his study, writing for three hours every morning from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., and then going off to run the post office, be more like that. Get a post office, perhaps.

I once made a list of all the things I thought I should be doing on a daily basis and estimated how long each one would take. The total came to 28 hours a day, and didn’t include any time for sleep. Maybe I really need to learn to be more forgiving of myself.

Douglas Century, writer and author of Nextbook Press’s Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter

I’d love to be able to explain basic biblical stories to my six-year-old daughter without having to look them up on Google. The other day, when I mentioned the story of Abraham (almost) sacrificing Isaac, she looked deeply troubled, and said, “I don’t understand—why would God tell Abraham to kill his own son?” I stammered something about how God was just testing Abraham, then found myself getting online and scrolling through website after website to read the various explanations for the Binding of Isaac. I realized I couldn’t remember the exact motives for Cain killing Abel, either. Or list more than a handful of Joseph’s brothers. Since my daughter is starting her religious education this year, it would be nice to relearn the stories that the 12-year-old me knew by heart.

I also use way too much profanity, especially driving. Since cursing under my breath at other aggressive drivers seems hardwired into my reptilian brain, and since I’m often driving with my daughter in her car seat behind me, I’m also constantly half-turning and apologizing for using bad language. “Daddy shouldn’t have said that, honey, you’re right.” It happens, too, when I’m on the phone. I’ve tried spelling out curse words, but Lena caught me at the first “S-H-I–.” So, I resolve to make every effort to clean up my act. Perhaps it’ll make me calmer and happier too.

Finally, I’m sure most people resolve to be more productive and focused each day. I need to go through a kind of social networking detox, or at least stop rationalizing hours wasted in the sinkholes of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube by telling myself it’s time spent doing “research.”

Ayelet Waldman, writer and author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace

1. Pay more attention to my husband.

2. Not worry as much about my children’s futures.

3. Turn off my damn appliances to save energy.

Mimi Sheraton, former New York Times food critic and Tablet Magazine food columnist

1. I resolve never again to serve my Italian husband matzo balls marinara or noodle kugel—which he abhors as “sweet pasta.”

2. I resolve not to tell guests that my chopped chicken livers contain gribenes. Let them enjoy!

3. I resolve never again to grate potatoes for latkes in my Cuisinart. From now on, it’s a hand-held, four-sided grater or nothing.

4. I resolve to lose the last 10 pounds. Doesn’t everyone?

Some critics aren’t sold. “The biggest hurdle for white, Western reggae singers to overcome is phoniness: How to make reggae without faking patois (which sounds silly and condescending), and how to embrace its themes without reducing a racially and politically charged genre to mere schtick?” notes a reviewer in Paste. “Matisyahu spectacularly fails to solve these predicaments, but the biggest problem with his reggae is simpler: He’s unequivocally terrible at it. Not only do we get fake patois, but also raging electric guitars and cluttered hip-hop production.”

Hasidic Star Matisyahu Mixes It Up on New Album [AP]
Lyin’ From Zion [Paste]
Previously: Melody Maker

Matisyahu + Umphrey’s McGee at SummerStage [TONY]
Matisyahu Expands Sound, Vision on Light [Boston Music Spotlight]
One Day [Matisyahu’s MySpace]
Previously: Melody Maker [Tablet]

The community is featured sporadically in Jewish newspapers, mostly as a wacky story about unconventional Israeli immigrants. The thing most reporters don’t usually write about, however, is the town of Dimona’s unlikely profusion of pop and soul singles in the 1970s.

Ye’allelulah! Soul Messages from Dimona, a sort of posthumous greatest-hits compilation for the colony released by Numero Group, chronicles this near-forgotten and altogether brilliant history. When the Dimonans imported their Chicago lifestyle to the New Old World, they brought their aesthetic along, too. The CD art features a number of wild shots of people in vivid ’70s clothes, all sequins and spangles and red jumpsuits”with tallit and ceremonial head-coverings as well. Just over half of the tracks feature a group called The Soul Messengers; the other songs spotlight later incarnations of the group, including a group of female vocalists known as The Spirit of Israel, who played with the same backing band, and The Sons of the Kingdom, a group of later immigrants from the same Garvey community.

Dimona

Musically and thematically, the groups mesh together seamlessly on this album, so you’re essentially listening to one long record by the same band with a cast of revolving vocalists. But, hey, that’s exactly what early Motown singers did, too.

Much of the album is inspired by American soul music of that era. There are fat, tightly-arranged horns playing high fanfares and low, ass-beating funk; the guitars have a wah-wah wobble. The singing on “Go to Proclaim is straight out of the Curtis Mayfield songbook. “A Place to Be sounds like an outtake from a Martha and the Vandellas album”well, except for the chorus that declares “I just want to live in Israel—well, except for the chorus that declares “I just want to live in Israel . . . It’s a place of love and freedom / It’s a world of love and peace.” Meanwhile, “Holding On,” both musically and lyrically, could be a Jackson Five song, with its traded-off vocals and chorus that’s hopeful almost to the point of naïveté—“Sisters and brothers, walk hand in hand / Cause this whole world, right here / is standing on our jams”—but in the context of religious music, these pleas feel somehow purposeful. The lyrics—in fact, the very dynamic—of the album straddles the foggy border between Biblical hyperbole and Motown cheesiness: that is to say, it’s not how people talk today, and it’s probably not how anyone ever spoke. But, just as there’s poetry in Psalms and in songs like “My Girl” and “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted,” there’s poetry on Soul Messages.

Shem’s Disciples

I first encountered Shem’s Disciples in the middle of a giant festival concert. Until their set, the stage had been a revolving door, one performer after another. Suddenly a band was packing themselves onto the tiny stage—a guitarist, bassist, and keyboardist, and . . . four vocalists.

Right away, I knew something was up. The men who front Shem’s Disciples paint an unusual picture: Two young, awkward white brothers—one a Hasidic Jew in a bushy beard and baggy hip-hop clothes—took the left-hand mics. Two older-looking black men, both bald and dressed to the nines, stood to the right. The band looked like they were going to start a high-voltage, pumped-up rock and roll chord—but, as soon as the guitarist’s fingers came down on his instrument, the band dropped into a laid-back reggae groove. All four voices came in at once, a kind of vocal wall of sound that assaulted every part of the listener’s ear at once: the white guys with their staccato lines of hip-hop, and the black guys belting out a powerful, soulful chorus.

In the short year since their formation, Shem’s Disciples have recorded and self-released an album, Sow Melodic (an allusion to the melodica that group leader Marlon Sobol, the kid with the big beard, sometimes plays). Its first half is a mix of solid background music and meandering reggae/hip-hop/jam-band hybrids that end just in time to leave listeners still in the groove and not yet bored.

Marlon Sobol

The second track, “Far from Home,” samples the song “Where the Heart Is” from Fiddler on the Roof. Weirdly, this is the second time in three weeks that I’ve heard it sampled in a hip-hop song. If anyone was worried that Fiddler had been getting neglected since Two Live Jews’ 1991 hip-hop adaptation Fiddling with Tradition, they can rest easy now.

The second half of the album really finds Shem’s Disciples raising the stakes. The rustic jam “Banks to the River” is a soul song set to reggae backing music that vividly recalls old gospel spirituals. The brilliant piano jam “Sapphire” threatens to break out into a late-era Elton John number, but retains its sparse instrumentation and layers on the vocal harmonies instead. It’s an honest, schmaltzy, and unexpectedly touching ballad—“Not living in a fantasy,” the singer croons, “just here to extend my family tree”—that, once you listen to it a few dozen times, plays really well as a self-questioning devotional for the recently religious. The Disciples’ soul-and-hip-hop vocal team-up is most effectively used on “Not for Myself,” where the hairless half of the vocalists recite the words of the Talmud tractate Pirkei Avot (“If I’m not for myself / who’s going to be for me / if I’m only for myself / who am I?”) with devotion befitting a Baptist choir while the brothers drop rhymes over a solid reggae riff.

Matisyahu’s new four-song E.P., Shattered, is less a stand-alone project than a preview of his upcoming full-length album, Light. “This album came about by me looking at music for the first time again, but it’s also about me looking at the world anew,” he told me in an interview last week. “First, everything’s darkness. Then you see a lightning bolt—that’s the ‘Shattered’ part. Then, there’s light, and it lights up the world and you see the realness of all the shadows around you.”

K’naan

“Smash Lies,” the first song on the mini-album, seems to be the single, but I’m more sold on “Two Child One Drop,” which clocks in at six minutes, flowing from pop song into full-blown odyssey in a torrent of different instruments, with wildly chanted Hebrew vocals (by Moshav’s Yehuda Solomon) and instrumentation that’s one part reggae and three parts Postal Service—echoey, otherworldy, and instantly nostalgic.

Matisyahu’s new tour features opening act K’naan, a survivor of the Somalian wars whose remarkable debut album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher switches from a chilled-out world music groove to a manic, breathless spoken-word stream of consciousness, launching a dazzling array of percussion out of his words alone.

I know, I know—Matisyahu may be a lot more familiar than black Jewish soul music unearthed after thirty years, but, in its own way, his new music is as surprising as the recordings from Dimona. Like K’naan and Shem’s Disciples, their songs do what great music is supposed to; I could put a name on it, but we’d all probably just roll our eyes and sigh.

Instead, just press play.

Matthue Roth is a performance poet and author of the novel Losers. He is an associate editor at MyJewishLearning.com.

Four years ago, Yoshie Fruchter came to New York and plunged into the avant-garde jazz scene that revolved around those clubs, watching local legends like Shanir Blumenkranz (who can coax just about any sound in the universe from a bass guitar) and multi-instrumentalist percussionist Kevin Zubek work their magic.

Now, they’re both in his backing band.

It’s hard to come up with the right word to describe Fruchter, who fronts the band Pitom, and whose debut record, named for the band, is available this month from John Zorn’s Tzadik Records. The album takes the characteristically absurdist and often improvisational jazz that Tzadik bands are known for and adds more than a measured dose of power-chord punk.

Pitom

Pitom isn’t a by-the-numbers fusion of jazz and punk, though; it’s more like jazz played on a punk canvas, fueled at one end by the interplay between Fruchter’s guitars and Jeremy Brown’s electric violin, and on the other by a rhythm section of Blumenkrantz and Zubek (who can’t confine themselves to playing rhythm, and often create a whole song-inside-the-song). Uncle Tupelo defined a genre with their mix of punk and country; in ten years, we might be saying the same thing about Pitom.

Listen to “Freigel Rock” by Yoshie Fruchter

Only a stone’s throw away in influence, but a world apart in content, Tel Aviv’s duo NX2 mix rock and punk and jazz to sound like Portishead without samples, and with an extra helping of lo-fidelity static and chaos. The band”named for its two members, Noga Shalev and Noga Shatz”combines trembling, delicate vocals and guitars shaking with feedback, creating what could easily be mistaken for a soundtrack to either a horror movie or a Gothic romance, but with enough substance and surprise to keep the music squarely at the center of attention. NX2′s six-song E.P. “Dreams on Fire, out from Israel’s Sshaking Recordss, is boundlessly dark, often sad, and almost entirely pretty”it’s what Emily the Strange would play if she were in a band.

NX2

For each detour NX2 makes into feedback-entrenched noise (like the latter half of “Feel ) another song springs up that’s simple and strummed. For the most part, the record’s aesthetic is dire and desperate and dirty, like PJ Harvey‘s earliest recordings, the ones that were so scratchy and barren that no one thought she’d ever record again. And then there are songs like “Insideout, where the guitars and vocals are so full and compelling that, like Portishead, they manage to make a tiny two-piece band sound like a whole orchestra.

Listen to “Feel” by NX2

Listen to “Real” by NX2

Eprhyme‘s recent two-song EP “Punklezmerap was released by K Records, a label more renowned for indie rock (The Moldy Peaches, Modest Mouse) than hip-hop. But Eprhyme (who was known in a previous life as Eden Pearlstein) writes lyrics peppered with bits of Jewish mysticism and philosophy that fit the label’s iconoclastic bent.

As much as I enjoy listening to artists like Kosha Dillz, I can’t help but wonder, would he still be dropping lines about Manischewitz if there wasn’t a more-or-less guaranteed audience? Eprhyme gives hope to those of us in search of something more substantial. He wears his influences on his sleeve, with lyrical and thematic nods to hip-hop groups like A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots, but his flow is entirely his own. In the song “Punkzlemerap, Eprhyme gives a mini-autobiography, playing up his dilettante side (“I’m not the kind of guy to stay too long in one spot/Before hip hop, I
was into punk rock”) while simultaneously striving to connect to something higher (“this is the sound of a different drummer/straight from the mouth of number wonder/613 to keep and remember ).

Eprhyme

And when he does employ a Jewish cliché, like lifting a chorus from “Fiddler on the Roof for the song “Where the Heart Is, he isn’t throwing it in blindly. Instead, he twists, wrenches, and squeezes meaning through the different permutations of the song’s verses. “Why must I travel to a distant land/far from the home I love, he sings, echoing both Tevye and an R&B diva. His new work, especially an upcoming project with Shir Feinstein-Feit, promises to dive even deeper; in the song “Shomer Salaam, he chants, “The niglah is the nistar, which literally means that concealed and revealed are the same thing. It’s one of his several hat-tips to Hasidic philosophy, which he’s likely to follow up with a quote from the Koran. It’s a far cry from the bagels-and-lox Judaism of many Jewish hip-hop acts today, and it’s a welcome breath of fresh air.

Listen to “Punklezmerap” by Ephryme

Listen to “Where the Heart Is” by Ephryme

Diwon the Yemenite DJ recently released his Beat Guide to Yiddish“not a series of language lessons at all, but a 25-minute mixtape, a smokescreen for Diwon to go wild on the turntables and computers. The record is Diwon doing what he does best, which is throwing together all sorts of crazy and obscure samples: Hasidic singer/jester Lipa Shmeltzer, Yiddish boys’ choirs, the requisite 1970s soul songs, and modern songs that sound like 1970s soul songs. Listening, you can’t help but ask yourself, again and again, where did he find that? Not that it matters. Diwon’s sampling feels like Gulliver showing his family the slides from his travels”there’s no way you’ll believe it without seeing for yourself.

Another notable debut: Ben Bresky, a veritable encyclopedia of all types of Jewish music”he’s the sort of person who can list the last ten people to record versions of “Adon Olam, in klezmer, reggae, and synth-pop variations”recently started podcasting about Jewish religious music for Arutz Sheva, the religious Zionist newspaper in Israel. In his latest episode, Bresky interviewed Aaron Dugan, Matisyahu‘s guitarist, and previewed songs from the latter’s new E.P., “Shattered,” a preview of his album, Light, expected in early 2009.

If you’re in the New York area, stop by the new 92nd St. Y in Tribeca, where I’m hosting a new monthly music and spoken-word open mic. The first session is Wednesday, November 19, featuring Jeremiah Lockwood from Sway Machinery and Elisa Albert. And if you’ve got a record or a song that needs to be heard, or if you’ve just got something to shout about, drop me a line in the comments.

Matthue Roth is a performance poet and author of the novel Losers. He is an associate editor at MyJewishLearning.com.

Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat are the brains behind Balkan Beat Box, an ensemble which samples and fuses everything from brass wedding tunes to Moroccan rai to create utterly infectious dance music.

Kaplan and Muskat got their early musical training in Israel, but it’s in New York that they began to put forth their own distincitve interpretation of what music from that part of the world could, or should, sound like. They explain all this and more to Sara Ivry in their Brookyln studio, just a few weeks before they hit the road with Matisyahu.

Next to the ad hung a poster for a newish CD titled Live at Stubb’s by Matisyahu, featuring a silhouette of the same young man clutching a mic. The poster led me to a website trumpeting the artist as “the Hasidic Reggae superstar.” Whether that means he’s a superstar who plays “Hasidic reggae” or a reggae superstar who happens to be Hasidic is moot. Right now, both statements are true: Live at Stubb’s spent most of the last year near the top of the Billboard reggae charts, peaking at No. 1, and if Hasidic reggae is a movement then Matisyahu is a genre unto himself.

2005 was a banner year for Matisyahu, and he’s braced for even greater success in 2006. He recorded two songs with born-again headbangers P.O.D. for their recent CD, and is set to release Youth, his first major-label album, on Epic this March. In addition to Carifest, his recent gigs range from sold-out shows at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom and Webster Hall to the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, where he performed Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” alongside Phish veteran Trey Anastasio in front of 90,000 people. It’s been a remarkable journey for a high school dropout, now 26, who followed that same jam band across the country a decade ago.

Hasidic reggae: The very phrase sounds like fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, and a predictably unfunny one at that. By dressing in the anachronistic manner of Lubavitch forebears”call it “Old Shul”"and shunning the temptations of the secular world, an adherent of Orthodox Judaism would seem an extremely unlikely candidate to entertain the masses. It’s certainly an attention-grabbing combination, a surprising marriage of secular and sacred, black and white, made richer by the memory of the 1991 race riots in Matisyahu’s adopted neighborhood of Crown Heights.

Despite their aversion to pop culture, Hasidim have become a familiar visual presence in it. Like Canadians, secular Jews have blandly assimilated, so while the fervently observant make up only a small percentage of the overall Jewish population, the Hasidic “uniform” has become the most obvious signifier of Jewishness, easy shorthand to depict an identity that’s notoriously difficult”birth mother’s religion? no foreskin? High Holy Days ticket-holding?”to define.

Hasidism are often employed as a cheap source of humor, from the davening scholar in the mosh pit in the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” video to the photos that American Apparel uses in its ad campaigns as bearded non sequiturs. Read as a gimmick, then, it’s no wonder that Matisyahu created such a media stir, one that until very recently outstripped his actual record sales. In the last few months, however, those have soared; to date he’s sold 369,000 copies of Live at Stubb’s, while sales of his 2004 debut, Shake Off the Dust. . . Arise, approach 12,000″a 400 percent spike since the fall.

With write-ups in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, and appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Last Call With Carson Daly (whose host proclaimed him the “most exciting thing happening in music today” even as he mispronounced his name “Modest Yahoo”), Matisyahu has garnered more mainstream media attention than any new reggae artist in years and become the first artist from the ranks of the Haredim to crossover to the mainstream. Even my shrink, who hardly possesses Daly’s cultural antennae, has heard of him.

He may be the focus of attention thanks largely to his novelty, but Matisyahu’s not a joke act relying on sophomoric punchlines, like 2 Live Jews, M.O.T., and Yidcore. Nor is he like the performers who normally target the frum demographic, purveyors of what some call “shiny shoe music”, a kind of slick Yiddish pop. Startling in its earnestness, his music attempts to unite the redemptive vibes of Bob Marley and Shlomo Carlebach, who left Chabad to found a commune for troubled Jewish youth.

The journey from rebellious teen to devout Orthodox scholar makes for an irresistible story. Born Matthew Miller, Matisyahu was raised Reconstructionist in White Plains, began listening to Marley at age 14, grew dreads, and slid into hippiedom. At 16, a trip to Israel connected him to Judaism, but his religious awakening didn’t really begin until he moved to New York to attend the New School and stumbled upon the Carlebach Shul. In Washington Square Park, he met a young Lubavitch rabbi who was a former Deadhead, and Miller soon moved to Crown Heights to devote himself to Torah study. Passionate about music long before religion, his performances for fellow yeshiva students led to his reggae career, but only after he received the blessing of his rabbinic advisors.

Matisyahu isn’t the first Jew in reggae; that honor probably falls to Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. There are relatively few Jewish reggae artists”dancehall superstar Sean Paul, indie ska stalwart King Django, and Elan Atias, the American-born, Israeli-raised lead singer of the Legendary Wailers, who will release his debut on Interscope in 2006″but long before The Matrix reggae artists were invoking Zion. The first international reggae hit was Desmond Dekker‘s “The Israelites,” which topped the British charts in 1969 and climbed to No. 9 in the U.S”the first reggae act to reach No. 1 in the UK and the first to chart in America. The Star of David, a familiar icon on album covers, graces the logo of Tuff Gong, Bob Marley’s Jamaican label, and a sense of ersatz Yiddishkeit abounds, from Biblical imagery in Marley’s “Exodus” or the Congos’ “Ark of the Covenant” to the “Fiddler on the Roof” melodies that float through Augustus Pablo’s “Skanking Easy” and “Havendale Rock.” The Ivory Coast’s Alpha Blondy has even taken the philo-Semitism to the extreme, titling his albums Masada, Jerusalem, Elohim, and Yitzhak Rabin.

There are actually a number of similarities between Rastafarianism and the Lubavitch, including strict adherence to the Old Testament, dietary laws that shun pork and shellfish, a proscription that women keep their head covered, and a fervent Messianic belief”for the Rastas in Haile Selassie, who claimed to be a direct descendant of King David; for some Lubavitch, in Menachem Schneerson. One Rasta sect considers itself the Lost Tribe of Israel, and another early Rasta proselytizer wrote that “A Rastafarian is a Jew by nature, being a righteous one of principles, dignity and love for God.”

In a world that embraces Christian rap-metal, perhaps Hasidic reggae is not really so absurd. Matisyahu’s smooth, retro groove has a traditional roots-reggae approach, and avoids the clanky, stuttering rhythms and abrasive barking of dancehall, with its impenetrable patois and inflammatory homophobia. Possessing a sweet falsetto, a soaring cantorial croon, and an impressively authentic delivery”it’s sometimes hard to tell what language he’s chanting in”Matisyahu’s songs tackle the Exodus (“Chop ‘Em Down”), the destruction of the First Temple (“Aish Tamid”), and spiritual salvation, both divine (“If you’re drowning in the waters and you can’t stay afloat/Ask Hashem for mercy and he’ll throw you a rope”) and earthly (“Bob Nesta said it best everything will be all right”). On “King Without a Crown,” he even subverts one of reggae’s most familiar associations, marijuana as a sacramental herb, singing “Me no want no sinsemilla/That would only bring me down/Burn away my brain no way my brain is to compound/Torah food for my brain let it rain til I drown.”

Aside from the obvious stylistic collision, Matisyahu’s real innovation is the connection he makes between Jamaican toasting and niggun, the improvisatory wordless melodies”sort of a Jewish scatting”that Hasidic writer Mordechai Staiman defines as “a stammering infant language G-d created for us when our feelings are too delicate or too intimate for others to hear.” There’s also a dash of hip-hop “flava”: His backing band’s easygoing rhythms are punctuated occasionally by Matisyahu’s beatboxing”one of the highlights of his concert repertoire”and at his show at Webster Hall last fall he was joined onstage by his White Plains white rapper homeboy Stanley. Yeshiva boys and frat brothers represented in equal numbers and the crowd’s rapturous response to him suggests he has potential for broad crossover appeal. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a dynamic live performer; bouncing up and down in exaltation, his tzitzit flailing, he stage-dived into outstretched arms, putting the “mosh” into Moshiach.

Though Matisyahu’s talents are evident in concert, his albums leave me wanting. He’s not without real skill, but on record his backing band is dull; the grooves are too tame and overly polite, and the basslines”perhaps reggae’s most crucial sonic component”are positively timid. Matisyahu is devout not only in his love of God and Torah but in his fealty to the reggae genre, and his albums are reverent to the point of blandness. While songs like “Warrior” and “King Without a Crown” have memorable melodies, elsewhere he falls prey to the same affliction that plagues much underground “backpack” hip-hop, especially by white rappers: overcompensating on their props-paying to the point of tedium. His records suffer not from a lack of talent but from a lack of excitement.

That hasn’t stopped Orthodox fans from engaging in online debates about purity and selling out similar to those among hip-hop and indie rock diehards”compounded in this case by the perennial question: But is it good for the Jews? Matisyahu’s inclusion last year at a benefit for the Hebrew Academy of Special Children at Madison Square Garden proved especially controversial. “Are we supposed to be impressed that he sings like a goy?” snarked one writer. Another complained that, after a 2004 Hanukkah concert, sheltered yeshiva teens ventured to Manhattan to see him perform at “treif nightclubs where drugs, alcohol, body surfing and other stuff goes on.” Matisyahu “may be attempting to maintain a distinction between his ‘kosher’ performances and his club gigs,” wrote yet another, “but the reality is that given his PR success, that distinction is impossible to sustain at this point.”

Will Matisyahu propel listeners toward tempation or keep them from it? This is, of course, the very battle between body and soul that pop music has engendered since its dawn, inspiring such establishment responses as anti-dancing laws, record burning, and the PMRC. Matisyahu may draw inspiration from a higher source, but despite his attempt to infuse that ol’ devil music with spirituality, at root it’s still only rock-and-roll (so to speak), and that’s precisely why crossover crowds flock to his shows. Whether he offers a walk on the wild side for the Haredi, an opportunity for the less observant to reconnect in some way with their roots, or simply a groovy night out for the curious, this pious piper is singing pop’s siren song”one intelligently designed to get feet, shiny-shoe shod or not, a-tapping.