Navigate to News section

Matisyahu Says Happy Hanukkah With iPad App

The formerly Hasidic rapper still loves the Festival of Lights

by
Stephanie Butnick
December 02, 2013
American singer Matisyahu is seen in Jerusalem's Old City on March 8, 2012, during his three-day visit to shoot a new music video. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/GettyImages)
American singer Matisyahu is seen in Jerusalem's Old City on March 8, 2012, during his three-day visit to shoot a new music video. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/GettyImages)

Matisyahu may have famously declared “No more Hasidic reggae superstar” on that fateful day in 2011 he sheared his long hair and peyot, but he hasn’t exactly found a solid footing in the wider music world in the intervening two years (See: “King Without a Beard,” David Meir Grossman’s dispatch from his tour this past summer). So it’s no surprise, really, that he’s returning to classics: Hanukkah, and his appeal as a reggae-singing Jewish dude.

Here’s his new Hanukkah iPad app for kids, featuring a new song, “Happy Hanukkah.” Matisyahu, still more Jewish than Drake:

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.