Who Lost Matisyahu?
It looks like the Lubavitchers did. The Hasidic reggae sensation recently told the Miami New Times:
My initial ties were through the Lubovitch sect… I went to a Hasidic school for two years in Brooklyn. At this point, I don´t necessarily identify with it any more. I´m really religious, but the more I´m learning about other types of Jews, I don´t want to exclude myself. I felt boxed in.
The New York Jewish Week took a look at the fallout in the Lubavitch world, and (non-Lubavitch) Hasidic rapper Y-Love chimes in on Jewschool. Y-Love’s post is particularly interesting, as are the reader comments.
Some Lubavitchers, it seems, fear their embrace of Matisyahu may have backfired. They touted him as a role model, and now he’s distancing himself from their movement. So they worry that young Lubavitchers may now follow their reggae idol’s lead.
Y-Love, however, (writing in the comments section of his original post) agues that Matisyahu will still be a good role model even if he chooses another flavor of Orthodox Judaism.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
