I’m Sorry, Is That Mp3 Kosher?
You might check a bag of Skittles to see if it’s kosher, but did you check your latest Bruce Springsteen album? A committee in Israel would like you to. The Jewish news website Matzav reported this week that the Organization of Rabbis for the Purity of Jews released a list of offenses that would deem an album unfit for consumption (listening).
Among them: Disrespectful sounds (electronic effects, distortion and “bending the notes”), the modern drum set which was “created to be used in wild, coarse music,” and the electric guitar, bass guitar and the Devil’s Flute, aka: Saxophone.
When asked for comment, the Jewish rapper Etan G remarked, “I hope I get rated X by them — I’ll sell a million albums.”
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