Matisyahu’s Show at Tel Aviv’s Zappa Club Was Nothing to Write Your Rabbi About
Crossposted from Haaretz
Matisyahu’s Tuesday night show should have been a great joy, first of all because of the location. Ordinarily, the conditions at Zappa are nothing to get excited about, but just one day after Bob Dylan’s performance in the cursed expanses of the Ramat Gan Stadium, a show in a small, crowded club sounds like a great idea.
And even more so in the case of Matisyahu, who gave a mediocre show at the huge Hangar 11 when he was here at the height of his fame a few years ago. Now that the novelty of a Hasidic rapper has quieted down (and justifiably so), he has returned to smaller venues that are supposed to showcase his strong suits.
Matisyahu was so close to the audience at this performance that with just a little effort I could have tugged on his tzitzit. But nonetheless, despite the clubby intimacy, it was not a good show. It wasn’t bad either. Just mediocre: nothing to write your rabbi about.
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