Drake’s ‘SNL’ Bar Mitzvah

By Anne Cohen January 20, 2014

Drake hosted “Saturday Night Live” this week — and it was pretty great.

In his opening monologue, the Jewish Canadian rapper harkened back to his bar mitzvah from 1999, focusing (successfully) on having a Jewish mother and a black father. SNL cast member Vanessa Bayer (known for her role in the original and recurring Bar Mitzvah Boy skit) played his mother and Jay Pharaoh played his father.

After talking about his hometown, “the city of Toronto: where the rappers are polite, and the mayor smokes crack,” and waxing nostalgic about his “Degrassi” past (do we detect a hint of embarrassment?), Drake launched into the skit with the fairly straightforward: “Here’s another fun fact. I’m Jewish.”

Warning: the sight of Drake in a kippah may just make your heart explode. Check out the segment below:

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO