Why I hate Matisyahu
It’s not a joke. Matisyahu – the ultra-Orthodox rapping rabbi from New York City – is not Sasha Baron Cohen with a new character. He really is a dark-robed religious fanatic who won’t stage-dive because of fears he might accidentally touch a woman, and sings in a cod Jamaican accent about the need to “return to Zion”. (What next, an Amish version of Take That?). But when I see his posters splattered over London, I feel pin-pricks of rage. His songs might sound like pleasantly bland homilies, but in fact they are rallying calls for a particularly nasty, misogynistic and homophobic far-right strain of religious fanaticism. When he says repeatedly “rebuild the Temple,” anybody who has been to the Settlements in Israel/Palestine will know what he means – demolish the Muslim Dome of the Rock and rebuild the Third Temple. Calls for World War Three are not my idea of a sweet melody.
