Hillel Crowd Kvells Over Jewish Rapper's Chutzpah

Matt Bar is not your typical rapper. Unlike popular artists such as 50 cent or Kanye West, Matt Bar discovered his passion for rap while teaching Hebrew school.

As long as his students were well behaved, Bar would spend the last three minutes of class rapping about the day’s lesson. Not surprisingly, he soon became the most popular Hebrew school instructor. Today, he performs around the world, teaching the Jewish tradition to young audiences, using what he calls “the language of the day”—rap.

Bar, a 28 year-old student at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, is touring the U.S. with his program, “The Bible Raps Project.” He dropped a beat at the Columbia/Barnard Hillel Tuesday evening for an energetic audience of about 70 students.

“He’s really appealing, especially to young people” said Abby Kerbel, BC/JTS ’10. “He gets tradition across in a new medium.”

In his music, Bar incorporates Biblical references with catchy rhymes and beat boxing. His rap not only tells the story of Noah’s Ark and David and Goliath, but also intends to provoke dialogue about what it means to be Jewish.

He began Tuesday’s performance with a piece called, “I’m not White, I’m Jewish.” The phrase was inspired by his response to reactions he would get when he rapped in high school. Saying that the song’s purpose was to “initiate conversation” on Jewish identity, Bar then asked audience members to share their reflections.

Bar’s unique interactive exchanges with the audience continued throughout the evening. Rapping to “The Ten Plagues,” he randomly selected ten audience members to join in at different times, turning the rap into a group effort and eliciting a hearty applause.

Having grown up with relatively secular values, Bar said he never saw himself as a Jewish educator—in fact, he wanted to be a basketball player when he was young. With the encouragement of the rabbis at the Pardes Institute, he was able to combine his talent for rap with his Jewish heritage.

“I always wrote songs and poems. I liked to put words together,” he said. “I realized my passions and skills lie there. Those manifest, thankfully, into something I can do—Judaism and rap.”