Matisyahu - Why Should Christians Care About a Hassidic Jew Rapping?

Maybe you lost track of Matisyahu after his brief flash of popularity a few years ago, but he’s still been on the road rocking crowds on non-Sabbath nights and working in the studio with a new full-length album coming out this Spring. As a warmup and to have new material to tour behind, Matisyahu has a new EP called Shattered available now. However, despite the quality of his recorded work, if you’ve never seen him live, just do. If you’ve never heard him, give him a go. For all the uniqueness of a Hasidic Hip-hop Reggae Artist has in general, his appeal to Jesus-followers might be even more unique.

On Shattered, Matisyahu sings: “Oh will I get out of my cage? Yes, I am a slave searching for some freedom… What is a man with no history? Where am I? Who am I? What is this place? I will be light…Time will continue without you, so in the end it’s not about you… It’s in one tiny moment in time for life to shine, to shine, burn away the darkness.” In true Hasidic fashion, he chooses to be light in a darkened world. Unlike most of us, he lives out his words, bringing that very light into his performance as an artist, stirring strangers towards Light, or Hashem, the Name by which Hasidim call G-d.

In part, the heart of the Hassidic movement - underneath the black coats, the curls, and hats - has been more about living out the Torah - G-d’s words to the Jews or as Christians so poorly call it, “The Old Testament” - than just writing books about it. When they tell stories about G-d’s movement it isn’t unusual to sing and dance their words and prayers. Which makes Matisyahu’s live shows something akin to a giant prayer service. Even if the majority of participants just came to hear good music, the weight of his performance can’t help but stir the deeper parts of the heart.

I had the chance to see him live at the beginning of December. The show was an experience that had all the elements that are missing in nearly every church experience I’ve had.

Among the friends with me was an Episcopal priest experiencing Matisyahu for the first time. All he knew was he was going to a concert by a Hasidic Jew that performed Hip-Hop Reggae. He’d never even heard Matisyahu. His comment before the show was “My gut sense is I need to see this.”

It’s not surprising that any given good concert has many of the elements people seek in a church service. The object of worship may not be as obvious but the communal singing, the euphoria, the music - it is all there on any given Sunday, at any given venue, no matter how milquetoast the packaging. The difference is a concert does not have the residue of religion, nor a religious spirit - something often shaming, false, and utterly nothing like Jesus - associated with it. People who go, go because they want to be there, not because they feel obligated.

At this particular show, Matisyahu came out dressed in traditional Hasidic garb, the edges of his prayer shawl - tsit tsit - dangling under his shirt, yarmulke upon his head. As he sang through his quiver of songs he mixed in chants, Hebrew, and freestyling that speak more like prayer than your normal street chatter. Regardless of how he’s changed the songs, it doesn’t change the weight of truth he sings: “You’re all that I have and you’re all that I need/ Each and every day I pray to get to know you please/ I want to be close to you, yes I’m so hungry/ You’re like water for my soul when it gets thirsty/ Without you there’s no me/ You’re the air that I breathe/ Sometimes the world is dark and I just can’t see.” Yes, I too, feel the same way, experience G-d the same way. Yet, there is hope offered for the taking: “If you’re drowning in the water’s and you can’t stay afloat/ Ask Hashem for mercy and he’ll throw you a rope/ You’re looking for help from G-d you say he couldn’t be found/ Searching up to the sky and looking beneath the ground/ Like a King without his Crown/ You keep fallin’ down/ You really want to live but can’t get rid of your frown/ Tried to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground/ Given up your pride and the you heard a sound… Makin’ room for his love and a fire gone blaze”

As the show stretched into nearly three hours, there was a real sense more than just another concert was in play. To my left were gay women dancing; various kids were swaying not just to the music but because they had too much too drink; there was the smell of pot here and there, and though we might never find that smell in church, it occurs to me the people smoking it won’t feel welcome in most church services either. They are caught up in the music, and aware or not, they are sung words about the condition of the heart, the need for love, the need for G-d’s light in the world.

I have my moments in conversation with G-d about what is being stirred to the surface in my own soul. Prayers are said. Confessions are made. And all this while I join the dance the Hasidim sings.

It’s not just the words or the music, either. It’s the professionalism and pure quality of play by each musician on stage. They were playing their best and enjoying it, too, and because of this we enjoyed it with them. When Komakaze (an Afican-American Hip-Hop freestyler from Miami) joined Matisyahu on stage for “Beat Box,” true art was flowing. They are artists at their top performance, the way artist celebrate a creative life. The way G-d has created us.

The last song before his encores, Matisyahu sang for nearly 15 minutes. “Sing” would be only part of it, though. He began by chanting in Hebrew to the slow beat, and as he repeated, “we sing praise to you” I forgot I was in a concert venue, surrounded by the drunk, the high, the longing - for I am longing, too. I get the sense this is what it is supposed to be like, to look like, to feel like. And it has none of the “religious” trappings of what Jesus-followers call worship. Though it is a religious experience - a means of drawing closer to G-d as a community.

It was nearly 1:00 AM when the house lights came up and I made my way onto the cold Denver streets feeling a sense of G-d’s presence in a way I’ve not experienced in years; and it is an experience shared with my friends as we walked home. And there was no fabricated “Altar call,” “come down the aisle and give your life to Jesus” moment presented by the artist. It was purer than that. The experience sat with me the next few days. I found myself wanting to know more Torah, the words that Jesus read as a child and spoke as a Rabbi, as Moshiac - Messiah. Rarely does a church service provoke me to spend the following week not just reading more about G-d, but wanting to know him more in the ways I’ve missed because of my narrow understanding of His heart.

Isn’t this what we hope for in a worship service?

But it is a concert, filled with THC and alcohol, and people of all kinds, with all kinds of hurts and joys; the mass of humanity that so many churches claim they seek but will never see on a Sunday morning.

Many a Christian could use a long lesson in their Jewish heritage, could maybe dance or sing their prayers to G-d instead of talking in drone to “Father We-jus.” Matisyahu not only embodies all the marks of a great artist, but challenges the way Jesus-followers know their Rabbi, their Savior. Whether it’s listening to his music at home - really listening to what he’s singing - or seeing him live, he gives light to the otherwise bland normalcy that so many Christians have grown dangerously accustomed to.