"Welcome to my people"

Last night, I stepped outside the bounds of my comfort zone. Well, no, let me take that back. Not outside my comfort zone - I was fairly comfortable. Just outside my normal sphere of activity, I guess.

I went with our Hillel students and advisor (student Jewish society) to a see an Israeli hip-hop group perform at the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh. Go ahead and process that for a few minutes, I'll meet you back here in 5.

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So, I haven't even gone to a Christian concert since middle school (unless you count some of my favorite Christian-influenced singer/songwriters), so this was very different. And I was highly entertained. I didn't come back wanting to download any of their stuff, but it was still an enjoyable couple of hours.

Here's a video:



The guy with the gray-blonde hair stripe is my favorite! (Pepe Le Pew anyone?)

Most of the songs were in Hebrew (and the largely middle school-aged audience was singing along!), but every now and then I realized that they were singing a song in English. I do think it's quite a shame that although many local Rabbis were there with youth groups, these rappers definitely sang one song about getting high before getting high, and then getting high again (re: "I smoke 2 joints in peace, I smoke 2 joints in war, I smoke 2 joints before I smoke 2 joints, and then I smoke 2 joints some more" ... awful). At first it sounded like Hebrew, but once I listened I clearly understood it as English. And that's just a shame.

Anyway, I texted my main Jewish squeeze, Spets, to let her know that I've never been surrounded by more Jews in my life than at that moment, and she wrote me back a very sweet message: "Welcome to my people!" And it was a wonderful thing.