Matisyahu Launches Hillel-Sponsored College Tour With Arab-American Artist
Image by Getty Images
Matisyahu has launched a U.S. college tour co-sponsored by Hillel chapters with a musician born to an Egyptian-Palestinian father and American-Jewish mother.
The formerly Hasidic reggae artist, who kicked off the tour with special guest Nadim Azzam on Sunday at Boston University’s Metcalf Ballroom, has said the decision to play with an Arabic musician is a response to being disinvited from a festival in Spain last summer.
“The purpose is to replace boycott and finger pointing with music as a reminder to find the compassion and humanity we share,” Matisyahu wrote on his website last week.
Last August, activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement pushed the organizers of the Rototom Sunsplash Festival to bar Matisyahu from performing. He was eventually reinvited after an apology from the event’s organizers.
After the festival controversy, Matisyahu played concerts in Jerusalem’s Old City and at the last remaining synagogue near the gates of Auschwitz. He was honored by the Anti-Defamation League for standing up to “forces of ignorance and intolerance.”
“There’s so much misinformation and divisiveness. Everyone boycotts each other and no one is listening. So I thought it would be good to do a series of concerts if I bring in a Palestinian artist and we try to bring these two groups together,” he told the Wisconsin Badger-Herald earlier this month about his current tour.
The shows with Azzam are sponsored by the Hillel chapters at the schools and other campus organizations.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 3
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Itamar Ben-Gvir is coming to America, with stops at Yale and in New York City already set
-
Fast Forward Texas Jews split as lawmakers sign off on $1B private school voucher program
-
Books What is ‘Zionism without Zion?’ New history asks, but can’t answer
-
Fast Forward Shapiro recites Priestly Blessing given to him by fire chaplain after Passover arson
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.