I know most of you aren't into hip-hop but i thought some might find this interesting nontheless.
http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2007/12/too-sense-sunday-jew-in-hip-hop.htmlThis essay is titled "The Jew In Hip-hop" because it is not my intention to discuss the contributions of individual Jews in Hip-hop, a la MC Serch or Beastie Boys, but rather to discuss the way Jews are talked about in Hip-hop and what it means.
One of the first thing any Jewish person who listens to Hip-hop notices is that certain stereotypes about Jewish influence are pervasive. Sentiments expressed by some rappers appear mirror those of straight white supremacists, but the truth is actually far more complicated.
Consider Nas on Hip-hop is Dead:
Hip-Hop been dead, we the reason it died
Wasn't Sylvia's fault or because MC's skills are lost
It's because we can't see ourselves as the boss
Deep-rooted through slavery, self-hatred
The Jewish stick together, friends in high places
We on some low level [censored]
We don't want niggaz to ever win
Sure, on the surface Nas just appears to be repeating a well worn Jewish stereotype, the idea that "all Jews stick together," thick as thieves. But while an anti-Semite invokes such sentiments to express the threat that the Jews pose to "white America," Nas is using the stereotype as a symbol of hope, almost as a goal. The idea is not that there's something wrong with Jews sticking together as such, but rather that if Jews can do it, so can black folks. Nas sees this behavior as something to be imitated, not something to be threatened by.
References to Jews in Hip-hop run the gamut from admiration to appropriation. Since slavery black folks have seen themselves in the story of the Jews of the Bible, in their journey from exile and slavery to relative freedom. So it's no surprise that rappers like Jay-Z find themselves engaged with Jewish identity, to the point of appropriation.
Rich n---as, black bar mitzvahs
Mazel tov, it's a celebration [censored]
L' Chaim
I wish for you a hundred years of success,
but it's my time
There are an infinite number of images that could be used to invoke a sense of wealth and prosperity, but Jigga chooses the traditional Jewish toast, "To Life," (L'Chaim). The reasons for this go beyond the idea of Jewish prosperity, but to the history of Jews as an opressed people that achieved prosperity. Until recently, the plight of Jews in America was the only story remotely analagous to that of African Americans, and symbolically, it still holds a certain cultural weight.
The choice of the toast itself is no accident. The ritual is practically the symbolic reverse of pouring libations for the dead; Libations are a ritual for the dead, L'Chaim is a toast to the living. It is a mark of Jay-Z's success that he can now toast to life, rather than pour one out for the dead.
References to Jewish pain or prosperity are not just the domain of horrendously successful rappers like Jay and Nas. The Jewish experience is even of interest to the passionately Afro-Centric Dead Prez:
Man made God, outta ignorance and fear
If God made man, then why the hell would he put us here?
I thought he's supposed to be the all loving
The same God who let Hitler put the Jews in the oven
For Dead Prez, what they see as god's callous indifference to the Holocaust is just further evidence that he doesn't exist. But they use the Holocaust as a metaphor because as an event, it is the only one in their minds that comes close to the inhumanity of the Middle Passage. The fact that Jews are often white doesn't mute the reality of their circumstances as a persecuted people.
Even when rappers are hating on Jews, it appears more out of a sense of disappointment, of mistaken high expectations, than the simple hatred of your average anti-Semite. Just ask Common:
My [censored] knocks environ---ments
of cats wit seventeen's tint, time is money
The mind is funny, how it's spent on gettin it
It's sittin wit descendants of Abraham
Who say the jam is "Money, Cash, Hoes"
I went from bashful to [censored] to international
Lover-self, word to the mother on my last
The descendants of Abraham Common is sitting with are undoubtedly Jews. But if they were simply white, Common wouldn't have been angry. It is precisely the fact that he expects more from Jews, that he wants them to understand where he's coming from, that
makes him angry enough to call out Jews in particular. This doesn't change the reality of Common's hostility, but there is more at work here than simple hatred.
While white supremacists and anti-Semites often invoke or exaggerate Jewish success to make their case that Jews are a 'global threat', in Hip-hop Jewish stereotypes function as something far more complex. They become a symbol of hope, proof that in America even the most hated can succeed.
Yet, they still make me incredibly uncomfortable. It's not so different from realizing that white people genuinely enjoyed performing in blackface, because it gave them a sense of "freedom" that they felt like they lacked in their normal lives. But that in no way made them question the inhumanity of the medium, and likewise, I don't expect rappers to understand what they're doing when they invoke Jewish stereotypes, even in the name of hope.
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