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Friday September 22, 2006

‘Radical Judaism’ is the rage among British hipsters

by vanessa bulkacz
jta

london | When 2 Live Jews penned their hip-hop hit “Oy, It’s So Humid!” in 1990, tongues planted firmly in their cheeks, their humorous, Jewish-themed lyrics were meant as a response to the controversial — and, at the time, inescapably popular — rap songs of 2 Live Crew.

A decade and a half later, call them Heeb Hoppers, Heebsters or harbingers of Jewish hipsterism — London youngsters are picking up where 2 Live Jews left off, intent on questioning tradition and creating dialogue about what it is to be a Jew.

A recent article in Metro, the free daily paper distributed in London’s subway and train stations, heralded the rise of hip-hop artists promoting themselves with their Jewishness, including Chassidic New York-based reggae rapper Matisyahu.

More surprisingly, though, Britain’s youth is getting in on “Heeb Hop” more and more, as homegrown Jewish klezmer/hip-hop acts like Emunah and Ghettoplotz are cropping up.

Even London’s hip-hop parody television personality, Ali G, whose real name is Sacha Baron Cohen, began his career rapping about Jewish life.

Antithesis, a Cambridge-based university student and Zionist hip-hop artist, thinks the trend will continue.

“It’s great to hear someone standing up, not being aggressive or anti-British but proud of their Jewishness,” Antithesis said.

Performances from Emunah and Ghettoplotz, rapping and remixing “Hava Negillah,” had attendees at a recent “radical Judaism” event in London dancing wildly — and in the small, windowless, sweaty, jam-packed venue.

The location of the party in a run-down East End squat was intentional, both for the location’s anti-establishment politics and for the reminder it provided of the neighborhood’s past as the heart of both renegade and mainstream Jewish culture in London.

It was a joint presentation by a nine-month-old, London-based organization called Jewdas and New York’s Heeb Magazine.

Similarly styled events have been popular in New York’s Jewish hipster culture for years, but Jewdas says this is the first event of its kind in Britain — mostly because, as the group sees it, traditional Anglo-Jewry is “increasingly suburban, conservative and dull.”

“We’re trying to start a new movement in British Judaism,” Jewdas co-founder Joseph Finlay said.

Jewdas’ statement of purpose includes “whipping up Talmud, satire, heresy and cream cheese into a chicken soup of underground diaspora culture.”

Apparently their recipe for Jewish penicillin went down easy. Finlay, 25, estimates some 600 people turned out for the event, which also featured live Jewish graffiti, “radical” Torah study and experimental Jewish film screenings.

“The whole party was really electric” and appeared “to be quite a diverse range of young people — all obviously mixing happily,” she said. “It heartens me that this is occurring in our generation of future leaders.”

The organizers are all London Jews roughly in their mid-20s, but Finlay doesn’t want Jewdas to be defined as a youth organization, and said he was delighted to see several generations represented at the event. One partygoer named Ben, costumed like the organizers in faux Chassidic attire, attended the event with his mother.

While some may see Jewish hip-hop as the new voice of renegade Jewish culture, Finlay believes it’s just one piece of a larger radical Jewish youth movement happening in Britain, one that includes artists, filmmakers and poets.

“We want to make a new space for people who feel excluded by the Jewish mainstream,’’ he said.

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