{"id":22448,"date":"2013-04-02T02:48:06","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22448"},"modified":"2015-10-27T20:44:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T20:44:43","slug":"can-drake-save-the-bar-mitzvah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22448","title":{"rendered":"Can Drake Save the Bar Mitzvah?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Drake Save the Bar Mitzvah?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Jewish Week<\/a>
\nBlog: Well Versed<\/a>
\n2012-04-12<\/p>\n

Eric Herschthal<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Drake\u2019s<\/a> new video, \u201cHYFR<\/a>,\u201d dropped [was released] over the weekend\u2014in which the Jewish, biracial hip-hop<\/a> superstar raps at a bar mitzvah<\/a>\u2014I was thrilled. Initially.<\/p>\n

For years, pop culture references to the Jewish rite of passage have been stuck in the same mode of self-mockery.\u00a0 Self-criticism is great, and in retrospect I partly appreciate the brutal truth that films like the Coen brothers\u2019 \u201cA Serious Man\u201d show to us Jews\u2014that this once incredibly powerful, meaningful rite had become totally cauterized, stripped of any real substance.\u00a0 The bar mitzvah has become just another excuse to get the family together\u2014half of which you may not even like\u2014and torture a poor 13-year-old with a foreign tongue he\u2019s probably less comfortable with than trigonometry.<\/p>\n

But the Coen brothers didn\u2019t invent that trope; it\u2019s been around for years.\u00a0 What felt so refreshing about Drake\u2019s video, and still sort of does, is how it isn\u2019t self-mocking at all.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a rapper so at ease in the self-conscious, status-driven world of pop star culture, that he can brandish his Jewish identity with little self-pity.\u00a0 He brings his Jewishness to a world\u2014the hip-hop world, and the millions who love it, myself included\u2014that\u2019s mainly known Jews as a stereotype.\u00a0\u00a0 The Jew, in hip-hop, is either the boss behind the scenes or, on the rare occasion (as with the Beastie Boys), the nerdy white kids who are lovingly embraced\u2014but still, let\u2019s be clear, as nerdy white kids.<\/p>\n

Drake\u2019s changed all that.\u00a0 In large part that\u2019s because his Jewishness is not the first fact about him.\u00a0 Many see him mainly as a black rapper, if a light-skinned one.<\/strong>\u00a0 And even when he broke onto the scene a few years ago and, when asked, would talk about his upbringing by a white Jewish mother in Canada\u2014who sent him to a Jewish day school, and had him bar-mitzvahed\u2014you didn\u2019t get the sense he was trying to hide it.<\/strong>\u00a0 But I\u2019m actually less interested in what Drake\u2019s openness about Judaism says about the changing world of hip-hop\u2014and my sense is that, in many ways, it\u2019s far more evolved in terms of black-Jewish relations than much of the country\u2014than what it might say about Jews\u2019 perceptions of themselves…<\/p>\n

…As much as I want to stick up for Drake, I think Kuehne is right.\u00a0 The song and the video still have many of the hallmarks of what\u2019s problematic with hip-hop\u2014mostly, the objectification of women.\u00a0 Plus, there\u2019s a ton of profanity.\u00a0 \u201cBut she was no angel, and we never waited,\u201d Drake raps at one point. \u201cI took her for sushi, she wanted to f*** \/ So we took it to go, told them don\u2019t even plate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s title, \u201cHYFR,\u201d stands for \u201cHell Yeah F***ing Right.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can Drake Save the Bar Mitzvah? The Jewish Week Blog: Well Versed 2012-04-12 Eric Herschthal When Drake\u2019s new video, \u201cHYFR,\u201d dropped [was released] over the weekend\u2014in which the Jewish, biracial hip-hop superstar raps at a bar mitzvah\u2014I was thrilled. Initially. For years, pop culture references to the Jewish rite of passage have been stuck in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,125,3601,8,820],"tags":[10399,10400,10402,1392,10401],"class_list":["post-22448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-identitydevelopment","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-religion","tag-drake","tag-eric-herschthal","tag-jewish-week","tag-music","tag-the-jewish-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43549,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions\/43549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}