Supporters of Clean Speech Colorado — “Clean Speech Champions” — were treated to this year’s campaign finale on Nov. 30 headlined by Jewish thought leader Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and black Orthodox Jewish rapper Nissim Black. Rabbi Raphael Leban of The Jewish Experience interviewed both men on stage.
Black shared snippets of his life story, including growing up in Seattle’s Seward Park neighborhood, the son of two pioneers of the rap music genre. He started rapping himself at age 14.
He followed a meandering spiritual path which led him to Judaism, to which he converted 10 years ago, studying with Rabbi Simon Benzaquen at the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation in Seattle. Black and his wife Adina and their four eldest children — now there are seven — made aliyah in 2006.
As he was interviewed by Rabbi Leban, Black acknowledged that rap music evolved into largely being angry, violent, misogynistic and even racist.
Nissim Black’s music is an upbeat combination of rap and pop, often in glory of G-d and expressing gratitude — a tenet of Clean Speech Colorado’s “Words of Love” campaign. Black is most proud of his hit song “Hashem Melech,” G-d is King, which reached number one on the world music charts.
Here are the lyrics:
This is the world makeover Mashiach will come takeover/ You ain’t gotta be me or see what I see/ All you gotta do is take a look forward lift your eyes/to the sky spread out your hands say thank you you smile/
Contrast rapper Nissim Black’s words of love to those of rapper Kanye West, whose anger and racism has manifest in his infamous anti-Semitic tweets and statements. Indeed, when Ye’s anti-Semitism went viral, Nissim Black said he was heartbroken, as he had been huge fan of Ye’s music.
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