The BibleRaps Project, helmed by Matt Bar, follows its “Purim Rap” with this treatment of the Passover and plagues story.
Matt’s not just in it for the fame and glory of YouTube success…the album he’s recording is part of the initiative’s larger educational curriculum aimed at young Jews from all religious backgrounds and streams. Each of the album’s tracks will have an accompanying course of study with layers of rabbinic and contemporary commentaries, and the classes and students themselves will help generate additional insights for the curriculum in its future. Or, to explain more deeply:
BibleRaps will be a bridge between the overt curriculum of Jewish education with the covert curriculum of what’s coming through the students’ iPod many hours each day. Instead of kids, singing to themselves, “booty, booty, booty everywhere,” they’ll be singing “ha shomer achi anochi,” thus providing an access point for Jewish education.
BibleRaps emerged from last summer’s PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism.
Jennifer Louise
4/14/2008
Cool idea but the name kind of makes me think of a cross between <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeggieTales”Veggie Tales and <a href=”http://www.flocabulary.com/”Flocabulary.
I am genuinely surprised to see the number of Jewish rappers that have popped up in the past decade (although I have a soft spot for MC Paul Barman, who seems to have disappeared) and I know Maya Rubin (the woman in Obama’s “Yes We Can” video that speaks in Hebrew) wants to do a Jewish rap album, too.
Not to mention that Amy Winehouse would like to do a <a href=”http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/01/15/mark-ronson-contemplates-amy-winehouses-grammy-performance-hanukkah-album/”Hanukkah album. I can’t wait to hear “Kosher Kisses.”
Rebecc
4/14/2008
this is one of the catchiest jewish raps i think i’ve ever heard. i can’t get the beat out of my head.