The Hasidic singer Matisyahu {our interview with him here} recently tweeted that he’d gone vegan.
The astute blog HeebNVegan, not one to let such things pass idly by, hit him up for one of their infamous Four Questions interviews (he’d also put me under the gun a few weeks before). Matisyahu qualified the statement — “I’m not exactly vegan, not religiously like keeping kosher at least” — but also added, “I stopped eating chicken and red meat ’cause I just figured it would be more healthy. I figured it would be more ideal to stay away from eating animals, from having meat sitting and digesting in my gut.” He talks about the kapparot ceremony (“the closest I ever came to an actual chicken”) and how freaked out he was — “the blood, the dirty chicken feet, the sh*t everywhere.”
Matisyahu also talks about the hardest parts of keeping kosher on the road. It’s not that long, and it’s worth checking out. My favorite part, though, is the last question — which I had no idea about until reading this:
Several years ago, Heeb Magazine (which heebnvegan is not affiliated with) noted that Burger King tried to recruit you for an ad and have you say something along the lines of “I can’t eat this, but you should” while holding a cheeseburger. Is this true, and what was your reasoning in saying no?
I believe it is sort of true, although I don’t remember the exact details. The reason for saying no is pretty obvious on many levels, but mainly, cheeseburgers? Come on.
Read the entire interview here.
Hasidic
Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement.
kosher
Pronounced: KOH-sher, Origin: Hebrew, adhering to kashrut, the traditional Jewish dietary laws.
