Check out the brand new video Y-Love, the gay Orthodox hip-hop artist, recorded for us for Hanukkah.
Yes, that’s Yiddish you hear.
The rapper known off-stage as Yitz Jordan has been a major player on the Jewish music scene since the release of his first mixtape in 2005, followed by his first solo full length album in 2008. He made waves in a big way this spring when he officially came out. We’re proud to have Y-Love as our celebrity spokesperson and have teamed up to spread the message of LGBT inclusion.
If your Yiddish is iffy, be sure to turn on captions once the video is running (the red “cc button in lower right corner) for the translation. Better yet, call your bubbie and watch it together.
Y-Love’s statement about the video:
“So since coming out this May, one of the major things that I have felt is an overwhelming sense of wanting to give back to the LGBT community in general and the Jewish LGBT community in particular. Spending most of my career in the closet, I never used my platform to speak against heterosexism and homophobia — the same homophobia I was suffering from — and never gave my efforts to the struggle for equality. 2012 changes all that, and I’m trying to put as much of my effort and influence into the LGBT struggle for equality as I can.
To this end, Keshet has been there for LGBT inclusion nationwide for years. At the Keshet teen shabbaton, I was inspired by stories of overcoming far worse than I had even feared would happen in my own life. I realized that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. By putting my name – as a premier Jewish urban artist – with Keshet’s, I think we can raise LGBT visibility and inclusion to even higher levels, and work towards one of my bigger goals for klal Yisra’el and humanity — that we should be the last generation to know of the closet.”
You can catch Y-Love on December 8 at Keshet’s Hanukkah party at Tracks in Denver! Limited tickets are still available.
Learn all about Y-Love here.
Hanukkah
Pronounced: KHAH-nuh-kah, also ha-new-KAH, an eight-day festival commemorating the Maccabees’ victory over the Greeks and subsequent rededication of the temple. Falls in the Hebrew month of Kislev, which usually corresponds with December.
