Matt Bar, if you’ll recall, is the world’s first Bible rapper, whom we recently profiled in Matt Bar Sees Dead People. All summer, he’s been traveling the country in a van with an acoustic guitar and his back-up beatboxer, visiting camps and spreading the good word:
Bar’s Bible Raps project is designed to marry Torah with a present-day pop sensibility. (The chorus of the song “My Brother’s Keeper,†which testifies, “I’m all about my brothers, I’m all about my people,†is a good representation of this.) For the past year, Bar has been touring almost nonstop in support of the project, mostly to Hebrew schools and summer camps, and speaking to crowds that are sometimes as unaccustomed to hip-hop as they are to the Bible — mixed secular and religious crowds of young children, teenagers, and parents. “It seems like it’s not Jewish…it’s really, really good,†a ten-year-old girl says on Bar’s promo video…and, though she probably doesn’t intend it as a critique of Jewish education, its validity stands.
And the coolest thing about it is: Right now, it’s free.
Matt just wrote — from the back of his wifi-enabled tour van, en route to a show at Camp Ramah — to let us know that any Jewish educator can receive a copy of his CD free, along with a teacher’s manual, just by visiting the Bible Raps website and emailing him. (For the rest of us, it’s still available to buy, and worth it.)
And, for educational purposes, here’s Bar’s latest music video. Not that you should watch it right away, of course — like I mentioned yesterday, you might want to wait 15 days or so…
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
