You might recognize Matisyahu for his hit song “One Day” about peace between peoples. But his life has been anything but peaceful… especially following the October 7th massacre.
New Jersey native Matisyahu has gone through ordeal after ordeal with three canceled, protested concerts across the US. Each time there was some other reason for its cancellation. This is all highlighted in a new film dropping Monday in Jerusalem. The director and co-producer Shlomo Weprin sat down for an exclusive interview with the Israel Daily News and said at the end of the day, the canceled shows came down to one thing: antisemitism.
“There was one particular case where he drove hundreds of miles, spent hours setting up, did a sound check, and no one bothered to tell him [it was canceled] until a fan came for the ‘meet and greet’ and said, ‘Oh, is your show cancelled?’” Weprin detailed.
Matisyahu had no idea. Even the venue had not told him…and this type of behavior repeated for three of his post October 7th concerts. Weprin says one concert was canceled over security risks…one was because the venue workers simply refused to come and work.
Another time Weprin says it was a municipal decision coming from the city of Chicago itself.
“I think it was pressure from different sides, but all of the people succumbed to this pressure. I think a lot of people felt what was happening was antisemitic in nature,” Weprin said.
The 86 minute documentary / concert film is in this year’s Jerusalem Jewish Film festival and is about Matisyahu’s rise to fame, his response and advocacy after October 7th, and the power of music to heal and unite in the face of antisemitism. Film festivals in the US have been saying this is the only Oct 7th related film that’s not too heavy to show an audience. In fact, it’s meant to be rather uplifting.
Matisyahu got very famous very fast. The American Jewish artist is known for blending reggae, beat boxing, hip hop and rock with Jewish themes and visions of peace. He recorded the song “One Day”together with Muslim hip hop artist Akon. His song “King Without a Crown” quickly became an American Top 40 hit.
When he first became known to the world, he was a devout Hasidic Jew. Over time his observance and appearance changed…but when he was first known publicly, he was on big talk shows in America like Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel. He would come on and discuss how he doesn’t play shows on Shabbat, despite his fame and despite his newfound success.
“At that time, specifically, he really represented something so important for the Jewish people in terms of making Jewish music cool …and thereby making Jews look good as a result,” Weprin suggested.
It all started with a music video.
The comprehensive film started with a moving music video. One of the main motivations for Matisyahu coming to Israel beyond seeing the aftermath …was that he had written a response to Kanye West after the hip hop giant released a wildly anti semitic tweet that caused turmoil on the internet and in the streets. On October 8th, 2022, West tweeted out “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
On October 8th, 2022, Matisyahu wrote a song addressing antisemites like West… a year later, it became a song that could also address terrorists. The next day, Matisyahu felt another jolt of inspiration and posted a video on Instagram of himself singing the lyrics to the song. It was October 8th, 2023, exactly a year after Kanye’s tweet, that he exposed it to the world for the first time.
Famous Israeli actor, Tomer Capone, saw the Instagram clip and reached out. He had been looking for it, but couldn’t find it. Matisyahu explained that he had not yet released the song, but sent it over. Capone suggested Matisyahu come to Israel and shoot a music video for this song.
Capone connected Matisyahu with Nova survivors who ultimately participated in the shoot, making the video very powerful. Big-time Israeli director Yariv Horovitz came up with the concept to show the persecution of Jewish people throughout history … ending with cheerier imagery and a hope for peace.
When asked if he had to choose one word to describe the film, Weprin said “powerful.” Regarding the creation of the film, Weprin said he chooses the word “personal.”
“It’s everything that I believe in, everything about music that I love, and what Matisyahu represented for me. When I first got to college, as a newly inspired Jew who had lived a year in a cave in Tzfat at 18 years old, my first Sabbath at college, Rabbi Korn, the Chabad Rabbi at NYU, brought Matisyahu to our Shabbat afternoon gathering. He was about to perform at the Jewish Life Fair the next day on Sunday in Washington Square Park,” Weprin remembered. And he sings this, like, Jewish ‘niggun’, we call it, it’s like a melody. Then he breaks into this beatbox rap that blew all our minds. And we were like, what is this? Within that year after performing at the Jewish Life Fair, he was world famous on MTV every day.”
Weprin says it inspired him to be a proud Jewish artist.
“I think that’s what he represented for so many other people and now post October 7th, he still represents strength, unity, resilience, and just pride for the Jewish people because of who he is,” Weprin said. “And so I’m grateful that I was able to try to capture that in a film in a way that can just transmit that to the world.”
Weprin says the showing in Jerusalem will be a big event and that he’s particularly excited for the crowd who will be in the audience since they are the ones who can probably relate to it the most. Some Nova music festival survivors who were featured in the film will be there, along with Rabbi Shlomo Katz… and there will be a Q& A after.
The film is set to be featured in the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival on Monday, December 30th in the Jerusalem Cinematheque at 9 pm. The movie is showing in film festivals across America throughout January at festivals on the West Coast including in Nevada, California and North Carolina.
Q&A with Weprin:
What global influences can we find in Matisyahu’s music?
He’s always been a big fan of jam band music, Phish particularly. He also was very connected to Bob Marley, reggae music, especially with the themes involving Zion and Israel. Those were two of his biggest influences that kind of came together as the fusion of what became Matisyahu. His songs had a very commercial appeal. His song “One Day,” which he co-wrote with Bruno Mars, happens to be one of his most famous songs. That was the theme of the Olympics one year. And, you know, it became an anthem of peace ultimately for the world ever since he wrote it.
A lot of people fear that the Jewish community will lose their Jewish values by catering to outside influences. Can you speak to that?
I think it’s very important that when Jews feel that they’re being hated or there’s some type of negative influence or force upon them, that they can have a reason to feel pride for who they are.
And I think Matisyahu always represented that, where Jewish people felt comfortable being themselves because they had a spokesperson that was so, that was so… universally accepted
What makes him so universally accepted?
The fact that he was humble, he was authentic, he was true to himself, and his music was great
You said that there were some serendipitous things that happened after you started production. Tell us about that.
One of the more, you know, I’d say divine providence oriented moments was when we were at the Nova site, and Shlomo Katz, a very popular Jewish musician, Rabbi in Efrat, happened to be seeing the aftermath at the same time as Matisyahu did.
They both didn’t know they were each there. Matis had gone off to reflect with his son about what had happened. Being a festival-goer, someone who can relate to what that must have been like. I saw Shlomo, I connected them, and it turns out Matisyahu’s son was actually spending Shabbat with Rabbi Katz and his community at the time when October 7th occurred, that Simcha Torah.
There was this moment that Rabbi Katz was told about what had happened. He was in the middle of the blessing of the priests, which is a very meaningful thing. You know, heartfelt song oriented blessing and when I connected them, Shlomo asked Matisyahu, can I give you a blessing from a broken soul?
And he put his tallit around him and his son. And Matisyahu at the time thought it would be a 10-second, or 15-second blessing. It ended up being a three minute real time blessing of the priests that was so heartfelt and meaningful. And he sang the whole thing all the way through.
And what I did was I put shots of the Nova victims from the memorial over that footage or over the audio of him saying the blessing and then a very talented musician Mendy Portnoy saw that video that I believe Katz posted … and put a custom song underneath it. It was so beautiful and he ended up being the composer for the film. Once I had to find a composer, I was like, you already composed this scene that was so gorgeous…
It was just something that was so powerful, so meaningful. It happened all at that time and we just put it out because it was just something that we felt would inspire people.
What is the purpose of the film?
I’d say the first half of the film goes through the aftermath of October 7th. What happened at the kibbutzim that he witnessed. The aftermath of the Nova Festival. Him meeting with survivors of the Nova Festival. And, uh, and then at the end, I guess midway through the film he starts meeting with the soldiers and uplifting the soldiers.
He meets the hostage families and he plays a set or music for the hostage families at the Hostage Forum. He sees Hostage Square and then, in between each of these scenes, you’re seeing these very powerful musical moments. From the concerts that he performed in Israel and what he talks about in the film, which is that all his famous songs from written, I don’t know, over a decade ago, they all took on new meaning post-October 7th. His song “Live like a Warrior” is now about the soldiers and the song “Lord Raise Me Up” is about the hostages.
His songs about the destruction of the Temple are now about the destruction of the kibbutzim. So that became sort of the thread through which we tell the story. We’re showing the scene, the musical moments.
Are there any other core issues addressed in the film?
Those protests at his shows…there were all these news segments, TMZ and all these major news outlets were interviewing him. He’s just a Jew who believes in Israel’s right to exist and is now being boycotted for that.
I think that’s really a core issue that we address in the film that needs to be brought to the world because it’s just not acceptable for that to be the case.
Artists should not be penalized for believing that Israel should exist as a homeland for the Jewish people. I think that’s a strong message in the film.
The people who boycotted were not fans of his. They had seen that he was supporting Israel by coming here [to Israel] and seeing what was going on, seeing what had happened… And that caused an uproar of them being against him, accusing him.
And what Matisyahu says is …people are accusing me of committing a genocide. Meanwhile, at my shows, you have Jews and Muslims with their arms around each other singing “One Day” …we’ll all have peace. That’s the ironic thing,
Everyone wants to help the Palestinians right now, including Israel, and that’s this myth that needs to get changed – that Israel’s the bad guy and Hamas is the good guy. That’s just not the case.
Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you would like to hit on?
I would just like to speak about the process of editing that music video because what had happened was as we were editing this video… his first show was cancelled and I was working with the director and there was a cinematographer involved who was reaching out and saying, you can’t put this video out.
He was rapping at a grave site, the Nova site. I thought – we can’t; this is too controversial. And me, even though I was basically doing it as a charity, I wasn’t getting paid. In my head, I was just like, as a friend, no matter how much work I put into this, I was worried for his career. We can’t put this out.
I don’t want all this backlash. I don’t want articles being written. Then the second show gets cancelled even more so. I said, no way we can put this out. This is crazy. When the third show got cancelled, I felt like something in my brain did a 180, where I said, we have to put this out. This is crazy. Now this is like, just completely unacceptable that an artist who supports Israel’s right to exist is having his livelihood be put in jeopardy in such a, in such an unreasonable way.
Anything else that you want to share about the production, about the editing?
Once we did put it out, there was no backlash. And I think it was a very strong message overall that when you stand up to these people that don’t really have a justified reason for what they’re doing and who they’re targeting, they all back away.
Can you tell us about the future of this film?
We’re showing it at a bunch of film festivals in America at the moment. We have another round coming up. In the end of January, beginning / middle of February, we’re showing it at the Phoenix, Nevada, San Diego, and Charlotte Jewish Film Festivals. I found from the couple of screenings I’ve attended that it really had such a strong impact on the people who attended, and I feel very blessed that it is doing something positive for the messages that we tried to achieve with this film.
I had one person come up at the LA Jewish Film Festival and said, I want all my non-Jewish friends to see this. That was a really powerful statement for me, to know that that’s what this film inspired, for someone to feel that and say that to me. And so I just hope this film could get out to as many people as possible.
As controversial as anything October 7th is, I really hope and pray that this gets out to a non-Jewish audience. That would be my dream. Because it has such a strong message that can hopefully help alter people’s perspectives that are very misinformed.
Where are people going to be able to access this film?
We have a film distributor we’re working with based in Jerusalem, so I’m excited that we’re working with an Israeli-based company. They are really excited about it and the potential. But, as we know, October 7th films are controversial today…so in terms of getting it out to the mainstream audience…we’re gonna have to see where it goes and what we can do. Where, it will end up. But like I said, I just hope it gets out to the most amount of people possible.
The above article was sponsored by the Matisyahu film team.
Discussion about this post