To be a Jewish Rapper

By Ed Smykus, The Swampscott Reporter

Nosson Zand likes to refer to the past four years of his life as a time of going through some identity changes. One of those changes led to him winning a Best Actor award at the Boston International Film Festival for his performance as an Orthodox Jewish rapper in the film “Song of David.” In fact, off screen, Zand is an Orthodox Jewish rapper.

Zand, a Brookline native in his 20s, used to go by the name Nathan, and grew up attending the Conservative synagogue Temple Emanuel in Newton. He went to Clark University in Worcester, where he majored in U.S. history and French.

This was all before those identity changes, before he went to France to teach English, and got involved with the Chabad community in Paris, where he began to explore what it meant to be Jewish. It was before, as Zand puts it, “I broke down my own ego a little bit to reveal the Nosson within the Nathan.”

But Zand, living back in Brookline and a convert to the Orthodox branch of Judaism, had gone through changes before — and they weren’t of a religious nature.

“When I was growing up, my mother was listening to Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Janis Joplin, Crosby Stills Nash and Young,” says Zand. “On my father’s behalf, there was jazz. He listened to Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie. I was hearing all of this at home.”

“But when I was in the sixth grade at the Lawrence School, I got involved with a more urban hip-hop culture, and from 12 on out, even to now, the majority of the music I listened to was hip-hop. It felt like a fast, sporty car compared to the safe Volkswagen the Beatles reminded me of.”

An admitted troublemaker with a trio of suspensions from Brookline High School on his record, Nosson says he was, in those days, “a punk.”

“I was involved with a certain crowd, one that I learned a lot from, for better and for worse. I learned how to have an attitude, how to be a tough guy, and I thought at the time was that I was taking on the world,” Zand said.

Zand always had reminders of his Jewish background. Although he wasn’t going to weekend services at the time, there was always “the Friday night Shabbos thing, with a little family singing. But that stood in stark contrast to the life I found myself getting involved with.”

The changes really began when he met Professor David Zern in the Department of Education at Clark.

“He introduced me to the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who I would say was at the forefront of my transformation,” says Zand. “David started challenging me, in a Jewish way, and invited me to be in a directed study where we learned various Jewish texts, and he provided a Chassidic dimension to things.”

For Zand, it was a time of changes — both spiritual and musical.
“All throughout Clark, I was very much into hip-hop,” he explains. “I was rapping and performing. I was rapping about how great I am and how ridiculous everyone else is. So I hadn’t yet made a fusion [with Judaism].”

It was then that Zand’s studies with Zern started to pay off, and when the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe began to make some sense in his life.

“He always was adamant that anyone who grew up less observant and became a lot more observant, should not abandon his or her talents from their ‘previous’ life,” he says of the spiritual leader’s philosophy.

“They shouldn’t even look at it as a previous life; it should be viewed as an evolution. He encouraged people to use their talents. So I started plugging in Jewish references and a positive Jewish message in my rapping. But I didn’t want this music to be viewed as corny or contrite or not acceptable in the hip-hop world. It was tough to preach a nice guy message in the hip-hop community without being labeled as a ‘conscious rapper,’ which is anyone’s nightmare if you want to be a commercial success. I used the slang that I knew, and various pop culture references, but I changed a lot of the content.”

It was when Zand learned of and was blown away by then up-and-coming music star Matisyahu — who was finding success by merging Orthodox philosophy with reggae — that he knew he was on the right road.

After returning from France, Zand had no concrete plan. He studied at a Yeshiva in New Jersey for a while, then at another one in Montreal, then came back home, where he started receiving advice and guidance from Rabbi Shmuel Posner at the Chabad House of Greater Boston.

“Rabbi Posner called me one day and said, ‘Nosson, you have 15 minutes to get to Young Israel; Matisyahu will be there.’ I headed over, met Matisyahu, explained who I am and that he was a source of inspiration for me. He asked me to rap for him — ‘You got something for me?’ — so I gave him what I got, and he really liked it.”

“I performed for his manager, and gave them a CD I had put together,” he adds.

It paid off. Matisyahu later came to one of Zand’s local concerts and invited him to join him onstage at a Hanukkah gig he was doing at Avalon on Lansdowne Street.

“I’d been to that club before, with friends from a different life,” recalls Zand. “And to be there involved in this new kosher lifestyle, but with the same music, told me it was something that could be well received and could make some waves.”