A Jewish Girl's Reggae Odyssey

I distinctly remember sitting on a hilltop in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by smiles and dread locks and sweat and sun, the bass from the sound system echoing in my solar plexus while small gentle breezes swept past me leaving aural trails of hemp and lavender. The masses dancing to the sultry reggae grooves, a sea of shoulders touching. Flags and clothes in the colors red, gold and green, along with the five-pointed Star of David. Everywhere. Songs about Zion, references to Israelites. Heads wrapped in shrouds, chanting, beating on drums, people in communion with one another and with something greater, too.

The vibration was biblical inasmuch as it was also a big crazy reggae party in the mountains of Northern California; and inasmuch as I was simply one of the partiers in those mountains, I got the distinct feeling that I was also, in that moment, a Jew connecting to something there...

So I spent the next three years trying to understand what the connection was between reggae culture and Judaism, in the context of a personal ethnographic documentary, a daunting prospect given the fact that I was then neither an anthropologist nor a filmmaker. But from the onset, something about this unusual journey kept compelling me to continue, and it definitely helped that the music was always there to lure me along the way. In the beginning I seriously thought people would either laugh at me or tell me I was crazy for trying to make these seemingly asinine connections.

But then one day, at a time when I was researching the Old Testament and its mention of the word Africa, I happened to pick up a copy of Time Out New York, only to find out that a Jewish dub-reggae band called Adonai-and-I would be playing in the city that weekend. Here I was trying to find ancient liturgical connections between Jews and Rastas, and here were these contemporary Jewish musicians expressing said connections, albeit through rhythm and melodies.

Mingling with rabbis and Rastafarians

I was not sure exactly what I was looking for, but I somehow felt the necessity to stay on course. I started going to dub sessions and dancehalls. I talked to rabbis and began to mingle with Rastafarians, whose mystical auras and monologues about redemption began to ring true in my ears, and whose worldview seemed to be largely shaped by some of the very stories I learned about as a kid in yeshiva.

I traveled back to California, following the trail of anyone who I felt somehow manifested this duality of cultures, be they Black Hebrews, Hasidic rappers, or simply Jews who relished in the sound of a reggae tune. And I started to realize that they were everywhere: Hamburg, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sao Paolo, Maui, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Miami, and more. There was something about the convergence of these two worlds that was clearly felt by many, but for some reason thoroughly addressed by no one.

And the whole matter became even more perplexing when I began to think back on the notorious race riots of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the early nineties, when Black Caribbean and Hasidic Jewish communities became mortal enemies in the name of identity and pride. Again I thought it was odd that here I was trying to forge links between Jews and Rastas, when not even a decade ago in New York, the only thing the two cultures shared was a deep sense of hate and intolerance towards one another. And at that moment it became clear to me that it was precisely because of this paradox that my documentary would have a purpose.

From Jamaica to Jerusalem

I decided that no real study of Rastafari could be complete without a visit to Jamaica, and that a film with the word Zion in its title would be remiss without a trip to Israel. And so it was that the Great Jewish Reggae Expedition that was becoming my life began to take on a whole new global dimension. One afternoon, I found myself in the hills of Caledonia, Jamaica on the western part of the island in the company of Bongo Daniel, an 80-year old Rasta elder, his matted dreads made yellow by the sun, which he wrapped like a halo on top of his head. He would inhale a deep pull from his steam chalice, coughing wildly and fixing his discerning eyes on me. His words were like lessons from long ago, embittered by the salty resentment towards the slavery of his people and his past, and the anguish and humiliation that would forever trickle down from his ancestors to his own children.

He was angry and he was right. I began to understand Rasta as the voice of his resistance, a power to mobilize, a strength within that Africans in the Diaspora could call on as a balm for their wounds. I understood this in the context of the Jewish experience, and I began to see him not as a haggard old man smoking chalice and yelling at me, but as a tortured soul who was stripped of his heritage decades before he was even born.

And on the other side of the world in the old city of Jerusalem, on a rooftop overlooking Mt. Zion, a Hasid in a silk robe and a white fur hat rapped to me in a thick Patois accent and told me about his youth in Jamaica and his own personal return to Zion. His name was Nigel "The Admore" and he was as enraged about the great Jewish exile as Bongo Daniel was about his own brutal displacement. Both men grew up in St. Anne, a parish on the north coast of Jamaica, both furiously clung to the tenets and stories of the Old Testament, both lived a life connected to music, and both felt the sting of their forefather's pain. But somehow culturally they had nothing in common, and had they lived in Crown Heights circa 1991, they probably would have shared only disdain for one another.

Relishing on the experience of the search itself