Matisyahu

Not long ago I saw a poster advertising that Matisyahu was going to be performing in St. Petersburg. The Dutch intern, Michael, mentioned that he thought it would be fun to go, so on Thursday night I found myself in a St. Petersburg club for a Matisyahu concert.

Matisyahu is a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn (he was actually raised in a fairly progressive Jewish family and aligned himself with Hasidism in 2001) whose music is kind of a reggae, hip-hop mix with some Jewish themes and sounds mixed in. While I knew who he was and had heard some of his songs before, I was certainly never a devoted fan. Despite that, it was a really fun concert and he has some pretty cool songs. Listen here or here.

And I bought a t-shirt. I'm always looking for a new t-shirt.

It was pretty interesting to watch a guy, dressed in pretty traditional clothing, with sidelocks and exposed tzitzit, up on the stage at a concert. A couple of times his yamulkah fell off as he moved around the stage, but either he or one of his band members was usually pretty quick to pick it up so he could put it back on.

St. Petersburg's Jewish community turned out in support. There were a fair number of people there who looked like they were fairly Orthodox (sidelocks and tzitzit), and lots of guys there wearing yamulkas. St. Petersburg has a Jewish population of about 100,000, but this was the first time I had seen any Jewish people in the city. It made me wonder if there is a Jewish neighborhood somewhere. I haven't looked into that yet.



It was fun to do something different and to get out and experience a little St. Petersburg night life, even if I did second-hand smoke several packs of cigarettes over the course of the evening (I'm second-hand smoking at least a pack a day over here - one thing I will certainly not be sorry to leave behind when I go home).