shek

You all know 50 cent. In da club. Candy shop. P.I.M.P. But have you heard of 50 shekel? Aviad Cohen, a.k.a. Shek, is best known for his hit single In da shul. He has quite the following (my lil bro knows all the lyrics) and was featured in Maxim's Blender mag and Heeb last year. But after watching Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, the 30-year-old Israeli rapper who used to call himself "the world's most kosher MC," had a change of heart and converted to Christianity. He describes his salvation on his website: "Thanks Mel, if not for God using you and your crew mightily for His purposes, I would have gone straight to eternal hell and would have never known what it really means to be true Jew." His new message to the masses: "Get saved if you wanna keep it true Jew."

But it wasn't just the movie that convinced him. He tells quite the tale of woe about how he was never really accepted into the Jewish community:

"An Orthodox man spotted me. I was in my Shabbos suit, holding a bag from Best Buy. He gave me a snotty, "You’re such a less of a Jew...I don’t want to be seen with you...you are an embarrassment" look and then he kept walking on. Did he think he was the kosher police or a better Jew? He surely had the same vibe as so many Rabbis, teachers and elders that have passed through my life, trying to make me feel like a worthless and lowly Jew, just because I was never a "good enough Jew" in their eyes."

My thoughts on this whole debacle? 50 shekel was made to feel like he was wrong, so he responds by making other Jews feel like they're wrong. And that's what's wrong with the world. The problem with people is that they don't know how to accept others for who they are. They can't understand people who are different from them. They feel as though everyone should live just like them, act just like them, be just like them. But that's the opposite of what we should be doing. We've all got to do our own thing. Stop judging and start loving. Please.