If I were to offer my inspiration onto Jerusalem’s stone like those devotees of R. Nachman of Breslov who go hip-hop and graffiti the city with “N-NaCH-NaCHMa, NaCHMaN”, I know what I'd joyously tag: “N-NI-NIE-NIET-NIETZS-NIETZSCHE.” Oh how tragic it is that the man who wrote “Shoot here: what should be placed above all anti-Semites door” has been so cruelly twisted into a proto-Nazi!! How painfully ironic that the words of the man who wrote “The Jews are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe,” were so often used to poison the arrow tips that issued from Goebels’ murderous tongue.

Even upon my first reading of this idol-smashing thinker when I was still forming my identity, My Judaism was nurtured by Nietzsche’s capacity for pinpointing elements of a nation’s spiritual DNA, thus informing how I am: “AM Yisrael.” Years later, deeper in love with Nietzsche – ‘the godless’ (not the g-dless!), spiritual poet of life on earth - I continue to snatch his star from the constellation of Nazi Ideology and shoot it in through the windows of the Beit Midrash where such light belongs.

For example, as a Bible Rapper, when I begin my work in the Beit Midrash, I attempt to follow the midrashist formula: Studying a piece of Torah with input from the great commentators who came before us to create harmony within the song’s lyrics between what speaks to me and what innovations I endeavor to add - dipping my pen into the sentiment below, from Nietzsche’s Human All Too Human, each time I go back to the well.

Art as necromancer. Among the subsidiary duties of art is that of conserving, and no doubt also of taking extinguished, faded ideas and restoring to them a little colour: when it performs this task it winds a band around different ages and makes the spirits that inform them return… and the heart beats to a rhythm it had forgotten.

Matt Bar with his business partner Ori salzberg run Bible Raps which will be releasing their PELIE and ROI supported "Bible Raps Teacher's Tool KIT 2.0 March of 2011" (Shout out to sponsors ROI and PELIE!). Besides sweet Teacher's Tool Kits, Matt’s music has been featured on MTV's "The Real World" and NBC's “Hip Hop Nation Notes from the Underground.” He has opened for Grammy winning group Outkast and released 4 albums selling over 7,000 units. The Bible Raps Project is an outgrowth of the success and excitement he discovered when he introduced Bible Raps into his classroom teaching Hebrew School in Iowa City, IA and Greenwich CT. Matt has spent the past 2 years investing in Bible Raps by spending his time at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the PresenTense Institute and ROI in Jerusalem. Bible Raps now works from Atlanta when not on the road.

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