The 34-year-old performer, who lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, said by phone he wanted to make sure the product was made in Israel. He met a guy in Mahaneh Yehuda who made whisky, and they agreed to be business partners. The result is “Hava Whisky: A Blackened Whisky.”
“It’s a smooth takeoff with a smooth landing,” Black said of the drink.
But he admits there’s been much turbulence in his life from his youth to his journey to convert to Judaism to making aliyah.
The father of six children admits it was also rough when he got COVID last July.
“Scary times, man,” he said. “I understand the government wanted to make things safe but I think they went a little overboard. It’s a great thing things calmed down when it did. I think people were almost ready for a rebellion. Thanks to Hashem, even though I had to go to the hospital, I recovered and I’m thankful to the staff who helped me.”
He said he is thrilled to be able to do concerts again, not only for paranasa (salary), but because that was his routine of life.
Black grew up in Seattle, Washington, attending his grandfather’s mosque.
“He was a Sunni Muslim and he told me I was one, so I would go to pray with him five times every day but then he went back to jail for breaking his parole and it was sad that he died in jail,” he said. The child who had been rapping into little video cameras loved Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Nas, but his favorite was Jay-Z.
His home life was tough, where drug trafficking went on. When he was eight, he said, the FBI used a battering ram to bust into his home.
“Where I lived in Seattle was rough,” he said. “It wasn’t Compton or Chicago but there was danger. You could hear shootings in the middle of the night. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.”
He ate whatever his mother cooked, preferring tuna casserole or fajitas, but dinner was often at midnight because of earlier illegal activities in the home.
Asked about racism in Israel, he said what bothered him more than the racist slurs hurled against him were those hurled against his six children. The oldest is 13. The youngest is a year old.
“Just uneducated people who haven’t seen many black people and they for sure should not talk like that especially to my kids,” he said. “It’s wrong. But for the most part, Israel has been loving and accepting.”
He said while he is angered by the shooting of unarmed black men in America, the media have gone too far to make it seem like all police officers are racist.
“I grew up in the hood and I was worried about cops, because I was doing what I shouldn’t have been doing,” Black said. “I did get pulled over, we were racially profiled once when we were in a nice neighborhood and we were in an old school car. There is real racism in America that needs to be worked on. Some police officers are unfortunately racist and that needs to be worked on. But this thing that police officers are out looking for black men to purposely harm, I don’t believe that to be true. There’s been a lot of trauma for sure. Some people get paid for keeping up trauma in the African-American community. They try to get people to think every white person in America wakes up in the morning thinking about how they can keep the black man down. That’s not how it is. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Prejudices? For sure people have that. But not everyone.”
He joked that he has heard attempts at rap in America and Israel.
“Go to any Beit Knesset (synagogue) and see how fast they’re davening, that’s for sure called rapping,” he jested.
BLACK, WHOSE first name means miracles and whose birth name was Damian, married his high school sweetheart, Adina, whom he knew since she was 17. She was Seventh-day Adventist.
“I made a deal with God that I would give him every day except Sunday,” he said. “That was reserved for my (Seattle) Seahawks. I think (quarterback) Russell Wilson just needs some defensive help.”
He said at the age of 29, he knew he wanted to convert to Judaism. A Christian group helped him get away from violence. But when he became involved in Gangsta rap, he was at a crossroads. He got into a heated disagreement with another rapper.
“A friend of mine tried to kill him,” he recalled. “He missed. I thought they were gonna come after me. It was either I kill him or he kills me. I started praying. I didn’t want this life. I got a Koran, the Christian Bible [and] the Chumash, and Judaism really stuck out to me. The book that showed of all the mess-ups of the Jewish people and how God loved them anyway resonated with me and reminded me of my life.”
He said he and his wife converted to Judaism through a program at a Sephardi synagogue that took two and a half years. Though he married in 2008, he later chose to have an Orthodox wedding in 2013.
As for his move to Israel, he was a bit sly.
“I shouldn’t inform on myself, but I filled out the paperwork for Nefesh B’Nefesh and forged her name but it was okay because my wife gave me the green light to make aliyah,” Black said, which they did in 2016.
He said he considers himself a Breslov Hassid, visits Monsey, New York, often, and he’s hoping the Messiah comes soon. He said he’s been blessed to record music with many other Jewish artists, and most recently did a track with Shlomo Katz.
He said he learned how to shoot a gun “the street way, not the Army way.”
His manager, Aaron Fogelson, said what struck him when he visited the artist was that “only a small fraction of his life is focused on music, while the majority of his time is spent on religious learning, taking care of his family, and serving as a glorified rabbi for the community.” He said he often saw how Black was approached by other parents who asked that he give classes or sermons to their children.
The video for “The Hava Song” has more than 993,000 hits, features break dancing and is very different from the sometimes only Jewish song you hear at weddings.
What’s his most prized possession?
“My relationship with Hashem” Black said. “I talk to him every day.”
He’s worked with everyone from Lipa Schmeltzer to Gad Elbaz to Six13. His last album was Gibor and no doubt, he is a hero to many.