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‘Can You Dig It?’: New podcast traces how a Puerto Rican-Jewish gang leader helped create hip-hop in the Bronx
(New York Jewish Week) — In the late 1960s, the Bronx was at war. Rival gangs were fighting over territory in neighborhoods that had been devastated by drugs, poverty and the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Benjamin “Yellow Benjy” Melendez was the son of Puerto Rican Jewish immigrants and the leader of a multicultural gang called the Ghetto Brothers that promoted peace. After his comrade Cornell “Black Benjie” Benjamin was beaten to death in 1971 while trying to break up a fight, Melendez brokered a truce among 50 gangs that led to safer streets, a flourishing of public art and, ultimately, the birth of hip-hop.
Julian Voloj, an occasional Jewish Telegraphic Agency contributor who is married to New York Jewish Week managing editor Lisa Keys, published a graphic novel about Melendez in 2015. Now he has co-written and co-produced a five-part podcast about the Ghetto Brothers that debuted on Audible last month in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of hip-hop.
“Can You Dig It?” includes interviews with former gang members and historians, dramatic reenactments of key moments in the Ghetto Brothers’ history and recordings of Melendez, who died in 2017. Chuck D of the legendary rap group Public Enemy narrates the series, and Coke La Rock — who rapped at what is considered to be the first hip-hop party, on Aug. 11, 1973 — spits a few bars and shares some memories.
Melendez’s ancestors were crypto-Jews from Spain who practiced Judaism in secret to avoid persecution during the Inquisition and afterward. Likewise, he kept his faith under wraps during his gang years. While he forbade members of the Ghetto Brothers from wearing swastikas to appear tough, he never explained why the symbol offended him. Later in life, he embraced his Jewish roots and prayed at the Bronx’s Intervale Jewish Center.
RELATED: From Rick Rubin to Doja Cat, Jews have helped shape the first 50 years of hip-hop
Voloj, who lives in Queens, spoke with the New York Jewish Week this week about hip-hop history and how Melendez’s Jewishness has inspired his own projects on the genre.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
JTA: When did you first hear about Benjamin Melendez?
JV: I started a photo series on Jewish diversity in 2005, and I always was looking for interesting characters to photograph. Someone recommended Yellow Benjy. He got his nickname because the mother of his first two kids was Chinese, and there were a lot of other Benjamins in the neighborhood. So I called him up and we met up in the Bronx in 2010 at the stairs where Cornell Benjamin was murdered.
That first meeting was really meant to be just one photograph, but he had this fascinating story and we hit it off. I guess it had to do with my own Latinx, Jewish identity — my parents are Colombian — so we really had a lot in common. When Yellow Benjy died, my kids thought that he was a real relative because they had seen him so many times. He was Uncle Benjy to them.
Benjamin Melendez in 2010. (Julian Voloj)
At its heart, “Can You Dig It?” is a story about gangs of disenfranchised youth fighting over turf. What’s the connection between gangs and hip-hop?
Every culture is part of a certain environment in which it was created. The realities of the 1970s Bronx, there were no youth activities, so the gangs in a way filled this void. Obviously “gang” is a term that’s not one size fits all.
After the Hoe Avenue peace meeting, the Ghetto Brothers invited other gangs into their territory for street parties. There is a direct connection to the early hip-hop parties. The philosophy of early hip-hop was about peace, love, unity and having fun. Only later on did you have gangsta rap with its glorification of violence.
Scholar Joe Schloss says on the podcast that people were always surprised to learn Melendez was Jewish and calls him “a perfect example of what it means to be Jewish in the world in a way that was very different from sort of stereotypical notions of what Jewish is.” Do you agree?
It was one of my main motivations to tell Yellow Benjy’s story in the graphic novel “Ghetto Brother.” He was a proud Puerto Rican Sephardic Jew, and it was a story that was missing from the overall canon on Jewish identity. It was also important that his children have Jewish names, and so his kids have names like Judah, Zipporah, Sarah, Rebecca, Joshua. And with them, his legacy lives on.
Several Jewish personalities are mentioned in the podcast. Can you share a little bit about them?
You have all different aspects of Jewish identity in the story. There’s Benjamin Melendez, who’s a Puerto Rican crypto-Jew. Then you have Robert Moses who comes from a German-Jewish family. The Cross Bronx Expressway is the legacy that he’s most associated with, which really accelerated urban decay and white flight.
Then you have Rita Fecher, whose father was a rabbi. She grew up Orthodox, then divorced her husband and lived as a single mom in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. Fecher was an art teacher at a school in the South Bronx, and she was such a positive influence on all these kids who had never met any Jews. She really cared about them. She allowed them to find their own voice and helped them to think about art. She’s the kind of teacher you wish would exist more.
From left: Pete Chelala, Angelique Lenox, Julian Voloj and Bryan Master at the Cornell Benjamin street renaming ceremony in the Bronx, June 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Voloj)
And she co-produced with Henry Chalafant the 1993 documentary about gang life titled “Flyin’ Cut Sleeves.” How did that come about?
She brought a video camera to the Bronx in the late ’60s, early ’70s, and she gave the kids the camera to document their own lives, which was unheard of. Over a decade later, she tried to track down her former students and see where they ended up. That’s really the powerful thing: you see these angry kids who feel left behind and then you see that everything somehow worked out.
For me, the fascinating part of “Flyin’ Cut Sleeves” is you see Yellow Benjy at the Intervale Jewish Center, the last synagogue of the South Bronx. He goes to services and he’s with Moishe Sacks, who was the rabbi there.
Each episode of “Can You Dig It?” ends with a song by the Ghetto Brothers band, which was fronted by Melendez. Did he rap too?
He really didn’t like hip-hop. It wasn’t his music. He was more of a Beatles fan. He liked Santana.
Although he wasn’t a hip-hop artist, he has a direct connection to the hip-hop troika of [DJ Kool] Herc, Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. Like Herc, he was once a member of the Cofon Cats [gang]. He was friends with Afrika Bambaataa, who may or may not have participated in the Hoe Avenue peace meeting. Grandmaster Flash, who is slightly younger, knew about the Ghetto Brothers growing up and mentions them in his autobiography.
Who is this podcast for?
Anybody who’s interested in nonfiction audio storytelling. Anybody who’s interested in the history of New York. The bookends of every episode are scripted reenactments, like they use in film documentaries. They really allow listeners to dive in and experience the Bronx in the 1970s.
For the hip-hop community, it allows people to discover a different origin story. You can argue over whether hip-hop is really 50 or not because there are so many origin stories. This is one of them.
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The post ‘Can You Dig It?’: New podcast traces how a Puerto Rican-Jewish gang leader helped create hip-hop in the Bronx appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish Democrat Announces Primary Challenge Against Anti-Israel New York City Councilwoman
Jewish Democrat Maya Kornberg, an author and senior research fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, has launched a primary challenge to New York City Councilmember Shahana Hanif. Photo: Screenshot
Maya Kornberg, a Jewish Democrat from Brooklyn, New York, has launched a campaign to unseat New York City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, an outspoken critic of Israel.
Kornberg announced on Tuesday that she will seek to represent District 39 in the New York City Council. Much of the city’s Jewish community has expressed outrage at Hanif over her repeated repudiations of Israel, including her false accusations that the war against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza constitutes a “genocide.”
“I am thrilled to announce that I’m running for NYC Council in District 39! With the Trump presidency looming, local governance is more important than ever, and the City Council is our best line of defense,” Kornberg wrote on X/Twitter on Tuesday. “Together, I believe we can build a district where everyone can feel happy, safe, and thrive.”
“I’ve dedicated my career to making democracy work better,” Kornberg added in a statement, promising that if elected she will concentrate on “standing up against hate, providing reliable constituent services, and delivering meaningful change for every resident in every corner of the district.”
Kornberg’s decision to enter next June’s Democratic primary contest sets up a showdown between a self-described “pragmatic” liberal and a far-left democratic socialist. Hanif, who represents heavily Jewish neighborhoods in central Brooklyn such as Park Slope, has reportedly enraged her constituents by ignoring concerns about antisemitism and unloading an unrelenting barrage of criticism directed at Israel.
Following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Hanif issued a statement blaming the Jewish state for the terrorist attacks.
“The root cause of this war is the illegal, immoral, and unjust occupation of the Palestinian people. The Occupation has brought violence toward Israelis and Palestinians for over 75 years. There will be no peace unless the rights of all people in this region are respected,” Hanif wrote on X/Twitter on Oct. 13.
Despite Hanif’s presence on New York’s “Taskforce to Combat Hate,” she has reportedly refused to denounce acts of antisemitic vandalism and graffiti around the city. Hanif was also arrested at an October 2023 “ceasefire” rally organized by the anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America organization. At the rally, protesters chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — and held up signs reading “No, I do not condemn Hamas.”
Hanif later participated in the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University in April. She posted a photo of herself from the center of the encampment, sporting a red keffiyeh and smiling.
“I’m proud to witness disciplined leadership from students mobilize for peace and against genocide,” Hanif wrote.
The incumbent councilwoman also voted against a resolution to establish “End Jew Hatred Day” in New York City, claiming that it had been brought forth by a “coalition that has concerning ties to far-right politicians who promote problematic and hateful rhetoric.”
Kornberg, who has reportedly spent months fundraising to enter the primary race, is expected to receive substantial backing from the community’s pro-Israel constituents. Many District 39 constituents have expressed exasperation with Hanif’s unwillingness to publicly apologize for her past commentary and hesitance to tackle surging antisemitic hate crimes in the city.
The impending battle between Kornberg and Hanif comes on the heels of New York City experiencing a somewhat rightward shift in the 2024 presidential election. Every single county in the New York City metropolitan area moved toward Trump compared to four years ago, and the Republican president-elect’s margin of defeat in the heavily Democratic city was 16 points narrower than in 2020.
In the wake of last month’s surprising election results, many Democrats are modulating their approach to controversial topics such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seeking to strike a more moderate tone. Many observers believe the District 39 primary race could indicate whether the deep-blue city has made an enduring shift away from far-left progressivism.
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Orthodox Rabbinical Conference Slams German University for Canceling Lecture by Israeli Historian Benny Morris
Israeli historian Benny Morris in 2024. Photo: Screenshot
The Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, an influential association of orthodox rabbis, lambasted the University of Leipzig for canceling a lecture by Israeli historian Benny Morris following anti-Israel student protests described by the school as “understandable, but frightening in nature.”
The Cologne-based group said on Wednesday that it was “shameful to see how quickly an academic institution in Germany is now caving in to aggressive anti-Israeli and antisemitic activism,” German media reported. Instead, the association continued, it is necessary to “resolutely defend the freedom of teaching and science.”
According to the rabbinical conference, young people must be taught to engage with each other at educational institutions rather than shut out opposing views in order to fulfill the post-Nazi promise of “never again.” However, it continued, submitting to aggressive activists rather than protecting constitutional rights is an “alarming signal” and a threat to a free, democratic society.
Morris, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, was scheduled to deliver a lecture about extremism and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which the Jewish state secured its independence, at the university on Thursday as part of a lecture series on antisemitism.
However, the school released a statement this past Friday announcing that it had canceled the planned event, citing protests over the lecture and what it described as security concerns.
“Our invitation to Prof. Morris was motivated by the desire to talk about his earlier work, which has had a profound impact on historical research, the university said in its statement. “Unfortunately, Prof. Morris has recently expressed views in interviews and discussions that can be read as offensive and even racist. This has led to understandable, but frightening in nature, protests from individual student groups.”
The University of Leipzig did not elaborate on any specific comments by Morris, whose works include the seminal study The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, first published in 1988, and made a point of noting it did not endorse the historian’s views.
“In principle, inviting speakers to the university does not necessarily mean that we agree with their views, and we firmly distance ourselves from Prof. Morris’ controversial statements,” the school said. “The purpose of the event with him was to engage critically, not to endorse his theses or later statements. In our opinion, science thrives through the exchange of diverse ideas, including those that are challenging or uncomfortable. We trust that our students are able to engage constructively and critically with the guest speaker.”
Various groups including Students for Palestine Leipzig had called for the lecture to be canceled, arguing Morris — who has expressed political opinions associated with both the left and the right — held “deeply racist” views against Palestinians.
“Together with security concerns, the above points mean that Prof. Benny Morris’ lecture will not take place,” the university stated.
Morris, 75, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the decision to cancel the lecture was “disgraceful, especially since it resulted from fear of potential violence by students. It is sheer cowardice and appeasement.”
Despite canceling Morris’ lecture, the University of Leipzig expressed concern about the increased efforts to boycott and marginalize Israeli scholars because they are from the world’s lone Jewish state.
“Regardless of this case, we want to express our concern that a double standard is being established that is being applied to Israeli scholars, who are increasingly marginalized and excluded from events under the pretext of political differences of opinion, while other voices are given unhindered access to the university,” the university said. “This applies, for example, in Leipzig to events by colleagues who are close to the BDS movement, which is classified as a suspected extremist case in Germany. We are far from establishing a culture of cancellations, but the possibility should remain open to be able to discuss difficult and critical voices from both sides in a tough manner.”
The Algemeiner has reported extensively on wide-ranging efforts across academia to exclude Israeli scholars and institutions in accordance with the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
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Australia Backs UN Resolution Calling for Israel to Pull Out From Gaza, West Bank in Major Policy Shift
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong during Question Time in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Nov. 28, 2024. Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas via Reuters Connect
Australia on Tuesday voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking a two-decade pattern of opposing such a measure.
The resolution passed by a vote of 157-8 vote, with Israel and the United States voting no and seven abstentions.
In the measure, the General Assembly called for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “based on the pre-1967 borders,” as well as a peace conference in New York next year, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to advance diplomatic efforts in making the two-state solution a reality.
The resolution characterized Israel as an “occupying power,” demanding the Jewish state end its presence in Gaza, the West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem — areas described as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” It also called on the UN to recognize the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent state.”
Australia has not voted for such a measure at the UN since 2001. However, Australia’s Ambassador to the UN James Larsen and a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong both said in statements that Tuesday’s vote was meant to work toward peace in the Middle East and a two-state solution. Wong previously called on Israel to “exercise restraint” on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blasted the government’s decision to support the UN resolution, accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of “selling out” the Jewish community and “abandoning Israel” for electoral purposes.
“The best we can do for peace in the Middle East is defeat Hamas and Hezbollah and make sure their proxy in Iran does not strike with nuclear weapons, or through the Houthis, or others they are finding because innocent women and children are losing their lives,” he told reporters in Sydney.
The vote came amid already flaring tensions between Israel and Australia.
On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar summoned Australia’s Ambassador to Israel, Ralph King, for an official reprimand following Canberra’s decision not to grant Israel’s former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, a visa to enter the country last month.
Saar charged that the decision to prohibit Shaked from visiting Australia was based on “baseless blood libels spread by the pro-Palestinian lobby.”
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke explained that his decision to refuse Shaked’s visa application was rooted in concerns that she would “seriously undermine social cohesion” by speaking about the war in the Middle East, noting her past comments about Palestinians.
Meanwhile, antisemitism in Australia has surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
Antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, according to a new report published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), an organization that advocates upholding the civil rights of the country’s some 120,000 Jewish citizens. In many cases, antisemitic incidents were fueled by anti-Israel animus.
Daniel Aghion, president of ECAJ, lambasted Australia’s latest UN vote in comments reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
“This is a shameless pursuit of a domestic political agenda that puts [the ruling Labor Party’s] aspirations in vulnerable seats ahead of historic and principled support for a democratic ally,” he said, referring to Australia’s upcoming elections this spring. “For some time now, this government has been chipping away at bipartisan support for Israel and a negotiated end to the conflict. After this latest significant shift, there is very little left.”
David Taragin is a writer based in New York.
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