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Hassidic Rapper Nissim Black Explains Why Upcoming Album ‘Glory’ Is ‘Very Different’ From Past Albums
Nissim Black. Photo: Provided
American-Israeli Hassidic rapper Nissim Black spoke to The Algemeiner on Monday about his new album dropping next month and how its tone is quite different sonically from his past projects.
Glory, which will be released on July 7, is an infusion of all the different parts of Black’s musical styles in one album, he explained.
“I’m very purpose-driven on this record and nothing sounds the same,” the Love Me singer said. “Every time I thought I was going in one direction, I wanted to go another place and another place. And I wanted to beat myself up and say, ‘Listen, can you just stay grounded somewhere?’ It was a really honest conversation I had with myself and was like no, I can’t. Because I’m all of this. I’m pop, I’m rap, I’m R&B … these are the components that have shaped me musically. On this record you get almost an element of everywhere I’ve ever been, musically, ever. I’ve popped all over the place.”
Glory was originally intended to be released in November 2023, but the release date was pushed following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel. Black has not released an album since 2019. At a sneak peak listening party for Glory that took place on Monday night in New York, Black played all 18 tracks from the upcoming album.
“God got me feeling that I’m here for a reason,” Black sings in one song. On another track, he says: “You may have to face some fears/and you may have to shed some tears/and you may have to change some peers/all for you to do God’s will.” In another song, he sings to a friend who attempted to commit suicide, saying, “I heard you tried to take your own life … how can I go on? Please just look up. Life will get better.”
Black told The Algemeiner that a rabbi he became close with in recent years in Beit Shemesh, where the rapper lives, inspired him to name the album Glory. A native of Seattle, where his parents were part of the hip-hop scene, Black explained that he also recently experienced a period in his life when he thought a lot about his purpose in this world.
“I came to the conclusion alone that it was to spread the glory of God in the world. That’s what I’m here [to do],” said the He Is The King singer, who converted to Judaism in 2013. “I’m not here to hide it, to do it in a way where I’m kind of talking about it and nobody knows what I’m saying, I’m the type of person where I was put here to be open about that. [And] when I went to the rabbi, he kept screaming, ‘Glory to God. What he kept saying resonated to me, so I said, ‘The next project I’m doing, is [going to be called] Glory.’ And every time I would come into the beit midrash [study hall], the rabbi would put me on the spot and say, ‘Nissim, you need to make songs l’kavod shemayim [in honor of God].’ For him to be saying that about me, it was a good push.”
While the songs on Glory discuss sanctifying the name of God, they also address other topics, such as being bullied, pretending to be something other than one’s authentic self, mental health, having good friends, and “sticking true to who we are no matter what and allowing God to fight our battles,” Black noted.
“I was trying to capture and bottle some of the emotions and feelings that I’ve had over the years,” he added.
Black’s favorite track on the album is titled Ayeh, from the Hebrew expression “Ayeh Mekom Kevodo,” which means, “where is the glory of God?” In the song, Black sings about someone being in a very dark place in their life, crying out and asking, “God, where are you?”
“Each album is representative of me, of where I am at the time, but this is just another revealed layer,” he said. “Album after album, I’ve been more comfortable to use my singing voice — before I was always very shy about it. I had to strip away the idea growing up in the hood that you are either a rapper or a singer, that you can’t do both. And today, there’s no rules. And the more comfortable I’ve become with myself, I’m more comfortable with the gifts God gave me, so I’m able to use them shamelessly on this album.”
Black has already released two tracks from his upcoming album: Love Me featuring Oryahh, and Hu Hamelech/He Is The King featuring Gad Elbaz.
While speaking to The Algemeiner last year about Glory and other projects, he said about the upcoming album: “I’m really laying out my heart on a platter.”
The post Hassidic Rapper Nissim Black Explains Why Upcoming Album ‘Glory’ Is ‘Very Different’ From Past Albums first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Top Teachers Union Votes to End Alliance with ADL Over Israel Support
NEA Headquarters in Washington, DC. //WikiCommons
On Sunday, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cease its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), citing the latter’s defense of the Jewish state.
The policymaking, 7,000-member assembly of the nation’s largest teachers’ union approved “new business item 39,” a measure that resolved: “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
In response to the decision, the ADL called it “profoundly disturbing, that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.”
The ADL declared: “We will not be cowed for supporting Israel, and we will not be deterred from our work reaching millions of students with educational programs every year.”
Cautioning that “there’s an internal NEA process that deals with issues like this, and it is far from a completed process,” the ADL vowed: “We will continue to call out this antisemitism and prioritize our Jewish students and educators.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a consistent and influential critic of Israel’s right to exist, praised the teachers union’s rejection of the ADL.
“We welcome the NEA’s vote to stop exposing public school students to biased materials provided by the Anti-Defamation League due to its long history of spreading anti-Palestinian rhetoric,” CAIR said in a statement.
“The ADL has only become worse under its increasingly unhinged director Jonathan Greenblatt, who has repeatedly smeared and endangered students in recent years,” the group said. “This principled move is a significant step toward fostering respect for the rights and dignity of all students in public schools, who must receive an education without facing biased, politically-driven agendas.”
In a post Wednesday on X, ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote: “The answer to the surge in antisemitism in our classrooms isn’t to exclude the Jewish community from the conversation. Anti-Israel activists within @NEAToday cannot poison U.S. classrooms with politics. @ADL‘s priority is, and has been, to support Jewish students and educators. Our nation’s school systems should have access to the best resources for education on the Holocaust and antisemitism.”
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‘Transparently Antisemitic’: Google Founder Sergey Brin Blasts UN in Internal Company Forum
Sergey Brin of Google
(Source: ReutersConnect)
Google cofounder Sergey Brin criticized the United Nations in a company forum, calling it “transparently antisemitic” after the release of a report that accused Google and other tech firms of enabling Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Brin was responding to a UN report that claimed companies including Alphabet, Google’s parent company, profited from what it called “the genocide carried out by Israel” by providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.
“Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” Brin wrote in a discussion thread on a Google DeepMind employee forum. “I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the U.N.”
The report was the brainchild of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. The Trump administration has accused her of antisemitism and has called for her removal, saying she has demonstrated consistent antisemitic biases in her work and has unfairly singled out Israel.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US was imposing sanctions on Albanese under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
In a post on X, Rubio accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on “human rights violations” that Israel allegedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and rationalize Hamas attacks on the Jewish state. In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
Google has faced internal uproar over the company’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with Israel. The deal has faced sustained criticism from human rights activists and some Google employees, who argue the technology could be used to enhance Israeli military operations and surveillance of Palestinians. According to a recent UN report, the agreement provided Israel with key cloud and AI infrastructure after Hamas launched its deadly October 7, 2023 attack against the Jewsih state, killing approximately 1,200 people and prompting a large-scale Israeli military response in Gaza.
Google has previously punished employees who protested the company’s relationship with Israel. After a wave of internal demonstrations in 2024, CEO Sundar Pichai issued a companywide memo urging staff not to use the workplace to debate political issues.
In the months following Oct. 7, Israeli defensive military operations in Gaza have led to the deaths of more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Health Ministry, has repeatedly fabricated casualty statistics in the past.
The UN report accused US tech firms of exploiting a lucrative opportunity created by the conflict and Israel’s need for digital tools. It singled out Google and Amazon as being complicit in Israel’s so called “genocide” in Gaza.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
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