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The American singer and influencer speaks out about her “Bring Them Home” dress at the Grammys.

Raphael Poch

(JNS)

U.S. singer and actress Montana Tucker’s appearance at the Grammy music awards in Los Angeles this past Sunday was a powerful statement of activism and advocacy.

Wearing a dress adorned with a large yellow ribbon with the words “Bring Them Home” embroidered on it, Tucker, 31, brought global attention to the plight of over 130 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. In a special interview held a few days after the Grammys, Montana spoke to JNS and explained the motivation behind her statement.

“I’ve been to the Grammys before, but this was the first time that I was invited as an artist to be on the red carpet,” Tucker explained. “I knew that I would be surrounded by all of these celebrities, artists and people that I looked up to, and I realized that I had to do something and say something. I knew that most people wouldn’t make a statement about the hostages, so I needed to be the one to say something boldly.”

Tucker chose to make her statement by collaborating with a team of Israeli women based in L.A. Her dress was fashioned by Madebyila, a company run by Israeli designer Ortal Mizrahi, and her hair and makeup were done by Ortal Labrecque. “I told Ortal (Mizrahi) that I wanted to do something to honor the hostages with my look so I went into her shop, and we thought about it for a while and came up with this idea.”

The choice to wear her message on her dress left the TikTok megastar a bit apprehensive. “I was a bit scared because I was surrounded by so many people who are very high up in the industry,” she said. “I’m proud I had the bravery to do it. I knew my [Holocaust survivor] grandparents would be proud of my choice and that gave me the strength of mind to go through with it.”

The dress was quickly noticed and some of those running the event tried to stop Tucker from making her statement before arriving on the red carpet. “Someone from the recording academy came up to me and asked if I could remove the ribbon because it was too political, I told them no, and that it was sewn onto my dress,” Tucker recounted.

“I don’t see the symbol as anything political per se. There is nothing political about wanting the return of hostages who were taken against their will. They aren’t just Jewish hostages or even just Israelis. There are Arab hostages and foreign hostages as well. It doesn’t matter what your political opinions are, this is about the release of innocent people who were taken hostage, and they need to be released.”

Tucker was proud that she wasn’t alone. “[Producer] Harvey Mason Jr. came up to me and thanked me for doing this. There were also a few people wearing yellow pins on their jackets.”

Tucker’s move made waves around the globe as mainstream media outlets, as well as other social media influencers, picked up the photos and spread the story.

“What was meaningful to me was that shortly after the Grammys were over, representatives of the families of the hostages got in touch with me, as did some of the family members themselves, who I keep in contact with. They reached out to me to thank me and told me how supported they felt. That is when I realized that I succeeded at doing something important.”

Tucker is well known for her advocacy. She is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and said that her family’s story influences her activism. “Growing up I heard both of my grandparents’ stories from the Holocaust. Anyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with my grandparents,” she said.

“When they went through the war they didn’t have a voice. But thankfully now we do have a voice, and we should use it and stand up to what is going on. I don’t feel that there is another option for me other than to speak up. I hope that I have inspired some other people, even people who are in way bigger positions than me, to go out and do something and say something. Harvey Mason Jr. deserves a lot of credit for what he said and his mention of the Nova festival,” she added.

Tucker doesn’t limit her advocacy to Jewish causes, she attests to standing up and fighting for many causes, including Black Lives Matter, participating in marches and spreading the word via social media.

She has spoken out vociferously against the war in Ukraine, and she uses her voice to fight antisemitism in all of its forms. “I will continue to speak up about major issues until real change is made and until all of the hostages are released,” she told JNS.

When asked about her music career, the “Sunday Funday” and “Hola” star teased a new song that she has been working on, without giving away too many spoilers. “I’m working on new music and I have been recording behind the scenes, but I don’t have any release dates yet.”

Tucker added that her video content creation is also continuing at full pace. “I am always recording new dance videos, and I have a new movie coming out where I play a supporting role. It’s called “Mob Cops,” and I’m very excited about it. David Arquette is in it. Kevin Connoly from ‘Entourage’ is in it as well.”

Returning to discuss her fight against antisemitism, for which she was featured on NBC’s “Kelly Clarkson Show,” Tucker encouraged people to follow her journey of remembrance last year in Poland, which revolved around a trip to the concentration and death camps. Tucker filmed the journey and turned it into an educational docuseries about Holocaust remembrance entitled “How To Never Forget,” available on YouTube.

Tucker’s multifaceted career and dedication to advocacy underscore her commitment to making a difference both on and off the stage. Her message at the Grammys of “Bring Them Home,” which transcends political boundaries, serves as a reminder of the power of using one’s platform for a cause greater than oneself, inspiring others to take a stand and make their voices heard.

Image: Social-media influencer Montana Tucker addresses an estimated 200,000 at the “March for Israel” rally in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 2023. Source: Screenshot.

The convert to Orthodox Judaism told JNS about his new album, as well as the pressing need for better black and Jewish-American relations.

Dave Gordon

(JNS)

Antisemites projected “Glory to our martyrs” on George Washington University’s Gelman Library, some five blocks from the White House, on Oct. 24. Six weeks later, some worried that a Chabad GW-sponsored, pre-Chanukah Nissim Black concert at Kogan Plaza, adjacent to the library, would be canceled on Dec. 5.

“Not only did we not get shut down, there were so many different black students that came to this show,” Black, an American-Israeli rapper, told JNS. “They are eating latkes and having sufganiyot.” (The Jewish delicacies refer to potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts.)

Chabad GW lit a menorah on the same site where the antisemitic message had been projected, which afforded some 350 attendees a symbol of light overcoming darkness, according to the 37-year-old, a black convert who identifies as Chassidic.

One attendee—a non-Jewish black man with dreadlocks—approached Black at the concert and told him that the rapper’s message inspired him on a rough day. He gave Black a hug, the rapper recalled.

“That is what we are supposed to be doing with our music and what we could do with our music,” Black told JNS.

He thinks that more can be done to improve relations between black and Jewish Americans, especially amid rising Jew-hatred. He told JNS that relations between the two communities started to sour well before Hamas terrorists attacked Israel nearly four months ago and before Kanye West (“Ye”) increasingly issued antisemitic statements.

“A lot of this started to happen with the riots after George Floyd and the world going back to the Dark Ages three years ago,” Black told JNS. (A white Minneapolis police officer was convicted of murdering Floyd, 46, a black man, on May 25, 2000.)

“On Oct. 7, so many light bulbs went off for me. How do we get back to this place of where we were allies?” Black told JNS. He noted that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish lawyer Jack Greenberg and Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who spoke immediately before Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington, marched with King.

Why, Black asked JNS, isn’t an under-represented voice like his, as a black Jewish artist, so absent from news reports on Israel?

“I’ve seen Fox, CNN, the media, and I have not seen so many black Jews speaking. How come nobody has reached out to me and the community?” he said. “If that’s not an ace card against ‘white colonialism,’ I don’t know what is.”

Academic affectation

When he thinks about the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania who testified in a Dec. 5 House hearing that it would not necessarily violate their policies to call for the genocide of Jews, Black was struck by the double standard.

“If the same thing was being called for towards the genocide of black people, how well would that have gone over with the school?” he said. “There is no doubt about it.”

Not enough is being done to counter the blood libels that are proliferating to smear Jews and Israel, he added.

“To think that we are people who would even support or want the deaths of thousands of innocent people—that doesn’t even compute,” he said of Jews and Israel. “We understand that people die in war. But us as a whole, we are painted to be monsters. This is the opposite of what the Jewish people represent. That’s one of the things that needs to be projected more.”

Straight outta Seattle

Born in 1986 in Seattle, Damian Jamohl Black followed in the footsteps of his parents, who were hip-hop performers.

At the age of 13, he recorded his first song with a producer who went by the name “Vitamin D.” At the time, Black thought being surrounded by drugs, gangs and violence, in addition to police raids, was normal. When he was 19, his mother died from an overdose of pain medication.

Then under the name “D Black,” he released the album “The Cause and Effect” in 2007. Two years later, he released “Ali’yah” and began to receive wider attention both from fans and in the industry. The album performed well and was well-reviewed, and Black started getting invitations to perform at major music festivals.

After a religious journey that took him to other faith traditions, Black had a spiritual awakening and underwent an Orthodox Jewish conversion. He changed his name to Nissim (“miracles” in Hebrew), replacing his earlier musical themes of guns, drugs and violence with faith, identity and perseverance. He and his family live in Jerusalem.

“I started to realize, over the years, my responsibility to the world, and I think it came from understanding the Jewish responsibility to the world,” he told JNS. “As a Jew, we are called to be a light unto the nations.”

At press time, Black’s 2020 hit “Mothaland Bounce” had more than 5.2 million views on YouTube.

The internationally acclaimed artist is set to release an 18-track album, “Glory,” this spring. He told JNS that the new album will be an ode to God through soulful melodies, captivating lyrics and powerful production. Single titles include “Scream,” “Speed Dial,” “Better” and “Ayeh.”

“It’s really centered around faith and elevation,” he told JNS, describing the new music as “big black soul, black gospel, mixed with some very high energy pop-rock-type feel.”

Shalom Arush, a Breslov Chassidic rabbi in Israel, and other friends have encouraged Black to globalize his message rather than sticking to a Jewish niche. And so, he has heeded the call.

“I didn’t inherit an idea, or space, where I think my goal is to sit only in this quiet place and not influence or inspire the world,” he told JNS. “From the time I was a kid, this is what God has called me to do.”

“I feel like we all have a purpose, a reason why we are here,” he added. “My story, I hope, will show other people that sometimes you have to open yourself up into knowing what you don’t know.”