AN ULTRAORTHODOX RAPPER

It became one of the biggest TV hits of the 2000s, but Sandra Bernhard is not sorry she turned down Sex and the City. The performer was offered the role of Miranda, but said no, because she thought the script and pay were poor. And when it came out, she hated it. “The depiction of New York was unrealistic and disgusting,” she told Craig Mclean in The Daily Telegraph. “And I don’t like the way it portrayed friendships between women. I thought it anti-feminist. Women looking for men, spending too much money on shoes. Women doing things out of desperation. That’s exactly what I’m not about.” Nissim Baruch Black knows more about world religions than the average rapper. Born in Seattle, he was brought up in a family of drug takers and dealers. “It was very loving,” he says, but dysfunctional: the house was full of drugs and guns. He began smoking dope at nine, was dealing by 12 – and has been clean since 13 (he quit after a bad trip). Back then, he thought of himself as Muslim, because his grandfather – while a criminal – was devout and took him to the mosque. But at 14, he went to a summer camp, formed healthy relationships for the first time and converted to Christianity. His faith didn’t stop him being a gangsta rapper, but in his 20s he had a violent encounter with a rival, and his mother died – sending him on a new spiritual quest. “At the root of Christianity and Islam, I found Judaism,” he told Harriet Sherwood in The Observer. The process of converting took 30 months – “they’re not looking for new customers” – and two years ago, he moved with his family to Jerusalem. “I live a very Haredi [ultra-orthodox] life,” he says. They keep a kosher house, dress modestly, obey the rules of the Sabbath – but in one way, they stand out: whereas their neighbours are almost all Ashkenazi Jews of European ancestry, he, his wife and their four children are black. Yet he feels they are being accepted, as is his music. “People even ask me to sing at bar mitzvahs.”