From the “Who Knew?” department comes this interesting tidbit: Lashon hara has a staunch opponent and Judaism an enthusiastic fan in, of all people, the pop musician known as Beck.
In a special music insert of last week’s LA Weekly, the pioneering Grammy-winning post-modernist – best known for genre-blending albums such as “Odelay” and “Midnite Vultures” – was asked to comment on a rumor circulating that linked him to Scientology. Beck answered the question this way:
“I’m not a gossip at all, maybe because I’m a Jew, and Jews believe you shouldn’t talk about people. I’m the same way about stealing – I’m absolutely unable to steal. My family weren’t observant Jews, but I wanted a bar mitzvah, and when I was a teenager I used to go to synagogue and study Torah with a friend who lived in Tujunga.
“If I have children I’ll raise them as Jews, because it’s a great religion. I like to look at things from as many different angles as possible, and one of the things I love about Judaism is that it gives 100 different interpretations of a single line of Torah.”
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