Pink Found Her Courage When the Music Industry Lost Its Spine

There are moments when celebrity is merely celebrity – fame, glamour, applause, record sales. And then there are moments when celebrity becomes a test of character.

This week, Pink passed that test magnificently.

After rapper Macklemore turned an Ed Sheeran concert at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium into a platform for his anti-Israel activism – performing Hind’s Hall, displaying wrenching images from Gaza, accusing Israel of genocide, and repeatedly proclaiming “Free Palestine” – Pink did something that has become astonishingly uncommon among the superstars of Western music.

She stood up.

More importantly, she stood up as a Jew.

Pink – born Alecia Beth Moore – had initially reposted criticism of Macklemore’s performance and was immediately engulfed by the predictable social-media fury. Her response was not to crawl away, hire a crisis consultant, or issue one of those pathetic celebrity apologies crafted to offend absolutely no one.

Instead, she wrote words that should reverberate throughout the Jewish world:

“I was born a Jew. I didn’t pick it, and I’ve never hidden it.”

And then came the sentence that moved me most:

“I’m standing up for my own people.”

She acknowledged that she expected doing so to be lonely – and discovered it was even lonelier than she imagined.

Pink did not discover her Jewishness when it became fashionable. She proclaimed it precisely when Jewish solidarity came with a price.

God bless her.

Pink was careful. She did not endorse every action of the Israeli government. She explicitly affirmed Palestinian humanity and aspirations, grieved for innocent children, and said she speaks for neither Israel nor any government. But she also stated an elementary truth that much of the entertainment establishment seems incapable of uttering without trembling: Hamas is a terrorist organization.

That balance makes her stand more compelling, not less.

You can care about Palestinian civilians and still recognize Jewish fear.

You can criticize an Israeli government and still refuse to demonize Israel.

You can mourn children in Gaza without pretending October 7 never happened.

And you can support Palestinian dignity without turning a stadium filled with families who came to hear Ed Sheeran into a one-sided political rally in which Jewish concertgoers suddenly find themselves effectively put on trial.

That is what Pink understood.

Macklemore insisted that his criticism of Israel was not criticism of Jews, telling his “Jewish brothers and sisters” that opposition to what he calls apartheid and genocide was not directed at them.

Pink’s answer was devastating in its simplicity: “You don’t get to decide that for us.”

Precisely.

For years, Jews have been lectured about what does and does not constitute antisemitism by people who would recoil in horror if any other minority were treated similarly. Jews are told that slogans calling for the disappearance of the world’s only Jewish state are harmless. We are told not to feel threatened. We are told that the obsessive singling out of Israel has nothing whatever to do with Jews.

And when Jews say, “Actually, this frightens us,” the response is often: Your fear is propaganda.

Pink rejected that arrogance.

Nor was Macklemore’s history irrelevant. Pink reminded her audience that in 2014 he appeared onstage disguised with a large prosthetic hooked nose, black beard and wig – imagery widely criticized as evoking an antisemitic caricature. Macklemore denied antisemitic intent and apologized at the time. Pink said she accepted that apology. But the memory understandably colors how Jewish audiences experience his current activism.

Jews do not need Macklemore’s permission to decide when rhetoric, imagery and obsessive anti-Israel agitation make them feel targeted.

And here is the scandal within the scandal: Why did Pink’s intervention feel so extraordinary?

Because the music industry has displayed a breathtaking lack of backbone.

There have certainly been actors, comedians and public figures who have defended Israel or Jewish communities since October 7. But among the highest-profile international recording stars, the ranks of those willing to withstand the mob have been depressingly thin.

One glorious exception has been my friend of nearly 30 years, the great Boy George.

This summer, the Culture Club legend released We Will Dance Again, a song explicitly honoring the victims of the Nova festival massacre and declaring solidarity with the Jewish people. He even incorporated Hebrew and confronted those who speak endlessly about Gaza while erasing October 7. The Jerusalem Post described it as an extraordinarily direct pro-Israel and pro-Jewish statement from a mainstream recording artist.

Boy George showed courage.

Now Pink has shown courage.

Where is everybody else?

Where are the stadium-filling singers who fill award ceremonies with speeches about justice, oppression and speaking truth to power?

Where are the performers who spent years telling us that “silence is violence”?

Apparently, for too many of them, silence becomes perfectly acceptable when Jews are the victims.

That hypocrisy is revolting.

It does not require supporting every Israeli policy to say that Israelis had a right to defend themselves after the mass murder, kidnapping and atrocities of October 7. It should not be professionally dangerous to demand the defeat of Hamas. It should not require bravery to say Jewish fans deserve to attend a concert without being made collectively responsible for a Middle Eastern war.

But in today’s cultural climate, apparently it does.

Which is why Pink deserves our gratitude.

She knew what would happen. She knew followers would attack her. She knew there would be boycott threats and accusations. She knew that acknowledging her Jewish identity would cause strangers to project every imaginable political belief onto her.

And she did it anyway.

That is courage.

Not the performative courage of celebrities applauded by every person in the room. Not the safe activism of repeating whatever slogan is already trending.

Courage is speaking when applause is uncertain.

Pink reminded the world that Jewish identity is not something to whisper about until the cultural weather improves.

Pink once introduced herself onstage during a Hanukkah performance with the beautifully uncomplicated declaration, “My name’s Alecia. I’m a Jew.”

This week she gave those words far greater meaning.

She effectively said: I am still a Jew when it costs me something. I am still a Jew when the comments become vicious. I am still a Jew when standing beside my people is lonely.

For that, Pink deserves more than applause.

She deserves the thanks of the Jewish people.

And the entertainment industry should look at her example – and be ashamed of its cowardice.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international bestselling author of thirty-eight books, translated into more than twenty languages. He has been hailed as “the most famous rabbi in America” (The Washington Post, Newsweek), “arguably the most famous Orthodox Jew on earth” (The New York Observer), and named one of the fifty most influential Jews in the world (The Jerusalem Post). Follow him on Instagram and X @RabbiShmuley.