Jews are one of the world’s smallest minority populace, coming in at around 14.7 million people worldwide (in comparison, black people make up nearly 50 million people just in the USA), with a majority of them residing between the United States of America and Israel. Knowing this statistic, it’s important for Jewish people to support smaller Jewish businesses, musicians, and artists making inherently Jewish music (in any genre), artists, organizations fighting antisemitism, Judaica sellers, your synagogue, and the like. These things only survive by your contribution to them doing so, so it’s infinitely important to show your support for their continued operation.

I like to start small, I love looking on Etsy for handcrafted Judaica sellers, local businesses, then finding larger websites for the rest of my needs. When it comes to music, I listen to a broad spectrum of Jewish music, from Klezmer to pop, to rock, from punk to bluegrass (I’m looking at you Nefesh Mountain), but my first love is Jewish hip hop. When I began the conversion process, I gave up listening to much of the hip hop I used to, because its message ran countercurrent to the teachings of Judaism but finding Jewish hip hop gave me that love back.

Nissim Black, Kosha Dillz, Westside Gravy (Nissim Black’s The bright lights tour) was the last concert I went to (AMAZING btw) and after the show, Kosha Dillz let me know he had a release on 12″ vinyl, so I purchased that and he’s going to be signing it for me too. We purchase Kippah’s from an Etsy seller online who handmakes them and I have a decent little collection growing. We support the American Jewish Committee and our Synagogue, and we give Tzedakah to others as often as humanly possible. 

We support all of these things to support the overall global Jewish community, starting local and small, then branching out into the greater community at large. It’s important to us to support all things Jewish because we are a very small minority group in the world, of whom predominantly only other Jews will buy from, support, and listen to. We don’t care what movement of Judaism the company or person is, Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist… we give our support to all Jews. 

If we didn’t do these things, who else would? Would there even be any Jewish artists or shops without the support of fellow Jews? Therefore we as Jews support other Jews in their endeavors and businesses!