About MATISYAHU
Matthew Paul Miller , known by his stage name Matisyahu מתתיהו), is an American reggae singer, rapper, beatboxer, and musician.
Known for blending spiritual themes with reggae, rock and hip hop beatboxing sounds, Matisyahu's 2005 single "King Without a Crown" was a Top 40 hit in the United States. Since 2004, he has released seven studio albums as well as five live albums, two remix CDs and two DVDs featuring live concerts. Throughout his career, Matisyahu has worked with Bill Laswell and reggae producers Sly & Robbie and Kool Kojak. He has also appeared as an actor in films.
Matthew Paul Miller was born on June 30, 1979, in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His family eventually settled in White Plains, New York. He was brought up a Reconstructionist Jew and attended Hebrew school at Bet Am Shalom, a synagogue in White Plains. He spent much of his childhood learning the tenets of Judaism, but by the time he was a teenager, Miller began to rebel against his upbringing. At one Phish concert, Matisyahu dropped acid for the first time, an experience he recounted in 2016 "changed my life."
In autumn 1995, Miller attended a two-month program at the Alexander Muss High School in Hod Hasharon, Israel. During the program's first month, he was restricted to staying on campus for disciplinary reasons. He became more interested in Judaism and started to identify more as a Jew. After he finished Muss, he returned to New York. He started taking drugs and dropped out of White Plains Senior High School on the first day of his senior year, becoming a self-professed "Phish-head", taking hallucinogens and following the rock band Phish on tour. A stint in a rehabilitation center in upstate New York followed.
Miller then attended a wilderness expedition school for teenagers in Bend, Oregon, where he completed high school. "It was not necessarily for drug rehabilitation, but that was part of the reason I was out there," he explained to The Forward in 2008. In Oregon, he identified himself as "Matt, the Jewish rapper kid from New York." Miller has contrasted this time in Oregon to his life in New York City. "I was suddenly the token Jew. This was now my search for my own identity, and part of Judaism feeling more important and relevant to me." After being exposed to reggae and hip hop at the school, he began playing open mic sets.
He returned to New York, began taking classes on Jewish spirituality at The New School, and started developing his reggae style, spending hours in his room, writing and practicing to the accompaniment of hip-hop tapes. At the same time, he started going to The Carlebach Shul, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and bought a prayer book and prayer shawl. He began attending religious services every Sabbath at the synagogue and started to wear a yarmulke and tzitzit . One morning after getting drunk the night before, Matisyahu encountered Rabbi Dave Korn of the Chabad House at NYU, later moving into Korn's house to study Torah all day.
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